The weekend of May 18th ant 19th was the 8th annual Bay Area Maker Faire. Like so many times before, it featured all sorts of people sharing ideas and showing off their art projects, unconventional conveyances, giant robots, and more. There were all manner of oddities and the folks who love them.
I put on my usual display (slightly improved since last year) and spent the whole weekend chatting with anyone who was interested in gaining insight into the nuts and bolts of how I make my various projects.
Here's a shot of the display booth this year:
Here's one of dozens of pics from the event:
For more info and a metric butt-ton of additional photos, read on...
Space Marines are huge. In the game mythology their armor is power assisted, which allows them to move their several tons of mass with all the grace and fluidity of a dancer.
While building the Space Marine costumes, I didn't have access to any of the technology of the 41st millennium. As a result, I had to settle for making them not weigh tons. I also had to have people follow them around to make sure they wouldn't trip or fall over or bump their heads while walking through doorways.
Since I didn't like the idea of having the finest warriors of the Imperium of Man being shepherded around by a handful of people in jeans and t-shirts, I needed another option. The other option: have each of them accompanied by a small retinue of Imperial Guardsmen from the Cadian Regiments.
Here's a shot of the finished Guardsmen with one of my Space Marines:
For more pictuers and details of the build process, read on...
The other day I was out of town when someone decided to try and park an RV next to my boat:
According to witnesses, the driver was backing down the boat ramp to launch a trailered boat he was towing behind the RV. As the boat floated off the trailer, he put the vehicle in park but didn't set the parking brake because "it tends to stick."
I'm not sure, but I'm thinking that would've been the better alternative:
From what I've heard, the driver's girlfriend (a mildly disabled non-swimmer) was seated in the rear of the RV as it rolled itself down the ramp and submerged itself. The driver was able to get her out of the vehicle and safely ashore. She was soaking wet, but otherwise unharmed.
Then he went for a boat ride.
It was quite a while later before he returned to find a diver, tow truck, several firefighters, and the assistant harbormaster in the middle of retrieving what was apparently the entirety of his worldly possessions:
The not-quite-amphibious Winnebago spent quite a few days in the parking lot by the boat ramp before the owner was finally able to wring everything out, get it running, and get on his way:
People never cease to amaze me.
I'm going to be returning for the third year in a row to the Bay Area Maker Faire on the weekend of May 18th and 19th. If you're anywhere in the San Francisco Bay Area, or indeed the entire West Coast, you really ought to head over and check it out. The whole thing keeps getting bigger and better.
If you've never heard of it, you should check out the website. There will be art, science, and tech projects everywhere. The organizers bill it as the "greatest show and tell on Earth" and they're probably right. There
will be giant bicycles, flame-belching sculptures, an electronic
giraffe, and countless other things to see, do, and learn. Heck, last
year there was a guy who'd turned a DeLorean into a hovercraft.
For my part, I'll be setting up my display booth and have a handful of characters walking around in costume. I'll also be bringing a stack of molds, unfinished pieces, and photo albums so I can spend all day hanging out and answering how-to questions for anyone who stops by. So this is usually the view I have while I'm there:
I'll also have a booth set up to sell some Combat Garden Gnomes:
So come out and see some awesome stuff, get inspired, and have a great time.
Oh, and if you happen to bump into one of my Space Marines, be sure to apologize:
A while back I won an Objet30 3D Printer in a contest on instructables.com. This is an amazing machine that turns a digital 3D model into physical object by slicing it into very fine layers, then printing layer after layer of a photosensitive resin on top of one another until it has built the entire thing.
I've been watching 3D printing technology develop over the past couple of years, but this is the first one I've seen that has high enough resolution and seems reliable enough to make it worth owning. I named mine "Jarvis."
Because it seemed apropos, this is the first thing I had Jarvis build:
In case you don't recognize it, this is the Mark 3 Ironman helmet from the first movie.
On that note, if you don't recognize it, you're wrong. What rock have you been living under? If you've been living in a country with electricity at any point in the past five years you should've seen at least one of the three movies that have come out with this character. If not, get yourself a copy of each film by clicking HERE
, HERE
, and HERE
, lock yourself in a room, watch them all, and catch up with the rest of the planet. There's a fourth one coming out this weekend, so get yourself educated.
For more details on the build process for my helmet, read on...
