Makers Fair

We went to the Maker Fair a couple of weekends ago with Dan and Tanya, who are fellow Aussies. It is a big tech fair featuring robotics, computers, music, lego, electronics and lots of nerds.

While we were there we had a photo with the MythBusters, saw a fire engine (that shoots fire), bumped into autonomous blimps, patted a giant robotic giraffe, ran into Andrew "Bunny" Huang and generally enjoyed ourselves.

There were lots of stands with exposed circuit boards, roughly made cases, bits of robots. Everything was functional and undertandable, with little marketing gloss or covers to hide the internals away.


Microsoft had a stand offering $10,000 to whoever came up with the best idea. I think it had to be for a product. Anyway, I had no ideas to pimp so I passed that up. It was noteable that their stands were all shiny and business like, in contrast to most of the fair.

Among the coolest things at the fair were:

• Butthole Bear
• LED bike spokes that make pictures as you ride
• Meccano Difference Engine