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Dadbot
Welcome to what is for now a very tiny corner of the internet. I am a Silicon Valley dad who has great fun acting like a kid with my kids. We explore science, geology, aeronautics, robotics and electronics as a family – so I thought it would be fun to document some of it online for like minded parents.
There is no question this blog is inspired by the quite wonderful GeekDad. If I am able to add anything to the genre started by Chris Anderson and ably continued by Ken Denmead, I will consider it a success.
The maker movement – the idea that you can build really interesting stuff at home like rockets and electrical devices and all the stuff your Mom told you was too dangerous – continues to spread.
Just got my most recent Make Magazine, which shows you how to launch high altitude balloons and noticed there are several new maker-type efforts online.
Past issues of Make Magazine are available (to subscribers) in digital form
Make itself has its new Makeprojects website, which offers better pictures of projects featured in the magazine as well as an opportunity for readers to send in their own.
The magazine also offers .pdf reprints of past articles and projects at its Make Digital Edition.
Design News is offering “Gadget Freaks”, a new video blog full of projects, and I really enjoy Ben Heckendorn’s newest podcast through Revision 3. Great stuff.
Photo by Joe Rosato Jr.
NBC Bay Area reporter Joe Rosato Junior says the Raygun Gothic Rocket will be in place on the Embarcadero in San Francisco by early August.
The rocket will take-up the empty spot on the Embarcadero the large spider sculpture once occupied. The Port of San Francisco and Black Rock Arts Foundation, BurningMan’s public arts wing arranged for the Rocket to move in. The team will install the piece during the night on August 3rd, with a dedication party set for August 6th.
A kiosk [inventor Allen] Rorie calls the Rocket Stop will give visitors information on the piece as well as “flight times” and “routes.” But whether the rocket is indeed “full functional” as Rorie describes, is simply up to the skills of the dreamers who visit it.
View Pier 14 in a larger map
The new “grocery” section at my local Target store has individually wrapped potatoes.
Here’s the deal: everything you ever have done or will do to protect the environment will never compensate for a month’s worth of sales of potatoes individually wrapped in plastic with “patent pending EZ Open Strip”.
The Ray Gun Gothic Rocketship at Burning Man
The Raygun Rocketship seen at Maker Faire and mentioned in this post will be an outdoor art exhibit in San Francisco!
According to The Examiner, the 40 foot tall sculpture will be on display near pier 14 – where that big spider sculpture used to be. No word on timing, but the team that made the rocketship is apparently busy weatherproofing it for display.
Just in case we get a little too interested in the Memorial Day Toyotathon or the Mattress Warehouse Memorial Day Sale Extravaganza..
Video below of what Concord’s John Hallett was like as a younger boy. USMA graduate, married, new father. De La Salle High School water polo player. Killed by roadside bomb in Afghanistan while returning from delivering Cholera medicine to a village.
Hallett met his future bride — two years younger than he — in elementary school. During spring break in 1996 and 1997, they traveled with a group from St. Agnes Catholic Church to build houses for the poor in Mexico. After the first trip, Hallett told his parents that he had framed houses with “that Lisa Garner” from elementary school and described her as a “real go-getter.” Lisa, meanwhile, told her mother that she was going to marry him and “have his red-headed babies,” as she recalled. (more)
“He just said one day and I didn’t believe him ‘I want to build my own rocketship’ and I thought he was kidding”. A documentary of the Raygun Rocketship that was featured at Maker Faire.
Serial entrepreneur Mike Cassidy (not to be confused with the excellent Mercury News columnist Mike Cassidy) has just sold his travel website Ruba to Google. Didn’t even know it existed. It’s little bite sized travel guides made by users. Check out the San Francisco section for interesting things to do.
Don’t forget – Maker Faire is this weekend at the San Mateo Fairgrounds. $20 for adults, $10 for kids. $10 parking. Saturday and Sunday. (Photo courtesy Scott Beale/Laughing Squid)
Heh, heh. Cutting wind. 40 hit points!
I knew lots of different names of Pokemon when the first kid went through the phase – we even had a Pokemon themed Yahtzee! game. Now I have no idea what they all are. The blog GeekDad says a conservationist has tuned into kids’ ability to remember all the names, and taken advantage of it:
“Andrew Balmford, a conservationist, published a letter in Science back in 2002 explaining that kids as young as eight were able to identify over a hundred different Pokemon characters, but then had dreadful results trying to name real animals and plants—even those in their own backyards.
Inspired by Balmford, Phylo (originally named “Phylomon” but changed for copyright reasons) is a trading card game featuring actual animals with their common and Latin names and characteristics.”
Maker John Park is developing an automated Nerf sentry gun, which will presumably rotate around and shoot automatically (he doesn’t really say). He’s documenting the whole thing on Makezine.com.
Closeup of the trigger mechanism of the Sentry Nerf Gun
“The first step was to add wiring and a two-wire connector to control the trigger circuit. I opened up the Nerf Vulcan (about 30 screws) and soldered an 1/8″ female jack to the fire selection mode switch. This way, I can retain all the regular functions of the gun when it’s unplugged from the Arduino. To control it from the Arduino, I’ll flip the orange switch on top to “off” and then wire the trigger into the “pulled” position (done here with a classy twist tie). Whenever the Arduino’s trigger circuit closes (bypassing that orange “off” switch) the gun will start firing.”
Park says he will update the project serially… follow updates at the Make site.