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Detroit Maker Faire
Dear loyal readers, I have both good news and bad news to impart upon you. The good news is that I have recovered my vision entirely with no lasting pathologies. The bad news relates to why I lost that vision in the first place. It was at the Detroit Maker Faire that this untimely event unfolded, for the magnitude of the awesomeness of the wonderful and amazing things to be consumed at the Maker Faire was such that my retinas were promptly burnt out, just like looking directly into a 50W neon laser. And the bad news, my darling reader friend, is that the Detroit Maker Faire lasted but 2 short days. And it is over.
In 2 days we let kids built a castle of 2x4s, PVC, and cardboard, and within 3h of us constructing the main tower they'd thoroughly adult-proofed it by making doors and tunnels far too small for our frames. The kids nearly knocked me out with a sudden onset of spray paint fumes as they decorated the castle in themes reminescent of Jackson Pollock's drunken poetry. Not only this, but the constant chiptunes and the steady hammering of young children upon old electronics at the nearby Robotics Redefined, Inc. Wrecklab created a wonderfully chaotic atmosphere. i3 Detroit attacked us with their Twinkie car, even resorting to such treachery as to brainwash a Pumping Station: One member into piloting it. We countered with a sortie to take over their Maker Mixer and successfully transformed the gathering from a standing-around-talking-event to a dancing-like-awesome-party (many thanks to Oishi, Facehat, Matt, and Echo for their assistance). There was much fire and cape-wearing and ambient goggles and we also got to visit with our fellow Kwartzlab hackers from the exotic land of Canada, who curiously didn't sound very Canadian (we were glad to learn that our Canadian is more fluent than we'd thought). HackPDG, Arch Reactor, Omni Corps Detroit, Pumping Station: One, i3 Detroit, and a few other unmentionable hackerspaces were there as well. I like to think that we managed to make more friends than enemies among them.
Now that the Maker Faire is over and our visions are returning to normal, the hardy hacker crew at All Hands Active has been at best lethargic and at worst listless. No breeze stirs through our sails of inspiration and the waves of possibility lapping at our hull are unnoticed in the desperately understimulated state we find ourselves in. Enough with the nautical nonsense, though, because we're already planning for next time. Yea, verily, it was not the despoilment of fresh Sterilite bins with Ever Greater Organization that plucked at the bow of our heartstrings, but rather the possibility for More.
So we are planning, and we are devising, and scheming, and determinedly determining that whatever we do next will--nay, MUST--be grander and more impressive. And involve either marshmallows or fire.
Digitizing Xander - 3D Modeling in Blender
Members of AHA are often holding or facilitating in some sort of free workshop, class, etc. So far we've managed to get our hands involved in Welding, Model Rockets, Duct Tape Wallets, Python (Programming, snakes come later), and so much more. Most recently we've been doing 3D Modeling classes on the occasional Monday.
Xander, like Arnold Schwarzenegger has provided his likeness for the purpose of digitizing. Using a front and side profile image of Xander's face and the free software Blender, Oishi taught the first half of a class on 3D Modeling in Blender.
More news next week when the second half is finished
Ann Arbor Mini Maker Faire Follow-Up 2
More documentation of the Ann Arbor Mini Maker Faire that took place June 5th have emerged via Make Magazine's blog and Flickr stream, courtesy of Matt Mets of HackPDH.
Here Bilal was making flyers for us to hand out, as we quickly ran out of our normal flyers*:
Here I am with one of the finished products:
Amanda had wrapped the yarn that somehow wound up with our fort-building supplies around me before she left for Indonesia that day.
Here's Alex, scaring little kids and teaching them to juggle at the same time:
We enjoy recursion and make certain to engage in it whenever possible:
Nick Britsky of i3 Detroit, our closest hackerspace neighbor, seemed rather confused by Amanda's Hank Drum:
Afterwards, we went to Pizza House and built stuff with the odds and ends I found in my backpack. I try to be prepared for the apocalypse, although I'm not certain what a linear taper would do to help me in that event.
Nate is silly.
And finally, here's Alex continuing her trend of creepiness:
Seems that whenever we're around paint of any sort we wind up with it on our faces and in our ears and hair. I choose to believe that this is a positive attribute and I hope that it will spark a new fashion movement. Imagine it!
*Normal strategy is to write on our faces and photocopy them.
Ann Arbor Mini-Maker Faire Nightcap
The Ann Arbor Mini Maker Faire took place this Saturday and it was so very freaking awesome that my armpits are still itchy from excitement*! There were Ooblek troughs (like this), space harps, soldering stations, copper butterflies, electric tractors, articulated bicycles, ferromagnetic microscopes, and lots of kids running around with robots! It was a feast for those curious about makery making-ness and the incredible things that ordinary people can do. The bar to entry to making things is low (and the event was free), and too many don't seem to realize this. I find this unfortunate. The act of making is regarded as some sort of esoteric technical art, when really all it is is wrestling that hungry spark of an idea out of your ear and trasmuting it into reality. Sure, sometimes it is hard, sometimes it is frustrating and often we run into roadblocks that we require help to get around, but these are the very things that make the challenge so very satisfying in the end. The AAMMF provided excellent fuel for attendees' creative powers, and I hope sincerely to see many of them returning next year as exhibitors.
All Hands Active intends to build a fort for our booth at the upcoming Detroit Maker Faire, and as a prototype we hauled out a large stack of cardboard and much tempera paint and let kids loose upon the engineering, completely open ended. Why did we do this? Because kids have absolutely no preconceived biases about how good design works, and their cognitive barrier for an idea to be more vivid and therefore more plausibly make-able is much lower than us stiff-minded adults. The children seemed to love it and spent many hours crafting something that quickly became a hybrid castle-spaceship, and they even built in features that kept us taller folk out. I couldn't fit through the doors they constructed. I don't mind, I had fun sitting and playing guitar while talking to curious parents and passerby about hackerspaces.
Parents, we did not let your kids use sharp tools, but we did let them eat paint.
Also! You remember that rumor revealed down below that we're the friendlist hackerspace in the country? Well, I found out who started that rumor. And that person was there at the Mini-Maker Faire. So I punched him in the face** to dispel any truth that might be lurking in his nefarious rumors. I mean, he actually cackled--CACKLED!--when I confronted him about it. What else was I supposed to do?
*That's normal, right?
**Although this was gentle, and only after giving him a hug. This may have decreased the effectiveness of the intended message.
Gloves et al
I recently read a couple sentences written by Heidegger that reminded me just what a douchebag Nietzsche is. An argument with a modern philosopher who stopped by the hackerspace only served to compound my rage, which was primarily directed at the existence of a school of thought that takes tautologies as proof and accepts flowery verbiage and misleading clause structure in lieu of evidence. And without the decency of using any math?
F'real?
So, if those punks can make philosophy, then so can I, confound it! As such I'm beginning to develop a Unified Theory of Personal Protective Equipment. Repeated observation after repeated observation yields the same ineluctable result, which follows as the Law of Strange Equipment:
Those Makers not acquainted with a piece of gear upon a daily basis will be immediately and disproportoinally fascinated by said gear upon their intermittent exposure to it. Bystanders shall be [bem/conf]used.
I have seen both very intelligent people and incredibly inane people demonstrate this law, so I posit that we can safely agree that intelligence of the subject has been controlled for. My personal observer's bias, however, cannot be entirely ignored.
Anyway, from this, it stands to follow that the contrapositive corollary is evident as the Law of Familiar Equipment:
Those Makers daily exposed to gear shall become numb to its novelty and grate at its safety's necessity.
Unfortunately, the Law of Familiar Equipment almost always leads to tragedy when it bumps up against the natural forces of Human Complacency and Divisive Probability. That is, the less the Maker cares, the more likely it becomes with each improper use of said gear that that Maker will injure themselves or aforementioned bystanders.
Poor bystanders...
Anywho, for evidence, I direct you to the following images.
This is an excellent example of Pokey demonstrating the Law of Strange Equipment, and doing so in such a way that he has attained a local maxima of Creepiness and made me doubt whether or not I can ever again trust him with a scalpel. This is an image upon which nightmares and horror movies are built, and it is exactly how I picture plastic surgeon conferences. Knowing him, Pokey would probably be in one of their a cappella groups, which are among the most inexplicable forms of social torture* anyone ever chooses to subject themselves to.
Here I am aptly demonstrating the Law of Familiar Equipment. It is difficult to see in this picture, but the gas mask is completely unsealed because I had not properly tightened or fastened the head straps. Luckily, I wasn't actually using it for anything at that moment beyond contemplating doing some stinky painting.
What can I say? I'm obviously neither three nor a philosopher**. I think, at the very least, even if my Laws of gear manage to hold up to scrutiny, that the latter claim is indisputable. I didn't even need math to prove it, eh?
*Among such luminous peers as Michael Bolton concerts, tanning booths, and televised golf.
**Or am I!?
