Maker Faire '07 - Part 6.

Finally... the Robots!

If you look back through my blog, you'll see I've been covering robotic events for years. Truth be told, my dream job would be a robo-event reviewer.

Some years, I have been fairly irritated by the events. Which is why I never even bothered to post most of my pictures from this year's CES, including pictures of iRobot CEO Helen Greiner at their CES booth. And - I'll try not to be bitter the marketing guy stood me up.

My problem normally revolves around companies making products without the tiniest thought of why people might buy the item. They only know robotics are going to be popular, so they just try to put out something with the word "Robot" in it. From year to year these products fade away.


Luckily an iRobot Create team was there. Good job, iRobot. And, unlike CES, most of their toys were actually working.

There was the Hacking Roomba guy. Tod Kurt.



Roomba Spirograph.



However - there was a standout for me this year. A product from Revell.



It had a very good grasping arm.



It also had a video camera. In this case the combination worked very well.







I didn't take any pictures of the Robogames. I couldn't get close enough to the arena to get a good shot. They have an event in San Fransisco next month anyway.

But - I'm hoping they were able to recruit enough participants from Maker Faire to make it a more interesting event. Especially since the Battlebot craze is becoming less popular. Things are trending more towards FIRST Robotics competitions.



Microsoft was also there.



Below is a robot bartender, programmed using the MS robotics sw.



And of course what would a robotics show be without some celebrity cameos?

Maker Faire '07 - Part 5.

Is this the saddest kid you've ever seen - or what? For me not so much.

Mr Snarkolepsy and I dropped by the Dutch Baby House on the way to Maker this morning. Seated to Mr Snarkolepsy's back - my front - was a woman and her son.

This woman immediately got onto my radar because she looked like she wanted to die. The whole time we had breakfast - this woman's eyes did nothing but roam the restaurant. Her son (I assume - maybe I shouldn't) was playing a game boy or something. But he looked like an angry child. The mother and son were there before we got seated, and I don't think I saw her say one word to him. He was probably 10 years old.

At any rate she looked miserable, and I couldn't figure out why she would bother taking the child somewhere, because they both seemed very unhappy to be with each other.





About this time Mr Snarkolepsy and actually ran into some people we knew from a company that both Mr. S and I worked at several years ago. There were a ton of people there, and we wound up running into people we knew a couple of times. Small techie world I guess.



If you like puppets. Me not so much. But they were very nice people. The camera causes people to be very open. So I actually wound up talking to them a little earlier in the day.











Okay, I have to admit I thought these were the mooninites.

Maker Faire '07 - Part 4.

Text reads:

Artcar Fest September 27-30, 2007. Last weekend in September.
100 Artcars from Around the world coming to Berkley, San Fransisco, Oakland & the Santa Cruz Museum of Art.

Maker Faire '07 - Part 7.

I know I should set up a Flickr type account.. but someone already started operating under snarkolepsy like a year ago. Plus... I have a weird resistance.



See the tiny helicopter? I wanted to get a better shot of it, but the guy doing the flying wasn't co-operating with me at all. Once I started trying to take photos of it, he started flying it at the ground level.

Maker Faire '07 - Part 1.

Let me be the first to say this.....can we move onto another hackneyed phrase? Whenever there is mention of robots, this is the first thing people say. This is a little old, people. But that is just me.

Maker Faire '07 - Part 3.

Veronica Belmont of CNET.










This round table was one of the more interesting things I saw. You could spin the circle and make differenet patterns.

Maker Faire '07 - Part 8.

This gal seemed to be hosting the power tool races.

One thing that was a little surpising is - I wasn't my normal shy self. So I wound up just asking a lot of people to pose. They were all very nice. If you see yourself here. Thanks!



These people said they were from the Discovery Channel. They were interviewing one of the builders from power tool racing. Which I wish I would have gotten more shots of. I was just a wee bit on the ADD side at that point and easily distracted.



This grrl seemed vaugly familiar. I'm not sure who she was, but she had a camera crew.



Interactive LED display.



Each time I go to a robotic event I get pictures of the 3D laser printers. Seen here, and here. You have to scroll through the posts to find them. I like to track how much they are coming down in price.

Maker Faire '07 - Part 2.

I'm going to start with easy stuff, because well. I'm tired.

I initially thought I would have a lesurly day. I'd gotten two day passes. But it was just so much fun that I blazed through 8 megs of photos.







Also, I'm about to go batty over dust artifacts. I really hate to photoshop any of the pictures I take. What I see in the viewfinder is what I keep. And no matter how diligently I clean - I just can't seem to get rid of a couple dust artifacts that have been plaging my pictures for a while.