Maker Faire

photo: plastigami by Andy Lee

The thisislarry clan headed up to the Maker Faire today, between our now-standard Little League game Saturday and a pair of birthday parties for friends of Princess Pony on Sunday afternoon.

Stacks of mind-blowingly cool stuff, from DIY mechanical frog dissections hosted by Ambidextrous magazine, to the giant human-powered nose-picking machine, to an experimental duo of electronic cellos named the Trees of Pythagoras, to good old-fashioned robot wars (Rabbit Dragon's fave) -and we only saw maybe a third of what was there!

Also got to find out alot more about the TechShop, a new DIY open-access workshop here in the bay area. Very cool, and very tempting.

My favorite single piece, in terms of elegance, simplicity, scale, and trying to do one thing well, was IDEO alumni Andy Lee 's plastigami series of prototype furniture (pictured above). Especially as Andy's booth was situated between the loud experimental instruments, and the DIY glitter-and-paint kids projects (Princess Pony's fave), his nice white prototypes were an oasis of calm. Doh, I forgot to buy one of his $3 plastigami frogs....