Hello new visitors! We are indeed the first lucky recipients of this glorious box of crazy stuff. It hasn't gotten here yet but when it does we'll do our best to make something awesome. We will, of course, document it here. If you want a friendly email when we have something worth reading about finished, send a note in the contact panel at the left of the page.
If you are the kind of person who would like this kind of challenge just head over to the robotsdotnet post and let them know!
I was watching Puppy Cam earlier (I can't turn it off - it's just too cute) and Kris started referring to the puppies as Mr. Red, Mr. Green, etc. like in Reservoir Dogs. Yeah, those are real Reservoir Dogs.
Kris and I had an invitation from our Austin friend Mark to stay at his place for "as long as we want." We ended up staying a week. Well, technically it was Monday night through Friday night.
I don't remember what we did on which days for the most part so I will just give a sweeping summary of the highlights.
-Austin friend Mark took Monday off to show us around Austin which included a trip to the botanical gardens that had a super special dinosaur garden (you know how much Kris and I love dinosaurs!). We had coffee again at the same place we went to last year. The first thing I did was find the Dora the Explorer Memory game that we played last year. I dominated when we played memory last year and even my awful held cold this year didn't take me out of winning at least a handful of rounds.
Austin friend Mark had Mind Trap at his apartment. As it turns out, Kris and I are pretty good at Mind Trap. I found a web site with Mind trap questions if you would like to try it yourself. Any time we were at his apartment we would be asking each other Mind Trap questions.
- We went over to John P. Funk's house (we met John at Maker Faire). He makes movies and he wanted to show us some of the stuff he was working on. Here are a bunch of pictures of the things he has made:
The Alamo Drafthouse showed the movie StarCrash as party of the book release party. I personally love B-rated sci-fi and horror flicks so I LOVED this movie.
*David Hasselhoff with a LIGHTSABER FTW!!!!!!!!! *Best line in the movie: "Time for some robot shovenism"
You MUST watch the trailer for StarCrash. It really is as bad as it looks!
Kris and I were very well taken care of that evening - thank you, John and Dan!
-On Thursday (of the extra week we stayed), Austin friend Mark sent us a text message (while he was at work) that said "You guys wanna go to San Antonio tomorrow? The Alamo is there" How could we say no to seeing the Alamo?
-So Friday we went down to San Antonio. We had lunch on the Riverwalk: It is so pretty down there and the weather was perfect!
-Then, we went over to the Buckhorn Saloon and Museum. That was an experience. There were taxidermied animals as far as the eye could see. I'm not joking. At first it was sort of uncomfortable, but then it just because humorous.
Guy at the ticket booth: "The giraffe on the wall there died of natural causes. The baby upstairs, not so much." He also encouraged us to drink while we walked through the "museum."
The first thing you came to in the "museum" was a Jack Daniels whiskey display. (seen on the left)
The "museum" has a ghost of Buffalo Bill character that walks around. Kris and I were admiring the display of antique guns when Buffalo Bill walks over to the Jack Daniels display, moves the rope, opens a box in the display, pulls out a cigar, lights it, closes the box, puts the rope back and wanders back to the dining area leaving only the incredibly strong aroma of whiskey behind. I swear that happened. I think the expression on my face during that would best be described as my 'WTF Face.'
Kris and I decided to have some fun with the taxidermied animals. We made it into photographic art.
This bobcat(?) had a taxidermied dead rabbit under it's foot. I'm not sure why it was looking at a poster for Buffalo Bill though.
Here is that baby giraffe that didn't die of natural causes:
How could you not love that face?
The 'info cards' had more information on how to PREPARE AND EAT the animals on display than characteristics of the animals when they are alive. How very Texas of them. The sign says: Pompano Dolphins are typically called "school dolphin" because they roam in large schools. The flesh is delicious, but since it is a very bloody fish, it should be cleaned and put on ice immediately to preserve the flavor. The Pompano Dolphin grows to only 3 pounds or so.
You would think they could at least taxidermy the animals with their jaws in the right place:
They had a thing to compare your feet size to animal feet sizes. Here I go!
This picture was taken from the "museum" out into the dining area. The walls were covered with animals. They didn't care if they had multiple animals, they just packed them in. In fact, they even built extra wall space to hang more animals off!
According to that museum, Australia is part of Asia.
Anyway, we went down to the Alamo. See, I have proof! I must admit, I wasn't that impressed. But at least I can say I've been there!
-Friday night of our trip, we went back to Austin and Kris and I finished our trip the same way we started it - with Locksley! They were playing in Austin at Emo's. We saw them 3 times in 2 weeks (I should also mention they were touring with the super sweet boys of Hymns). Those Locksley boys were an adorable finish to an awesome trip. Too bad we were so tired that night.
We had a pretty awesome view of the show: I hope their tour schedule always matches our travel schedule because I loved seeing those boys so many times in that short of a time frame.
-The next morning, Austin friend Mark took us to Jim's again for a breakfast of sweet cream waffles.
Last year, I got a sweet cream waffle:
This year, I got a sweet cream waffle with strawberries and whipped cream:
We headed home that afternoon and arrived back home in Iowa Sunday afternoon. On the drive home, Austin friend Mark was texting us Mind Trap questions. How cute is that?
So that's it! I hope next year is as much fun as this year. xoxo, Carly
Sunday of Maker Faire, the faire was open from 10am to 6pm (luckily, a much shorter day than Saturday!). We had a chance to walk around before the open and see some of the other makers that we hadn't talked to on Friday or Saturday - most specifically we got a chance to talk to the Instructables people! They are seriously the nicest and most awesome people ever. If you get a chance to talk with Christy, she has the best stories I've ever heard about eating weird things and taxidermy.
After looking through my pictures, I realized just how little of Maker Faire Kris and I actually saw. So I will direct you to the pictures taken by Lenore (of Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories) and Steve (of robots.net). Okay, so maybe I got lazy about taking pictures when we were walking around with Steve and that is why I don't have many pictures. He had a better camera than I did and I knew he would post them to his Flickr.
Anyway, here are the projects Kris and I brought. This year we decided to play with LEDs so I hacked a Monopoly board to light up when you play. If you land on the electric company the street lights turn on, if you land in jail red/blue flashing LEDs light up, Chance and Community Chest light up when you land on those spots, and I had a bucket light up with a blue LED if you landed on the water company. Here is a picture I took:
The following pictures I am stealing from Steve because, sadly, I didn't take pictures of all our stuff.
And a Dino-rama (Dinosaur diorama). The stars are fiberoptic strands with LEDs at the end, there was a flashing red/green LED to make the volcano look like it was churning, and there was light reactive pigment around the volcano that glows: Thanks, Steve, for taking all those pictures!
Late Sunday afternoon, we were awarded with an Editors Choice ribbon from Gareth Branwyn. I wish we had found more time to talk with Gareth. Maybe at the next Maker Faire we will find the time! Gareth wrote the sweetest piece about our projects that was posted on MakeZine.com.
Sunday we were invited to the maker dinner.
Sunday afternoon, the guys who had the iCreate robots next to us left to get some things done before going back to Buffalo. They stopped to get ice cream and one of them got a spontaneous nose bleed (I believe it was caused by all the cold medicine he consumed that weekend). He bled (a lot!) all over his ice cream. Rather than doing something silly like going to the hospital, he grabbed his camera and started taking pictures of his bloody ice cream.
I told that story to tell this story. At the maker dinner, he got his camera out with all the pictures of his bloody ice cream. We passed that camera all around the table - while we were eating. Maker people aren't exactly normal, but I'm not sure it was healthy for us to be laughing that hard at bloody ice cream pictures in one hand while we were eating with the other hand. Shouldn't bloody ice cream be the sort of thing that makes you feel just sick enough to stop eating for at least a moment or two? Not us apparently. Christy from Instructables named it a 'Vampire Sundae' and told him to post an instructable on it. I searched the site but didn't come up with anything.
So that is the end of Maker Faire. The people at Maker Faire are some of the most amazing people on this planet and I can't wait to see them again (if not in San Mateo, again in Austin next year).
I'm going to end Pt. 2 here and I'll post about the rest of our trip in a day or two. xoxo Carly
