The San Francisco Bay Area delights me anew all the time. The Maker's Faire this weekend was no exception.
The Faire was the first of its kind, a gathering of folks from O'Reilly's Make magazine (stay tuned; they're launching Craft this fall. Look out Martha Stewart...) to actually get together and show off their goods -- and their brainpower. The Crucible folks were there with welding torches and a giant flamethrower. The Power Tool Drag Race folks were there -- although their fastest machine (88mph) was just a rocket on wheels, powered by compressed nitrogen and involving no power tool whatsoever. My favorite was the belt sander with wings (wings purely ornamental).
There were four halls of exhibits. We missed the sewing tent, where you can bring in old clothes and leave with anything you can make in two days. And I didn't get a chance to test-drive the 3-wheeled electric zipcars.
OK, here are highlights.
- a mechanical abacus that caluclates the curve of a sine wave. The inventor sketched out the plans for it and a printing device in 1848, but never built them. "They both work perfectly as designed" the nice bearded man showing off the device, which was utterly hypnotic, told me.
- 3-D printing. Last I heard, they were doing it with potato starch and expensive printers. Turns out, the serious folks send their work out to be "printed" at higher temperatures in steel and other metal powders. Glass, the artist Bathsheba Grossman says, can't be far behind.
- OK, this wasn't an exhibit. But this woman had a cool t-shirt with a cartoon heart on it. Check out all the organs atI Heart Guts. Gotta get me one of these.
- Metal. Chunks of it, any size. Metal Supermarkets, the convenience store of the Metal Industry. If I won the lottery, I'd buy steel. And a lot of tools. And a garage. With a house attached, for the furniture to go in.
- Better than NetFlix: rent videos that show you how to do absolutely anything, for $10 a pop. TechnicalVideoRental.com. Sample titles: Wine for the Confused. Focus on Flamework: Using Northstar Frit and Powders. Intro to Robotics with the Parallax Boe-Bot. (lots of Parallax robots on hand as well.)
- Cool lamps and other funky objects from Jonathan Foote, made from found objects like used hard drives and old street lamps.
- Coffee table made from half a sheet of plywood, from Andy Bot. Easier than going to Ikea. And getting out again.
- No idea what these guys did. But it was cool. Making jewelry from old fuses, I think. The mystery will be revealed when their site launches.
- Cool crafty shit everyone should own at the Bizarre Bazaar, from arty wallets, iPod cases (I bought one) and goofy animal patches (I bought two) and about 5 zillion more things I saw but was too dazed to investigate.
It was a good day. Princess is pleased.
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