Geek Gestalt

AUSTIN, TEXAS--I'm in the Texas capital for the first Maker Faire to be held here, and the gates will open to the public in 16 hours.

Yet, even at this late date, after nearly two full days of setup, less than half of the exhibitors, or "makers," have shown up yet.

Which means that as you walk around the spacious grounds of Austin's Travis County Fairgrounds, it feels empty. Sure, there are dozens of makers already on hand, some of whom have put up some truly wonderful stuff.

But everywhere you look, there's space that, … Read more

AUSTIN, Texas--I'm high in the air, aboard a carnival ride cum Burning Man art piece cum bicycle-tech-powered people mover known as the Star Wheel.

It's hard to describe this: It's a giant wheel, maybe 20 feet high that has three seats built into the middle of it--independent of the outer frame--that are geared to spin around when their occupants pedal like crazy. As they pedal, the wheel moves slowly forward while those inside whoop and scream their way through rapid 360 degree rotations.

It's quite the experience. I had first seen this at Burning Man 2004, … Read more

AUSTIN, Texas--If you've never seen a machine that makes 3D models out of sugar, you should.

But unless you're part of a relatively small group of people who went to the Maker Faire in California in May, or are one of a few other people who know the machine's creator, you probably have never even heard of the device.

Similarly, you may not be aware--or at least the general public probably isn't--that there is a whole movement going on right now to build advanced, digital, relatively inexpensive personal fabrication and robotics tools that can do or … Read more

I'm lusting after a material thing, and I'm a bit ashamed.

Still, this is just about the coolest hat I've ever seen: A top hat with a built-in set of LEDs (seen here from the artist's YouTube video) that plays sequenced animations, including images from Space Invaders and Pac-Man. It also displays bouncing hearts, the alphabet and all kinds of other images.

I'm not sure how comfortable this hat would be, but hey, who cares? You can walk around with wonderful animations scrolling on your head, and that obviates simple comfort.

This reminds me of … Read more

AUSTIN, TEXAS--I'm sitting in the lobby of the Radisson hotel downtown with a bunch of the folks putting on Maker Faire.

One of them is Make magazine editor Phil Torrone, who, among other crazy ventures, was the co-genius behind Roomba Frogger, when he and fellow hacker Limor Fried modified a Roomba vacuum cleaner and wirelessly directed it to run back and forth across an Austin street like the iconic classic video game during South by Southwest 2006.

This morning, however, Torrone is tired, as it's only 8 a.m. But he's got a goal, and it's … Read more

LOS ANGELES--I was sitting in line waiting to get on my connecting flight to Austin, Texas, where I'm going to cover the behind-the-scenes activity at Maker Faire, when guess who walked up to join the queue?

It was none other than Maker Faire co-organizer and Boing Boing co-editor Mark Frauenfelder, also off to Austin for the event.

I love how small the world can be sometimes.

If there's one thing you can be sure of about Jon "Neverdie" Jacobs, it's that he's always up to something crazy.

A couple of years ago, he became the first person to ever pay $100,000 for a virtual asset--a space station in Entropia Universe that he insists is profitable. More recently, he bought one of the valuable banking licenses in that virtual world, paying tens of thousands of dollars more for it.

Now, Jacobs' newest effort is a reality show that will focus on the finalists of the Massive Multiplayer Online World Championships. This, … Read more

If you haven't bought tickets to a traveling Cirque du Soleil show in the last few months, I recommend that you do right away.

Not for the privilege of going to see the Cirque--though if you know me, you know that I will always pimp for that--but actually so that you can experience what I can unabashedly say is the best online ticket-buying interface I've ever seen.

I am always amazed by the fact that here we are in 2007, and company after company after company still shows that it hasn't got the first clue about what … Read more

OK, folks, here's your chance to show some Playboy bunnies just how good you are at NBA '08.

Wednesday night, from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m., at Bloomingdale's locations on Beverly Boulevard and on Santa Monica Boulevard in Los Angeles and on Market Street in San Francisco, the ladies with the iconic bunny tails and ears will be on hand, ostensibly for the launch of a new Playboy line of clothes, but also to play some video game hoops with fans.

Now, you may be a wizard at using your joystick to make Shaq slamdunk over … Read more