Maker Faire 2010

Many people have asked what "Maker Faire" is - and what a "Maker" is.
I'd say that a "Maker" is someone that makes, modifies, fixes, improves or otherwise personalizes "stuff". They can be a poet, or an artist, or a tinkerer, a DIY fixer, someone that spins fire, model trainer, a green-thumber, knitter, handyman - anybody that invests their spirit in some effort or thing.

So a Maker Faire is an interesting place - it has a dash of the old county fair, with people showing off their stuff. A dash of funky-cool swap meet, with people selling their stuff (which may be special tools, or kits or parkas woven from recycled power cords...) A dash of "recruitment drive" - for all the folks with all the clubs or groups or concepts that are in need of zealots, or cash... A dash of environmentalism, save the world a bit a a time - wiht a big theme being "reduce, reuse" and only when all else fails, recycle.

Reuse for a maker might mean fixing something that is broken, and bringing it back to life. It may mean re-purposing something - turning an old nintendo case into a sound box for a 1 string guitar, or into a jewelry box. Or it might mean grinding it up to use for rocket fuel...

I've included some info for some of the various things you might see there, with links -

A couple of the large on line maker markets -
www.boingboingbazaar.com
www.etsy.com

A cool wiki based resource for on line manuals and info on how to fix stuff


So, years ago there was the "Basic Stamp" which was a simple hacker computer which was great for education, simple robotics, and other little stuff (I made an LED sorter with one). Now days, people talk about the Arduino which is based on the Atmel ATMEGA family - much larger memory, faster, blah, blah, blah... Many sources of stuff including:
www.liquidware.com

Lots of art and jewelry
www.surlyramics.com

There is a funny little "nerd community" called gravity.com, with folks talking about all sorts of things they love, including personally printed Electro Luminescent
www.gravity.com

A gal that writes poetry on demand - whom the poem in the previous blog was written for -
www.thepoetrystore.net

Microrax makes cool extruded mechanical elements for prototyping
www.Microrax.com

A favorite from previous Maker Fair, and Burning Man - the Neverwas Haul - an RV built from a Steam Tractor, with a Victorian House on top...
www.neverwashaul.com

And of course the Raygun Gothic Rocket Ship from last Burning Man was there in force - actually got to go up in side this time.
www.raygungothicrocket.com

A vintage clothing patern company -
www.decadesofstyle.com

Snail Art Car, Fire pits and cool electric light bulbs -
www.snailartcar.com

No Burning Man Friendly event would be complete without
www.utilikilts.com

Many engineering groups doing cools stuff -
www.heatsynclabs.org
www.longnow.org and their 10,000 year clock, and rosetta stone project to save world languages

Tool libraries - to, well, borrow tools of course!
borrowtools.org

massive servo motors - 1600 oz in of torque
www.invenscience.com

Folks working on OMAP3 based boards-
www.rationaledynamics.com

A funny rubbery adhesive stuff for padding, fixing, and tweaking stuff -
www.sugru.com

One of the "We will create your design" services offering many different materials, including acrylic, glass, and stainless steel -
www.shapeways.com

A poem inspired by Maker Faire

I went to the Maker Fair in the Bay Area over the weekend, and had a hoot. Lots of great people, stuff, ideas, etc. I'll do a seperate post blog on the faire later - but I was inspired by a gal there that is a poet for hire, a gig I did in middle-school for a few friends. She types them out on an actual typewriter, adding to the chique of the whole thing.

In any event, her's a gift that I sent to her -

A Poem for the Poet Muse
(C) Dave Cox, 2010

While wandering a fanciful land of crafted reality,
I stumbled upon a sprite, a vision from my own past -
A poet for hire, an extro-spective muse, whom,
provided with but a few tidbits of seed knowedge,
creates a poem of sublime understanding -
as if dictation from some invisible witness,
as if some deeper psychic tendril connectects her,
and pours fourth from the arcane keys of her typwriter;
and the weight of words lay, so much greater,
than the weight of ink on paper...

Into the Complex

Many of you already follow our periodic updates on Facebook with regard to the multi-dwelling property. We've been trying to figure out what to call it. Calling it a "Compound" has a Branch Davidian feeling. Calling it a "lot" implies just land. It isn't big enough for a campus. So, for now I guess it's a complex. Not the kind of complex that you go to see a psychologist for, but, in fact one of the buildings will be Barbara's Psychology Office (which will have a second office for a complimentary practitioner) - so I suppose "The Complex" has it's own double meaning right there.

There is also the "complex" side of making it all work - taking the buildings from what they are, and converting them into what we see as their role in this thing.

For those that don't know, the address is 3928 - 3932 Georgia St, San Diego. Supposedly the link is -


http://maps.google.com/maps?q=32.749046,-117.145224&num=1&t=h&sll=32.801113,-117.116639&sspn=0.006295,0.006295&ie=UTF8&hl=en&ei=m-0RS8bIKaeGiAOTqry5Aw&ll=32.749086,-117.14533&spn=0.000732,0.001031&z=20&layer=c&cbll=32.749076,-117.144998&panoid=IXfVWSU16No-bJ8SRfWL0Q&cbp=12,271.32,,1,2

We don't know much about the history. The house was built somewhere around 1908-1912ish. Somewhere along the way, a three car garage was built in the back, with a one bedroom appt on top of it. The house it self had additions attached here and there - a solarium in front, a laundry room in the back. A chunk of the house was annexed and another room was added to make a separate one bedroom unit.

So, we're taking the one bedroom unit which is attached to the house, pulling out the kitchen, and the tub in the bathroom, to make two offices in the building. This will be Barbara's space for her ever growing business.

The house we're going to do a remodel of the bathroom, at least add a microwave to the kitchen, and replace some plaster walls, paint and spiff up. Two bedrooms there - one for Delilah, and one for us, a "music and art room", living room, breakfast nook, and solarium.

The apartment mostly gets a cleanup to the kitchen (new tile and more power), and some painting. The garages will join the 21st century with roll up garage doors and electric openers...

Each of the dwellings had tenants that had to move out. All of them managed to get out within 30 days, even though two of them technically had sixty - so it is now vacant of people at least, though you would think that one of the tenants was actually a heard of pot bellied pigs for as much a mess as he left the place!

All the dwellings will need tenting for termites (which started today), foundation work, roof work, painting inside and out. Barbara has taken orchestration on as yet another part time job and we've been getting quotes and trying to line up the cast of characters to make it happen in a reasonable amount of time, and for a reasonable cost...

The lot is pretty big for urban San Diego, and we plan on parking our little RV on it and setting it up so that we could use it as a guest house or even host an exchange student or ?? in it. In the long term, we hope to buy a Yurt for community gatherings/meals and classes, put in a Jacuzzi, maybe even build a small chicken coop for a couple of Urban Chickens, some container gardening, probably even a little play house for Delilah...


We are looking to rent out the one apartment in back, and have had a handful of people say they might be interested - but we're still accepting applications since no one has committed yet! It's a non-smoking, no dog (though cats are ok) place, and we hope to spin some sort of a deal with regard to exchanging some kid-sitting in exchange for a reduced rent...

Thanks all for the well wishes along the way, the support, the hand holding, prayers, energetic anchoring, referrals for contractors, etc.

Hopefully, if all goes as planned, we'll be able to move in there in about a month. Once we've actually moved in and settled, we'll plan a house-warming/"Christmas Eve-Eve x 268 Party" or something party as appropriate. We look forward to seeing you then, if not before!

Life at Campland on the Bay

Ok, so I've been more than a bit remiss about posting for the last couple of months.
One would think that living at Campland On The Bay would be like living the life of vacation - a semi-permanent staycation, and constant party. But the reality of our "regular" life overlays "unsatisfactorily" upon the experience.

In case you hadn't noticed, or are reading at some time in the future, it's winter. Yeah, I know, winter in San Diego is hardly something to complain about. But, in the RV, we have no patio. When it rains, the rain pools two inches deep all around the entrance to the RV, so we have to sloug through it. When it rains, if thee is any real wind, we have to roll the awning up so it doesn't tear - so our only protection from the rain is also removed. When it rains, the rain beats on the roof - which at times is enchanting, and other times (like when you're trying to sleep, for instance) is less so... On the plus side, we had long ago converted the RV to electric operation for both the water heater and an old fashioned "electric oil radiant heater" that does a good job keeping things reasonably warm at night.

Another aspect is that we are trying to have an otherwise normal life. We started out with our one car, and the theory was that Barbara was going to play bus driver, get up at 7 with Delilah and I, we were all supposed to wrestle over the shower, the space, get dressed, eat, and get on the road - Delilah to school before 8:30, me to work soon after, Barbara does her thing - then back around, she picks up me, then D then back home around 6, oh - dinner time, then time to wrestle Delilah into bed, 8:30, maybe time for a round of skip bo, a little reading for B, an attempt at some WoW for me...

Part of the supposed allure of Campland is that it has "free WiFi". You get what you pay for. Did I mention that it's raining a lot this year? What, you say, does that have to do with WiFi? Everything. WiFi operates in a radio band that was declared a "free for all" frequency band by the FCC years ago. You see, Microwave ovens heat food by making the water molecules in the food jigger around at their characteristic frequency of about 2.4GHz. Microwave ovens are very high power - more powerful than many back woods radio stations - so if you were transmitting on purpose at that frequency, and someone turns on a microwave oven, they'd suddenly be tuned in to your microwave instead - and be listening to "Popcorn's greatest hits"... So, the FCC said "as long as you guys can put up with the noise, you can have it" and a whole lot of modern devices hopped on the spectrum. Which is fine, unless you are trying to use it in the rain. Or with a microwave. Or other people using similar stuff. Long story short - WiFi here is almost good enough to update your blog once a month or so... Almost...

On the plus side, there are lots of activities. If we had time to do them, I'm sure they'd be fun. One of the regular activities that we've learned to do is the "laundromat". Hum. Now I remember why we buy clothes washers...

Seriously though, the cafe here is nice - they have a BBQ and do a fine job at all sorts of carnivorous fodder. Then there's "The Company Store" - which has all the amenities, at twice the regular price, but dang it's convenient. They do have a nice playground that we get to at least weekly, and a great pool that we've braved perhaps a half dozen times. And as the name suggests, it's on the bay - a hundred yards that way is the bay, with ducks and seagulls, sand and, well, the bay - wet and cold. Just like they said. Did I mention it's winter??? :)

Happy Holidays!

Hello to all dear friends and family!

Well, as many of you know, many changes are afoot in the Cox household! We decided that it was high time to move from our little cookie cutter house of 10+ years. We decided that we wanted to find a property that better matched with the things that are important in our world right now – having a more “walk-able” community, having a separate address where Barbara could have her office, having a little land to do some edible gardening on, working our way into an “intentional community/co-housing” space, of having others that want to spend time together there, etc…
So, we started looking a few months ago and found a property on Georgia Street that we loved – but someone else initially beat us to the offer punch. Well, Barbara and a number of her friends worked their magic, and the universe returned the property to us a few weeks ago (after in escrow for 8 weeks!). Thus, we will be moving to a three-on-one lot – 3928 through 3932 Georgia St, San Diego; Link: http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=114605334561509999673.0004384bec27cefc191ae&t=h&z=13

The main house was built in I think 1907 (it may have been 1900). One building will be our home, one will be Barbara’s office, which we will convert into a two office center, and she will rent out the other to a complimentary practitioner, and the third will be a rental, hopefully for a community minded person(s) that would like to do a periodic get together for dinners, and other such fun stuff. We have room in the back for RV parking (perhaps a home for a foreign exchange person?), gardening, perhaps a yurt or other structure for gatherings, etc.

Since there are renters presently, the process will be a bit drawn out. Escrow should close by end of December, and then 30 and 60 days notice to the tenants, along with repairs (termite tenting, roof, foundation, along with a long list of odds and ends). So, we’re hoping to be “in” to live by sometime in late Feb or early March.

We’ve had some questions about our annual Christmas Eve Eve party – well, this year, it’s being moved out a bit in time to Christmas Eve, Eve, Eve *310 or so… and combined with our house warming party which will happen Hopefully in Early March. We’ll be doing the same ornament exchange, Carols, Egg Nog and Fondue, just a few months later. You should be able to get a REALLY good deal on your ornament at the after Christmas sales! 

For now, we’re living in the RV on Campland on the Bay which has been a mostly fun adventure, though compact, has lots of great amenities that we keep saying we’ll take advantage of when we have time, and aren’t doing escrow papers, scheduling inspections, working with contractors to get quotes, filing for change of use permits, etc… Will be doing Christmas at my brothers in LA, which will be fun.

In any event, this is the extent of our Christmas Letters this year!

Hope that you have a lovely holiday season, and that it is cheery and bright and full of joy for you.

Much love – Dave, Barbara and Delilah Cox

Thoughts on life - the ultimate "big trip"

I had an interchange this morning that got me thinking, so I wrote this out...

As we live our lives, we amass experiences; and as thinking creatures we attempt to tie these events back to other things we've done and experienced before, to make sense of them. We build opinions as we build this web of experience and action and observation. We develop many mental tools and constructs to aid in our logical process; generalizations, expectations, assign weights to them, try to communicate, to persuade, to try to make sense of it all. We define “truths”, weak or strong, and opinions, which in the larger scale of a life are sometimes well anchored, and other times will change subtly or profoundly as we continue to grow, to live our lives, and experience.

But ultimately, the experiences that each of us have are different, and our perceptions are colored or filtered by this web of life, our society, our family, the people we spend our time with - thus in myriad subtle ways, we are all different. Different is. And in this space of difference, we judge action, idea, experience - as always from our own point of reference - which is, from that point of reference, by definition right. Thus, there is no single universal right or wrong, save only the universe of one.

So, we are all different and we are all right.

Halloween 2009 - The Dolphin Costume

So, Delilah announced that she wanted to be a dolphin. Sure, no problem - I'm sure someone has a costume... Looking, looking... Ok, well, how hard can it be to make one?

So, get 8 ft of 1 inch foam, and make a laminated outline...

Figure out how to stick your kid in it, get a bunch of fabric and, kinda cut, and sew and...

Special thanks to Annette for Sewing Support, as well as Barbara and Delilah for their help as well!