Category Archives: Maker

The Maker movement is something that I have belonged to all my life without realizing it. It is based on the concept that it is more frun to make stuff and fix stuff than to buy stuff or throw it away. It is also about “found art” in the mechanical effluvia of out everyday lives and “what iffing” about what might have happened if…

So Foul and Faire a day I have not seen…

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All right, all right! So it is a bit of a stretch but I wanted to use the clever play on words to show I actually HAVE read the Scottish Play.  Odd as it sounds I actually PLAYED the “Scot” in the sixth grade, which explains a lot about how my life turned out in high school if theatrical superstition is to be believed!

Just finsihed packing the lunch for the day (as much fun as it is to buy food at any FAIRE HELLO! Starving artist here!) and I will be crawling into the shower in afew.  I am letting Nicholas sleep a little more but son we must away!

It si my second uyear working the faire and I am excited and nervous. I have never been shy about trying new things but I am often shy about meeting new people, it’sone of them there “self image” things.  Friends who know me in real life might be surprised to hear me say that but it is the truth, the thing is that I often hide my shyness behind bravado, killing the butterflies in my stomach by projecting an image like someone from a Jack London or Hemmingway novel.  If you are “bigger then life” people don’t question your feet of clay.

The OTHER Howard Hughes

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My Dad loved things that flew, was PLANE crazy (if you will excuse the pun) from an early age. He learned to fly when he was 13 and went in partners with his best friend to buy an old Curtis Bi-plane when he was in his teens, or so the family legend goes. Is it true? I dunno but ti is a GREAT story. Like the guy in Big Fish the line between fantasy and reality with my Dad was nebulous at best, non-existant at its worst.  This came from a combination of the fact that whereas early in my life he was distant as I grew up we became closer and closer.  His death in 2000 still leaves a gaping hole in my heart.

One of the people Dad respected more than most was Howard Hughes.  (aside:I realize that when I say that you just flashed on images of an emaciated, white bearded man walking naked through his Las Vegas Penthouse with kleenex boxes on his feet while ICE STATION ZEBRA blazed on in the background.  If you DIDN’T think that then you are either too young or have been living somewhere dark and full of spiders.  Hello and welcome to the human race!) In case you didn’t know there is/was a lot more to the legend of Howard Hughes then the crap the media LOVED to exploit for sensational ratings.

Some of this is touched on in THE AVIATOR, which my only regret I have about that film is that I didn’t see it in a theatre (for a specific reason).  That reason is the spectacular aerial footage of Jim Wright’s beautiful replica of the Hughes H1 racer. Since I have been talking about beautiful things from the hands of man this week I wanted to pass this one on to you. I first became aware of this airplane through a metal working website, TM Technologies . “TM” stands for TIN MAN, which is the nickname of the owner, Kent White who is a master metalworker.  Kent did a lot of the complex fillet and panel work on the H1 Replica, metal turned into art the contours of which would have made Da Vinci weep. I wander around the TM site sometimes for hours, marveling at the amazing things that can come from the work of a human being with a skill and the years of experience that turns it into an art form.

I wish I had a video for you of the plane this morning but you will just have to settle for a couple of links to beautiful images and interesting stuff.  Gotta go, need to get on the road North!  Talk atcha Later

Would ya kickstart my brain Please?

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…preferably with spike heels. Anything to get my medulla as oblongata as is conceivably possible. Been sitting here dressed for the gym for about an hour but the motivation is not coming to me. Maybe more Coffee will chase the spooks away.

I need to get out into the world and face the day Still waiting on word from my dev partner on this latest project, he has been slammed at his day job so he has started to wander in and out of focus like a programming Sasquatch.

I will be getting a lot of face time this weekend though, the tribe is gathering and Maker Faire is in the offing!  I am working at the iFixit booth again and am looking foreword to it quite a bit. Additionally my son, Nicholas, will be doing volunteer work with me as well this year.  My roomies are going to be working over at TECH SHOP so the gang will all be there.  How about
you?  If you are in the bay area you should drop by for at least one of the days and check it out.

It’s the kind of weekend that makes me wish my Dad was still around because not only would he have a blast looking at what people were doing but additionally he would be treated as a rockstar in his own write for all the stuff he worked on and built in his lifetime.

For those of you who don’t know what Maker Faire is, well it is a lot of things.  Members of the “Tribe” that gather each year in San Mateo might call it a “Celebration of “…well a lot of things.  It is a celebration of people who have chosen not to accept a disposable society and choose to FIX THINGS rather than THROWING THEM AWAY.  It is a celebration of knowledge in the face of a world where KNOWING stuff has been subjugated to OWNING stuff. It is a celebration of SCIENCE…which is lost to so many people these days that it would make Werner Von Braun weep openly. It is a celebration of stuff that is JUST F**KING COOL!  I mean where else is there a field where autonomous aluminum balls wander free in the shadow of a giant mechanical hand made of truck hydraulic cylinder and controlled by a NINTENDO POWER GLOVE that can crush a washer and dryer?

If you don’t think that last sentence was amazingly cool then you should either check for a pulse or go turn on Maury Povich as you are, in some way, dead.