From knitting
to robotics, do-it-yourself is the latest craze. Join Dale Dougherty,
publisher of Make and Craft magazines, as he
introduces some of the most inventive makers in the Bay Area.
Guest makers will demonstrate their creations and explain
how they're made. You’ll have a chance to
tinker with the best of these inspired creators, who will
stay around after the Webcast to answer all your questions. Whether
you’re a closet crafter, a serious hacker, or an
armchair inventor, you’ll come away inspired by
these innovative individuals who made their visions into reality. |
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  Making Your Own Kind of Music When Ezra Daly couldn't find a good slap bass guitar for less than $1,000, he looked around for the materials to build his own—and the Frankenbass was born. It was created from a Moto Guzzi motorcycle gas tank, a chrome tailpipe, and scrap mahogany. Ezra will demonstrate the process of making instruments from recycled components and will play the Frankenbass. Nerdcore, hip-hop musician Doc Popular is a circuit-bender who will be performing with toy instruments he has hacked. Doc describes his approach as "anti-theory," in which he connects wires and sees what happens. 8/4/2007 Ezra is a motorcycle luthier who created the Frankenbass on his bedroom floor to debut with a psychobilly band called Buddy's Riot. Doc Popular (aka Brian Roberts) is a video editor, marketing guru, and third-place world yo-yo champion in 2000.
Type: Demonstration Category: Everyday Science Discipline: General Science, Art  Like Making Candy - a 3D Sugar Printer with Windell Oskay and Lenore Edman CandyFab, the sugar printer created by Windell Oskay and Lenore Edman, creates 3D sculpture by stacking 2D images made of sugar. This sweet project ties together many disciplines—motion control, woodworking, microcontroller programming, sewing, reverse engineering, circuit hacking, high-power analog electronics, 3D modeling, and computer programming. 7/28/2007 Windell has been employed as a quantum mechanic, photographer, and (atomic) clock maker and, among other pursuits, has built an interactive dining table and hard-drive wind chimes. Lenore, who describes herself as a Pastafarian, enjoys working on bicycles, fabric, and electronics—and making edible origami.
Type: Demonstration Category: Everyday Science Discipline: General Science, Art  Tools for Making Things with Jim Newton Ever had an idea for something you'd like to make—but you had no idea what tools you might need for the task? While demonstrating how to build an electromechanical digital clock, Jim Newton will talk about different kinds of tools—low-tech, such as a drill press or a welder, and others more high-tech, such as laser and plasma cutters. Jim will also talk about TechShop, a community-based machine shop based in Menlo Park, California. 7/21/2007 Jim is a lifetime maker, veteran BattleBots builder, and former MythBuster. In 2006, he co-founded TechShop with the goal of giving anyone interested in technology access to the necessary tools and a creative environment for creating individual projects. Want to build stuff yourself? Check out TechShop at www.techshop.ws
Type: Demonstration Category: Everyday Science Discipline: General Science  Making Hyperbolic Crochet with Margaret Wertheim It's geometry! It's knitting. It's—hyperbolic crochet! For a century, mathematicians wondered how to represent a hyperbolic plane, described as a “surface in which the space curves away from itself at every point.” Sea anemones, ruffled lettuce leaves, and cancer cells exemplify hyperbolic shapes, where surface area is maximized and volume is minimized. Beginning with a simple crochet chain, learn how to create a geometric shape with a constant negative curvature just by adding stitches!7/14/2007 Margaret Wertheim is a science writer, artist, and founder of The Institute for Figuring (IFF) located in Los Angeles. IFF is devoted to the public understanding of the poetic and esthetic dimensions of science, mathematics, and the technical arts.
Type: Demonstration Category: Everyday Science Discipline: General Science, Art  Making BlinkyBugs with Ken Murphy More ooh than ick, Blinkybugs are small, hand-built, electromechanical bugs built from scavenged materials and powered with a single coin-cell battery. When the Blinkybug's wire antennae detect motion from air currents or vibrations, the bug comes to life, with its LED eyes blinking in rhythmic patterns. 7/7/2007 Ken Murphy is a tinkerer, programmer, and musician who created the Blinkybug during his quest to devise the simplest possible robotic creation. Ken enjoys creating new styles of Blinkybugs as well as various other blinking and bleeping things.
Type: Demonstration Category: Everyday Science Discipline: General Science  Making a Train Car with Paul Cesewski Yearning to ride the rails, but hesitant to hop a freight train? That didn't stop Paul Cesewski, who built his own human- and gas-powered train that he uses to ride the abandoned rails in the North Bay. You can share his back-road adventures as seen through the eye of a Super 8 camera and learn how he makes his own train wheels.
6/30/2007 Paul describes himself as a shop-nerd who has been into ironwork since boyhood. His large-scale interactive sculptures, poetic machines, and pedal-powered rides, built for art shows and carnivals, are often bicycle-powered. Many of his rides travel with San Francisco's Cyclecide Bike Rodeo.
Type: Demonstration Category: Everyday Science Discipline: General Science |
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Webcasts
made possible through the generosity of the Gordon and Betty Moore
Foundation, The Jim Clark Endowment for Internet Education, and the McBean Family Foundation. |
Streaming
Technology provided by: Digital Rapids |
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