Maker Faire 2012!

This year, I volunteered at the Maker Faire...and it was a BLAST! Here are a just a few of the photos from this fun event. My daughter loved the mechanical Giraffe, who later toured the fairgrounds, lit up with LEDs.
 











Frankly, the Maker Faire is a bit overwhelming,with 900 or so exhibitors/Makers, sponsor booths and hand-on engineering tents. Given enough time, I might have attended the Learn to Solder training and skipped sauerkraut making.  Instead, I frequented the Exploratorium, Scrap, RAFT and ... well tons of other exhibits, too numerous to list or even remember! I turned batteries and LEDS into lit up jewelry, and made beautiful music by playing the electronic banana keyboard (with Real Bananas)! The South San Francisco Patch site has a few more photos, and I'll be adding more in the next few days.

My daughter liked climbing into the belly of the fire breathing dragon sculpture, but after a turn through the SteamPunk area, I found this lovely Dandelion Sculpture

This is a working solar powered timepiece. There's a large solar panel on the ground below the clock (just out of the picture).  Comprised of a series of frames, wheels, chains and sprockets, this timepiece is nothing if not unique.

Solar Bike Clockwork

Seattle: Gay Pride Day

Unbeknownst to me, I'd arrived in Seattle on Gay Pride Day. At first, I'd noticed a lot of really tall women in Seattle. The closer I walked, the closer I looked: Those aren't Women! Big laugh! I need glasses, and to turn my gay-dar back on. For years, I'd marched in, attended or watched the Gay Pride Parade  in SF--and here I'd blundered into Seattle's version.  Waiting in long lines at the bathrooms proved entertaining at least, as a variety of lewd and no-so lewd tongue-in-cheek comments were bandied about. These  signs for the restrooms are tiled on the floor, and yielded a funny banter:

Seattle's Pike's Place Market. File under
"Don't forget to look down!"