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Eindhoven Maker Faire 2019 komt eraan!

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Komende weekend, 28 en 29 september zal de Maker Faire weer losbarsten in het Klokgebouw in Eindhoven.  Zoals zo mooi beschreven in dit artikel: “de magie van maken!”

Er is dit jaar weer een geweldig leuk en divers programma. Ik als Crazy Parade mens kijk vooral uit naar de Flying Duck !

De afgelopen jaren heb ik op de deze site al heel wat meer posts gemaakt over Maker Faire. Dus ter inspiratie voor het weekend hier een overzicht.

Eindhoven Maker Faire 2018

Second day of Eindhoven Maker Faire 2017

First day of Eindhoven Maker Faire 2017

Eindhoven Maker Faire 2017; the aftermath

IMG-20150829-WA0002

 

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Follow-up on the Nerdy Derby story

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Quick update:

Something changed in our house since the Nerdy Derby track made its appearance at primary school ’t Karregat 🙂

My son is busy building some kind of tank with turret and a canon barrel that says: “don’t panic”… (from number42)

He puts his tablet away to “engineer” new features on his tank and in his creative mind the tank will fire “real bullets”.

We already watched Master Milo’s tank project video’s on YouTube, but now these video’s are also used as “reference” for his own tank 🙂

conclusion: it’s not that hard to trigger the mind of a 9 year old 🙂

Look at that mock-up; I love it!

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Nerdy Derby track @ ’t Karregat!

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Last week, after one month of preparations, the Nerdy Derby track from MicroLab and Eindhoven Maker faire was setup at my son’s primary school ’t Karregat.

I find it difficult to describe the feeling and energy that was released when almost 400 kids participated with their self-made cars in the races. It was amazing 🙂

An important part of the preparation was an instruction morning with all the teachers.
Led by Jorg Duitsman the teachers experienced firsthand what to expect when building Nerdy Derby cars. To create some positive competitiveness between the teachers we planned the teachers-race as the main event of the Race day; the big final with all the children present!
Of course there was also the matter of sawing almost 500 pieces of plywood (aka the chassis), ordering 2000 plastic wheels and 2000 rubber rings (aka: the tires), finding the right size nail and collection as much junk stuff (aka car decoration).
Top tipL All kids want to have a race number on their car. So do like me and buy every available Rummy game at your local second hand stores. (I managed 5 games for less than 5 euro each 🙂 )

15 school classes, ranging from group 1 (4 year olds) to group 8 (12 year olds) started building their cars on the first  Monday after the holidays, 1 hour per day until Race Day on Friday. The idea behind it was to have a “racing” start after the holidays, full of positive energy and creativity.

I’ve never seen so much creativity and ingenuity packed in a single piece of plywood and a set of wheels.

I manage to photograph all the creations inside a specially prepared photo-booth.

I can’t emphasize enough how easy (and low-tech) it is to teach children and their teachers to be creative, to be expressive and to learn some technology along the way!

 

It can be done on every school; no excuse.

 

But let’s not end on such a preachy note.
At the end of the day, the Ouder Vereniging (parents association) of ’t Karregat, the teachers and all the children and their parents, just had a lot of fun and an explosion of creativity.

 

(due to privacy requests of parents, I can’t show pictures of the races)

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Unexpected beauties – part 1: Willem Twee Studio’s

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In 2019 I want to tell you about interesting meetings, planned or unplanned I experienced / encountered.

I call them “unexpected beauties, because they give me a lot of joy or provided me with a totally new perspective / insight.
First in line is the unexpected encounter with the Willem 2 Studio’s in Den Bosch.

10-11-2018:
Some time ago I was invited to join a “open soldering evening” in Den Bosch.

I met the organizer, Martijn Verhallen years before at the first Maker Faire Eindhoven.

The synth boxes Reverse Landfill makes are very cool and easy to solder and they make a hell of a noise!

The unexpected part of this soldering night was the location.
The outside of the building cannot prepare you for what is inside.

When entering the building it felt like a shift in time; all of a sudden you are in a 1950’s audio studio, with all these cool old fashioned boxes with Bakelite knobs and switches.

The next room is filled with 1960’s and 1970’s stuff with some unbelievable analog synth that had a huge footprint on the foundations of modern day music.

This beautiful video from Albert van Abbe is recorded at the Willem Twee Studios.

I can really recommend visiting this studio to anybody who’s interested in sound building / composing.
They offer all kind of courses like “introduction to the çlassic ‘ analog studio or a 8 lessons long course to learn to make compositions on classic analog material.

Thanks Martijn for giving me the opportunity to visit the studio’s!

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Eindhoven Maker Faire 2018

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In the last weekend of september, the Maker Faire exploded with creativity and beauty in the city of Eindhoven. For the 3rd time I had the privilege to be part of the EMF team to organize the Maker Faire.

Like last year it was bigger, better and louder then the before.
New this year was the outside area (Ketelplein) in front of the Klokgebouw.
The Crazy Parade and other makers enjoined the excellent weather and attracted a large audience.

Inside, the Faire span across the whole Klokgebouw with many, many thing to see, do and experience for children but also for their parents and grandparents.
On Saturday it was nice and busy, but on sunday it was fantastic and very busy. The weather was even better than the day before and the Faire was packed.

I took care of the Crazy Parade participants. The pictures below show some of the highlights.

some tweets with pictures and movies:

https://twitter.com/Windkracht11/status/1046050203718078468

 

 

Official after movie from the 2018 Eindhoven Maker Faire:

 

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If you can’t fix it, you don’t own it – follow-up

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After exploring the wonderful world of “State of repair“ from the Motherboard, I kept a  Close eye on other documentaries they put online.
And today I spotted a fantastic item (with a great title): “The Rogue Tesla Mechanic”.

It shows (in a painful way), what direction we are heading with our own capabilities to diagnose and fix stuff we buy (and though we fully owned)

The more I think about it, the clearer it gets that this really is an issue. Not only for professional users like the farmers and their tractors, but also for us, consumers who buy produces and automatically are ‘held hostage’ (in a friendly way…) by the companies that makes the products. It has been like that for many years, but recently I feel it has become part of the business plan / strategy. Before it was more the unwillingness or lack of interest to do something about it.

Just like with trying to improve the safekeeping of our private data with GDPR, I could be an idea to legislate diagnose and repair capabilities on a larger (European) scale, to force companies to design differently.

The reality is that new technology (upcoming IoT products) are so bad when it comes to ownership / control / secure that it becomes funny. just check “The internet of shit“.
(or check their Facebook page)

Eye-watering funny (and sad…)

The below example shows that selling you expensive headphones (300 euro) is only the beginning of the milking process…

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link-o -rama-2

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Without words….

Feast your eyes on this fully automatic Hamburger machine that uses fresh ingredients.

Ain’t she pretty!

 

DARPA demonstrates 6 new technologies.


As always with DARPA; cool and scary at the same time….

–100 degrees celsius!

This Frisdenker keeps his eyes open for interesting tech from all over the world, so also Germany is on his radar.

After sending my phone on an ‘ending-at-the-ground-flight’ when I stopped but my phone not, I’ve though about this case when I shelled out the 100 euro to repair my phone.,.. And this school kid, from Aalen is fixing it.

Peloton; wind drag experiment

In the special wind tunnel from the TU/e in Eindhoven a whole Peloton of cyclists was tested. CRAY computers had to crunch for 54 hours to do the calculation with a total of 49 Terabytes of working memory; a world record for a Sports application 🙂

 

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If you can’t fix it, you don’t own it!

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Motherboard has a fantastic series titled: “State of repair“.
I’ve seen a couple of episodes now and was amazed how modern day technology is more and more unrepairable (or at least that’s what the OEM-er would like you to think).
I like to way the documentaries are filmed and directed; it shows respect for the people that are portrayed and time is spend on delivering the story.

Quote from Motherboard

The future is wonderful, the future is terrifying. We should know, we live there. Whether on the ground or on the web, Motherboard travels the world to uncover the tech and science stories that define what’s coming next for this quickly-evolving planet of ours.

Take a look at the guys who keep the (aging) newspaper machinery running for the New York times. It got me thinking about my own work and the pride I take from fixing stuff, teaching it to my son and anybody else that wants to listen. But it takes so much time in today’s world.

And then the farmers in Nebraska with John Deere Tractors, completely filled with proprietary software and firmware systems, impossible to fix yourself. (as they always did in the last 150 years of mechanisations) When reading a title like “Tractor Hacking” I’m sold man!

The right to repair is now adopted by 18 states in the US and looks like a spreading awareness that an owner should be able to at least diagnose what is wrong and be able to know what’s inside.

And not to miss in the overview are “the last Pinball technician in New York city”.
Are these jobs the new jobs that will be added to these kind of lists soon?
I love Pinball machines and come to think of it, it’s probably because of the direct connection between me doing something and influencing mechanical / electrical stuff; addictive!

Finally on this list (so far), the crew from Motherboard follow the Ifixit guys in their hunt to get the latest Iphone X to be able to tear it down as quickly as possible to show the world what’s in it!
I was truly amazed when the Ifixit lady sad: “chip manufacturers want us (Ifixit) to tear down stuff and to show the world that their chip is inside the Iphone, because they can not say than themselves due to NDA, etc”.
Ifixit, just as repair.org want to create awareness for the (electronic) world around us and how it influences us. See also this video.

Somehow all the above mini-documentaries are also an ode to Makers and tinkerers. To those who just dare to pick up stuff and say: “O really, I’m not supposed to know what’s inside or to repair it? But I own it! I paid for it, so I will fix it (or break it even more 🙂 )

NB; here a link to the Ifixit Iphone X tear down movie on youtube.

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