Marc's Public Blog

2013/05/18 Another Maker Faire

π 2013-05-18 00:00 in Public

Last year I went two days to make up for the fact that one day, especially sunday, isn't enough. Last year I went two days, including all of saturday (from 10 to 20:00). Turns out that outside of a few talks that were only on sunday. Turms out it was a bit overkill so this time I only went saturday all day, having delayed a trip to Tokyo untli the next day so that I could attend. Turns out it was just right, I was able to see a good amount of talks and virtually everything in the expo halls.

I love those guys with the big eyes

R2D2 is always a favourite

Dub has this for your car for just $10K :)

I always needed liquid cooling in my PC and lit components

This year was really starting to be the year of 3D printing. Multiple printers on demo (most weren't new):

Back to the roots competitor which actually does things right:

Some talks:

a new arduino form factor

a very complete, albeit expensive, robot platform

Inside the expo hall:

Video game without a screen

Gabotronics, I his great scopes

all the official arduinos you can get today

opensprinkler, this looks cool. With local control override, I'd buy this

Get your drink right, every time :)

Fun stuff outside:

this car was fantastic

where you can build all your burning man fire machines :)

or this. OMG, this was impressive.

Crazy hexa and octo copters, all the way to dodecacopters (12 blades):

twelve blades, and 2 independent battery systems. Awesome reliabilty

An unsual hexacopter

Eepybird, a crowd favourite, was back for more diet coke and mentos:

this is what they use for their effects

This was all great to see, and I even managed not to bring back several hundred thousands dollars of stuff, so I guess that's good, right?

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2013/04/28 Back to the Roots Mushrooms

π 2013-04-28 00:00 in Public

I recently got another Back to the Roots Mushrooms kit at work during Earth Day, so I gave it another shot. This time it worked quite well :)

The amazing part is that the following pictures are only 5 days apart:

Yum!

Dinner :)

Our previous attempt was several months ago, and this time it worked a bit better.

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2013/04/27 Cupertino Cherry Blossom Festival

π 2013-04-27 00:00 in Public

I had managed to miss this the last few years, so made sure to make it in our calendar this year, and we went. It was well worth it, and good practise for our upcoming trip to Japan :)

They had some nice Ikebana:

Jennifer also got to look into Calligraphy:

OMG, the pond has such cute little ducklings:

they look so helpless :)

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2013/01/20 Back to the Roots Mushrooms

π 2013-01-20 00:00 in Public

I bought a back to the roots mushroom kit at Maker Faire last year, and despite following the instructions, it never worked. Turns out that just being close to the kitchen window, pretty much never in direct sunlight, was apparently enough to stop the mushrooms from coming out.

After getting a replacement, which didn't work either, I finally figured out that it really needed to be in a dark corner. The kit I threw away actually started producing in the garage without even being watered.
Once I figured that out, I was able to get the kits to work, first inside, and after getting the first crop, I put them outside in the yard for more output :)

Finally, got some mushrooms indoors, after weeks of failing :)

The other kit had other mushrooms, which were quite yummy too

And I was able to get more by just putting the already used up kits outside

Did we save money or time? Hell no :) but it's about the challenge :)

2012/10/28 Mythbusters Exhibit at the San Jose Tech Museum

π 2012-10-28 00:00 in Public

When I heard that there was a mythbusters exhibit, I thought it would be fun to go see, and indeed they did a good job.

Half the exhibit was to show props from the show, and some were cool to see in person:

the jetpack they built

that was a bad ass shark they built for another myth

this one was to see if you could surf a wave made by throwing dynamite in the water

a full boat made out of duct tape and wood from an island

can a plane on a conveyor belt take off?

The other part of the exhibit was being able to try and replicate some myths

pulling a table cloth without dropping the plates and glasses

do you get more wet by running or walking?

how long can you hang on your fingertip strength?

can you avoid a bullet (or paint ball in this case)o

We spent the rest of the time having a look at the rest of the tech museum, which is always fun to visit:

Time well spent.

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2012/10/21 Aaron and Nicole Wedding

π 2012-10-21 00:00 in Public

Aaron was almost a brother when I was living in LA and working for Byron in 1996, so when he invited me to his wedding, I was able to take some time off around that time, and go attend with Jennifer. Jennifer flew in the day before and since I was going to be in Palm Springs the week prior, I used the opportunity to spend the week in LA before the wedding.

The wedding was on a saturday by a beautiful sea-side setting:

After the wedding, they had a very nice reception:

It was a great party, and nice to see the wagners I hadn't seen in quite a while.

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2012/09/25 Crafty Squirrels

π 2012-09-25 00:00 in Public

Our bird feeder has been very popular with the local birds, but I happened to catch a squirrel climb straight up our outside wall, then our outside lamp, pulled on the rope I had to stabilize the feeder, and tried to grab food from it.
Damn, that's crafty all right.

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