Imagine a child’s first white Christmas: the excitement of snow, the mystique of Santa, and the oh-so-important presents. Now multiply that feeling threefold, and add in some fire, a few hundred robots, and enough paper rockets to make NASA nervous. Overwhelmed? So was I! 
Because I work at MAKE, I know this may come as a surprise, but this was my first (gasp!) Maker Faire! On the drive to San Mateo, I didn’t know what to expect. What would the crowd be like? Would I get any free time to check out the booths? Did the compressed air rocket booth have a maximum age? One of these questions loomed above all; I’ll leave you to figure it out! The answer to each question surprised me. First, I thought that a large crowd, in a hot, enclosed area, would be an irritable bunch to deal with. I was completely wrong! During my shifts at our MAKE Booth in the Expo Hall, I held interesting conversations with new readers and veteran makers alike, on topics ranging from featured projects to favorite booths at the fair. I chatted with many visitors about their maker beliefs, and we swapped stories of projects gone horribly wrong-all in good humor! I did not encounter a single person who was irritated, difficult, or rude; everyone respected the mutual interests of those around them. When a man called the cellphone he had lost at our booth from another phone, he and I chatted about the newest Arduino before confirming a rendezvous point!
I was cleverly given split shifts at the booth, so that I could wander and explore in the middle of the day before returning for the breakdown. I quickly learned that one does not simply “wander” through Maker Faire; I’m pretty sure I was the only person over the age of 10 who did every booth’s activity as I passed it! The amazing variety of subjects that all fall under the umbrella of “DIY tech” never ceases to amaze me. I learned to make fire with a bow-drill, then hustled over for a turn in a motorized cupcake! 
Maker Faire exceeded my expectations in every way. The entire MAKE Crew, along with the fantastic volunteer Maker Corps, gave me the quintessential First Maker Faire: a smooth setup, a wonderful event experience, and an easy breakdown. Because I was staff, I didn’t have the time to get to all of the booths. Next year! I immensely enjoyed chatting with everyone, and because of their sociability, I’ll end with this: if you ever want to make a couple thousand friends in one afternoon, head to your nearest Maker Faire! 
          Normally I try, with varying degrees of success, to keep things pretty apolitical here. But this is something I feel very strongly about and wanted to share with you all. Whitehouse.gov has a new-ish “petitioning” feature that allows basically anyone to start a signature-collecting campaign which, upon reaching a certain number of clicks from registered users, will require an official response on the issue in question. That may seem like weak cheese, but it does oblige the executive branch to publicly state a position, which can focus media attention, spark debate, and create windows for real policy change.
At issue is open access to scientific information gathered using tax dollars. Which, in the US, is about a third of it. If you’ve ever been hot on the trail of a technical lead and run up against a robot demanding $40 to download one four-page, twenty-year-old journal article, you know what I’m talking about. Please take a minute, if you haven’t already and are so inclined, to go register an account and sign. They’re just shy of 23,000 clicks, as of this writing, and need 2,000 more before June 19th. Thanks. We now return you to your regularly scheduled program. Require free access over the Internet to scientific journal articles arising from taxpayer-funded research More:
Seeing the Crowdfunding Exemption Become Legal          
Using a Propeller Quickstart, some basic electronic components, and eight bananas, Jeff Ledger created a gnarly sounding touch capacitive synth. From the build notes: Theory of operation: The Propeller measures the R/C time constant determined by the resistor (internal on the Quickstart) and the capacitance on the connection point. When you bring your finger close to the connection point (the banana), the capacitance increases and therefore the R/C time constant increases. The circuit is called: R/C Decay. Resistor / Capacitor discharge circuits are an easy way to read resistive & capacitive sensors. Here’s how the circuit works; flip the propeller pin to an output to charge up the capacitor. Then flip it to an input and count how long it takes for the capacitor to discharge. The time it takes to discharge is relates to the position of the potentiometer.
For full documentation on how to build one of these for yourself, check out Gadget Gangster.          
Maker Faire Why can’t I just stay home all day and skip school to have fun and play
I wish that every day was Maker Faire, we could just play, make, and take time to share
The Greatest Show and Tell on Earth, seven years now since it’s birth
Release waivers at the gates, lots of danger inside awaits
Fighting robots that go SMASH, Coke and Mentos makes a splash
Taking things apart is fun, when we fix them then it’s still not done
We might put it back a different way, but this is one place where that’s okay
Maker Faire is a place to hack, you can get maker kits at Radio Shack — Djuna Barricklow, age 11 Poem to be continued…  The poetess, Djuna, wearing a modded Maker Faire T-shirt skirt.          | |
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