Dad used to develop film for the TV industry in Hollywood. Around the age I started watching Batman and Robin on TV, he was telling us he was having lunch with them on set. And… damn him… he told us how they climbed up buildings. Just a matter of turning the camera sideways, he said. Which totally ruined the magic of it for me and my brother. Except that it didn’t.
Miles and I have a perfect track record so far at Maker Faire, attending every year since its inception in 2006. This year was our fifth time out, though things took a slightly different turn this year. Rather than it being father/son bonding time, my extended family trekked out to the Bay Area for the experience. Corralling nine people meant a bit less explore time, so we saw less of the cornucopia, but what we did see was amazing, as always.
Highlights: RC-controlled neon land sharks chasing kids around in the dark. Tall bikes everywhere, including one with “roots” that could be deployed at the flip of a lever so the rider could stop at lights without toppling over. A grand steampunk calliope with half-sawn tubas, whoopee whistles, cuckoos, and tubes galore honking out a rendition of Yellow Submarine. The giant Tesla coils throwing lightning, but this time generating music at the same time (remember Hot Buttered’s “Popcorn?” Imagine that set to explosive blue electricity). A guy playing drums, didgeridoo and bass at the same time. 6-ft.-wide plates of paella. The life-size mousetrap, as always.
Unfortunately, the Wooden Bikes crowd was nowhere to be seen, and the Cyclecide crew’s human-powered carnival rides were shut down for a break when we arrived. Still, Maker Faire remains “Burning Man for families” – an explosion of creativity and weld joints like no other. Won’t be the last.
Took fewer photos than usual, but managed to put together an OK Flickr set.
The world has changed since you last rode a pogo stick. Namely, you’ve gotten bigger – too big to ride the spring-loaded stick that carried you down the block between ages six and twelve. But good news: A few companies are making pogos re-engineered for grown-ups, so you can recapture that marvelous elastic bounce. Even cooler – they’re not spring-loaded anymore – modern pogos are brought to you pneumatically, with cylinders of air that can be pressurized to work with your body weight and desired boing-ratio.
Lucked out at a picnic in the woods today when one of the guys pulled a Vurtego from the bed of his pickup and went for it. After watching for a while, I asked for a turn. Here are the results of my first three attempts. It had been 35 years since I’d been on one, but like riding a bicycle, the muscle memory never really leaves your body.
Grownup Pogo from Scot Hacker on Vimeo.
The rennaissance of grown-up pogo sticks has given rise to the tiny cottage sport of extreme pogo, championed by Pogo Fred.
… but not like you’d expect.
Jennifer Maestre creates incredible sculptures out of pencils and nails, inspired by the form and function of the sea urchin. Not quite like anything you’ve ever seen. I love the idea of taking things that are inherently linear and creating something so distinctly non-linear. Gorgeous.
Amy, Miles and I did some experiments with flashlights and a laser pen recently, drawing in the air in the kitchen with 6-second timed exposures. Unfortunately Amy’s camera didn’t have a CF card inserted, so we were able to save only a few of them done with my dinky point-and-shoot (I actually didn’t realize my SD1100 was even capable of doing timed exposures until that evening).
Dig my little Volkswagen? Would like to play with this technique more one day – great possibilities.
Accidental team effort: A while ago, we ordered a set of super-magnetic BuckyBalls from ThinkGeek. Miles soon discovered he could stick them to the nails in our wooden floor, and stack them up in delicate little towers. Amy, with her amazing eye for detail, saw something beautiful in the scene and started taking pictures – close up, and with a very short depth of field. She accidentally left the camera’s light temperature sensor set to Tungsten, which caused this gorgeous bluish cast.
Remembering that ThinkGeek has a section attached to each product in their catalog for “Customer Action Shots,” I submitted the image alongside their BuckyBalls product entry. Next day, amazed to discover we had won this month’s user submission prize!
I’m totally in love with Amy’s shot — and with Amy. And with Miles.
Happy New Year everyone. Love to all.
A week ago, I spied this sign, attached to a chain link fence on a construction site near my work. Thought it was strange, maybe a relic from a bygone era, but mostly just loved it as a metaphor for a seven-year-old codebase we’re about to ditch. Still, the words NONCHALANCE VIABILITY SURVEY rang in the back of my brain. This was too odd to be accidental.
Last night, I pulled up the picture again and noticed that it included a toll-free number. Decided to give it a call – why not? What I heard next was… well, you’ll just have to call it yourself and see.
So apparently the whole thing is an art project of some kind – subtle and “official-looking” enough to pass for just more bureaucratic signage, so easy to walk past, not notice, be ignored. But just below the surface is something that rings a bit like a Church of the Subgenius 20 years later. Digging deeper, found this SFMOMA article about the project (and related ones), which in turn linked to Elsewhere Public Works, who apparently run the Nonchalance Viability Survey. Dig the arcane command line interface at the Elsewhere site.
I keep thinking about how this sign could have been just a raised eyebrow to me, barely noticed. How much do we miss on a daily basis? In the swirling miasma of culture, there are unnoticed touchstones that lead to paths that goes as deep and as far as we care to follow.
There were stickers scattered randomly around this year’s Maker Faire: “Last year was better.” The weird thing was that whoever made them would had to have printed them up before the fair began. How could they know in advance? What would have happened if this year had been better than ever? Unfortunately, the stickers were right.
We’ve attended all four years of Maker Faire now, so Miles has been there at ages 3, 4, 5 and 6 (does that qualify as a tradition?) I still think it’s one of the Bay Area’s most amazing explosions of talent and creativity — there’s nothing else like it. But this year there were noticeably fewer amazing giant steel sculptures, a much smaller presence from the incredible Cyclecide, more guard rails and safety precautions, more people (again), and more attendance from professional organizations. Year by year, the fair is starting to feel a bit less like a family-friendly version of Burning Man, a bit more like an opportunity for professional Lego collectors to network.
I don’t want to make too much of that though – Maker Faire most definitely has NOT started to suck. It’s still dazzling, inspiring, amazing. Just that it’s started to feel a bit… safer than it once did.
That said, Miles and I had an amazing day watching the Giant Mouse Trap, building inventions with computer scrap parts, learning about the SCA, “driving” the amazing snail car, watching the human llama wobble around, riding the wooden bikes (my fave part of every MF), digging on a thousand kinds of robots, taking on challenges at the Instructables booth, spending way too much time at the various Legos exhibits, eating great good food on a perfect spring day. And the R2D2 Miles wanted so badly to see last year finally showed up – the little Padouin was beaming with happiness.
This year’s photo gallery (63 images and 10 videos):
Click icon at lower right after starting to view full-screen.
View the whole set at Flickr (includes captions you don’t get with the slideshow).
Had some freaky food fun today… cut hot dogs into segments, pushed pieces of dry spaghetti through, boiled. Despite the faces in these shots, Miles loved them, said they looked like Cerise Tinh from Star Wars… without a face.
After clicking Play button, click icon at lower right of slideshow to view full-screen.
Why having a 6-year-old around the house is the greatest experience in the world:
That’s not our house, but minute-to-minute life isn’t far off from this girl’s wonderful stream of consciousness existence.
Note to self: Look out the window to see if there are any really little kids waiting for treats before putting on the mask and opening the door :)
Since 1994, A Word A Day (AWAD) has done one thing and done it well – bring a new word into your active vocabulary (complete with audible pronunciations). Truthfully, I often skim or gloss entries arriving in the daily inbox, but every now and then one really catches my attention. Today’s word: Skeuomorph:
noun: A design feature copied from a similar artifact in another material, even when not functionally necessary. For example, the click sound of a shutter in an analog camera that is now reproduced in a digital camera by playing a sound clip.
The word captures the fake authenticity meme so well. Think wood-grained vinyl on the side of a 70s station wagon. Think “distressed” jeans. Think hockey mom.
Stranger than fiction: Tiny, virtually indestructible animals called tardigrades, aka “water bears.” They don’t do much, but they don’t seem to know how to die, either. From The Very Short List – What can’t water bears bear?
Tardigrades — barely visible invertebrates that cling to mosses and lichens — are an exception to this rule. They are virtually indestructible. In recent years, scientists have subjected tardigrades (which are also known as water bears) to extreme temperatures, ranging from 155ºC to –200ºC. They’ve deprived the creatures of food and water for years at a time and zapped them with incredibly toxic levels of radiation. But, just like a Timex watch, water bears keep on ticking. Earlier this month, scientists reported that a colony of tardigrades had even managed to withstand the vacuum of outer space.
There is no outer boundary to the mind-blowing properties of raw nature.
See also: the Tardigrades in Space blog.
Y’all dream. Dream of all the things you could be doing if you weren’t glued to the job, glued to the family, glued to the tube. Watch Discovery and wonder if you should take up hang gliding / hitch-hiking / kayaking / gator wrestling / any activity that gets you off your seat and helps you milk life to the fullest. You know, that “50 things to do before I die” list? How many of those items do you really think you’ll cross off?
Brett [Something] decided the only way to make sure he crossed all 50 items off his list would be to leave the house and get started. And not come back until everything on the list was done.
Calls himself Amtrekker. Travels with four T-shirts, one pair of pants, one pair of shorts, and a backpack full of technology he uses to blog about his adventures and produce a weekly podcast from wherever he is at the time. And he’s doing it. Living the adventure dream you and I only dream about really doing. Only a few more items left on his list, then he can go back home.
Great interviews with Brett in the Podcacher podcast, episodes 178 and 189.
Go Brett!
Imagine traipsing down the trail with 200 lbs. of extra weight… and not feeling it. Better: Imagine being paralyzed, and suddenly able to walk. Human exoskeletons are a reality.
Berkeley Bionics has spent the last several years developing and working to perfect their exoskeletons, which augment both a person’s lifting strength and endurance. With the HULC device, a person can carry up to 200 pounds without seriously impeding their mobility while using up to 15 percent less oxygen to bear the weight, increasing the length of time a person would be able to haul such a load.
File under Truth Is Stranger: A couple of months ago Miles’ viking helmet got busted — right around the time we had to replace the video inverter in Amy’s monitor. Naturally, the broke inverter ended up attached to the broke helmet, along with a few lights and some pipe cleaner. Miles called it “The Brain Great-iator,” because it allegedly makes your brain greater (unconfirmed).
Separated at birth? Miles and Steve Carrell
Then last month’s Wired mag hit the stands, with cover story 12 Hacks That Will Amp Up Your Brainpower, featuring Steve Carrell sporting a grown-up version of Miles’ own invention.
Michael Scott is going to get so sued.
Wow. Live-action Spanish version of The Simpsons. No one seems to have more info. Can someone translate please?
Birdman coda: Yves Rossy dropped out of an airplane at 8,000 feet with this thing strapped to his back last week, becoming a human fuselage. 200 lbs of thrust kicked him out to 186 mph during his five-minute flight – first successful one of its kind. Awe-inspiring.
One of the excellent things about being a parent is the endless opportunity to re-live your childhood. In high school, Gumby was mostly the subject of satire… we had grown up watching 1950s/60s Gumby shorts in the 1970s. In the 80s, mocking Gumby was fun because it had been a staple of our own childhoods, even though that staple had already been retro when we were tykes. But while we made lots of Gumby jokes and loved to quote from Eddie Murphy’s 1982 SNL Gumby reprisal, and while I even made a foam Gumby costume for halloween ’82, I hadn’t seen any of the actual episodes since early childhood.
Rented a volume of early episodes recently to show Miles, and was taken by surprise — they’re so completely different from my early memories. I remember “Gumby” as innocent and simple, and it is. But it’s also incredibly surreal, and charmingly/badly produced. The stiffest voice acting you can imagine. Ridiculous plot and prop inconsistencies. The clay in Gumby’s body tearing between the legs and Clokey not even bothering to edit it out. Strange animations scattered throughout the stories for no particular reason… you can almost visualize the animators making it up as they went along: “Hey, what if a musical note jumped out of this red vinyl LP and down Gumby’s throat?” Sure, why not. Spontaneously bizarre.
Everything in the Gumby universe starts with “Gumb___.” Gumby and his family live in Gumbasia. Gumby’s mother and father are called Gumba and Gumbo. Gumba reminds Gumby every time he leaves the house, “Don’t forget to take your Gumbopiture!” — a bizarre reference to a recurring prop — a sort of circular thermometer that measures Gumby’s health relative to his temperature (clay is stiff when cold, runny when warm; Art Clokey seems to have been obsessed with the plot possibilities presented by clay’s thermal properties).
Another recurrent effect I had no memory of: Every time Clokey needed to show fire or smoke (dragon’s breath, burning wheat, steaming pools…), he created the effect by scratching at or burning the physical film (and by the looks of it, dousing it with chemicals from time to time). At one point, Gumby steals a hot rod and starts spinning donuts (I kid you not). The smoke reeling from his tires looks like Clokey just scribbled on the film with Magic Marker. It’s brilliant.
I had completely forgotten the excellent way Gumby gets around. Rather than animating him walking, Clokey just propped him up on one leg and slid him across the floor – an inexplicable one-foot slide/skate move that makes you wonder whether Gumby actually has some kind of undulating foot pad, like a super-fast mollusk. It’s just weird, totally cheap, and totally wonderful.
Nothing about watching Gumby episodes from the 60s while in your 40s matches your early childhood memories. Everything is cheaper, more hokey, more cliche’d, more technicolor. A TV show (even a kids show) being made this badly today would never get signed. These classic episodes would hardly even pass for rough cuts in today’s big-budget TV universe. But the constraints of small budgets allowed Clokey and the animators to think off-the-cuff and improvise like crazy. There were only three channels at the time, and no one cared that it was hokey – maybe that’s what we all loved about it (ultimately, Gumby became a 223-episode series stretching over 35 years).
After a few evenings of watching Gumby re-runs with Miles, I asked him what he thought:
“Well, it doesn’t amount to much, but it’s sure interensting!”
Right on.
Amazing what a man can do with a can of spray paint and a saucepan lid (and an uncanny gift for seeing possibilities).
My attempt to sell off boxes of 30-year-old+ comics was an abject failure. The market is flooded, the internet is taking over the comic space, etc. etc. Especially disheartening was that I couldn’t find a good home for all my old Mad magazines. Thumbing through the boxes a few months ago, had to take time out to do a bunch of Mad Fold-Ins — the back page was always a treat, and every issue has vertical creases at the 1/3 points. Creator Al Jaffe (now 86) has been creating the fold-ins by hand almost non-stop since 1964.
The New York Times is featuring an excellent collection of fold-ins, with interactivity expertly re-created in Flash.
Gizmodo: “Boston Dynamics keeps working on their BigDog quadruped robot, which will probably grow to be the future AT-AT of the Pentagon.” Video:
Something about the way the bot moves elicits sympathy in the viewer – its motions are so animal-like they throw you. When the researcher kicks BigDog to demonstrate how it can regain its balance, my first reaction was one of sympathy for “the animal” – internally, I had already started to identify it as a living creature (and thus as sentient). But the whine of the two-stroke Briggs & Stratton lawn mower engine keeps you reminded. Wonder why it isn’t electric?
More here.
