Um, I went to the Maker Faire at the San Mateo Expo Center today (good way to cure a hangover) because some of my friends students were showing off a microprocessor that they built themselves and I saw some weird stuff:
- Wozniak and cronies playing Polo on Segways on a grassy field
-a Linux cluster running on biofuel
-some kind built a weird bike where you ride a witchy broom and point the broom to steer, very simple and cool
-some pretty crazy robots, some kinda Burning Man-ish alas, some good ones.
so yeah . . .
― Drew Daniel (Drew Daniel), Monday, 24 April 2006 01:35 (twenty years ago)
oops, should say "some kid built a"
still hungover
― Drew Daniel (Drew Daniel), Monday, 24 April 2006 01:39 (twenty years ago)
The best robot of the day was mounted on an electric wheelchair, had a video camera and a TV screen face, upon which was projected the face of the man ("Larry", natch) who was remote controlling it from a secret location. It would wobble and grind and roll around the convention, with Larry seeing and hearing things (poorly) through some mics/cams and engaging curious onlookers in rudimentary conversation.
ROBOT: "HI!"
RANDOM DUDE: "Hi, um, how's it going, Larry?"
ROBOT "Good"
(nervous sideways tic look)
"I guess"
RANDOM DUDE: "Mind if I take your picture?"
ROBOT: "Go for it!" etc etc. etc.
The robot was wearing a lanyard with a photo-I.D. name tag that said Larry and showed its owner/inventor/controller.
It was that kind of day.
The subwoofer mounted in an ottoman was cool, and so were many of the USB/controller devices that various people had built.
A general mixture of Silicon Valley, science fair, Renaissance faire (SCA types were present), Geek Squad/Yahoo recruitment drive and Robotspeak gearhound-ishness was going on.
― Drew Daniel (Drew Daniel), Monday, 24 April 2006 04:17 (twenty years ago)
Coolest part for me personally was meeting the woman who designed this:
http://www.ladyada.net/make/x0xb0x/index.html
Her name is L1m0r Fr13d and she's pretty intense.
― Drew Daniel (Drew Daniel), Monday, 24 April 2006 17:37 (twenty years ago)