Wow, this post is waaaaaaay overdue! My focus has shifted from blogging the roadtrip to other more important things the last few weeks. A wonderful stay in Phoenix, arranging with my parents to stay in Florida, and of course starting the hunt for a nice place to stay in Buenos Aires. But of course you guys are curious what I've been up to, so let's get this blog post out of the way right away!
The last blog post ended with my arrival at couchsurf host Eli, in San Mateo. This turned out to be a wonderful guy. He's originally from Kenya and after studying and working in the US has started his own online business, arranging notary services, and is doing quite well with it (www.thebestnotary.net). He's in the early stages so he's bootstrapping his business, which means that he lives in a separate part of the office space he rents, and this is also where he could host me for two nights. Quite an interesting environment to be in, and very interesting to see what he's doing with his business, and how well he has the processes thought out.
We quickly got acquainted to each other, covering a lot of subjects in conversation! He told me his water cooler hadn't been working and, with me being an engineer, we of course had to go and have a look at why this was so. After a few minutes of fiddling we fixed it!
A friend of his was in town (being married, with a young baby) he didn't have much time to go out, so Eli had planned to go into town with him. Even though I was a little tired, I thought it would be fun to join the guys for an exploration of San Francisco night life (a visit to a singles event was planned), so we hopped in the car and headed downtown. On arrival we phoned Eli's friend, only to find out he had been rejected at the event we had planned to go to, due to his dressing style. Well, I must say I would've probably been rejected too (hiking shoes, lame T-shirt, three-day beard), but this guy hadn't made much of an effort either: track pants, sport shoes, sweat shirt and three day beard... that's what marriage and baby's do to you apparently ;-)). We agreed that he would find another bar while we would try to find a parking spot. This took some time, but in the end we managed it and ended up in an Irish pub. We had a few drinks and talked for a while, which was nice. Afterwards we wanted to try another place: a hotel bar with a good view of the skyline. Of course we were also rejected here, so we called it a night, because Eli and I would have to get up early the next day to get a full day of MakerFaire.
MakerFaire... I didn't have much of an idea what to expect, except for 3D printers, drones and lots of nerds. Eli had heard of it as well, but had never visited, so being a curious person he also joined in. We even contacted another Couchsurfing host, who had offered to host me, but could only do that for one night: Thomas from Germany, a test engineer living in San Mateo, he would join us later in the day. Eli and I got up relatively early after a night out, and headed into town. Parking was kind of troublesome (we ended up using the goodwill parking... that must have cost us some serious karma). But then it was on to... MakerFaire!
The last blog post ended with my arrival at couchsurf host Eli, in San Mateo. This turned out to be a wonderful guy. He's originally from Kenya and after studying and working in the US has started his own online business, arranging notary services, and is doing quite well with it (www.thebestnotary.net). He's in the early stages so he's bootstrapping his business, which means that he lives in a separate part of the office space he rents, and this is also where he could host me for two nights. Quite an interesting environment to be in, and very interesting to see what he's doing with his business, and how well he has the processes thought out.
We quickly got acquainted to each other, covering a lot of subjects in conversation! He told me his water cooler hadn't been working and, with me being an engineer, we of course had to go and have a look at why this was so. After a few minutes of fiddling we fixed it!
A friend of his was in town (being married, with a young baby) he didn't have much time to go out, so Eli had planned to go into town with him. Even though I was a little tired, I thought it would be fun to join the guys for an exploration of San Francisco night life (a visit to a singles event was planned), so we hopped in the car and headed downtown. On arrival we phoned Eli's friend, only to find out he had been rejected at the event we had planned to go to, due to his dressing style. Well, I must say I would've probably been rejected too (hiking shoes, lame T-shirt, three-day beard), but this guy hadn't made much of an effort either: track pants, sport shoes, sweat shirt and three day beard... that's what marriage and baby's do to you apparently ;-)). We agreed that he would find another bar while we would try to find a parking spot. This took some time, but in the end we managed it and ended up in an Irish pub. We had a few drinks and talked for a while, which was nice. Afterwards we wanted to try another place: a hotel bar with a good view of the skyline. Of course we were also rejected here, so we called it a night, because Eli and I would have to get up early the next day to get a full day of MakerFaire.
MakerFaire... I didn't have much of an idea what to expect, except for 3D printers, drones and lots of nerds. Eli had heard of it as well, but had never visited, so being a curious person he also joined in. We even contacted another Couchsurfing host, who had offered to host me, but could only do that for one night: Thomas from Germany, a test engineer living in San Mateo, he would join us later in the day. Eli and I got up relatively early after a night out, and headed into town. Parking was kind of troublesome (we ended up using the goodwill parking... that must have cost us some serious karma). But then it was on to... MakerFaire!
At the entrance the large and fantastic Burning Man creations attracted the first attention: El Pulpo Mecanico: a fire spewing steampunk octopus and a pair of snake-like carts. Impressive and totally custom made stuff. Up next was the Startup area: lots and lots of 3D printers, 3D printing platform (competition for 3Dhubs?) and various microcontroller and electronics businesses. Eli had thought up a little idea he could use in his business, of which I was convinced it would only take a weekend of hacking, so we chatted with various people to see if they would take it up. This was fun, and depending on who we spoke to we got very different answers. In the end we did find a place which had about 90% of the parts already to make what Eli wanted, and specialized in providing these kind of services, so we might actually see the idea come to fruition.
Besides all these entrepreneurs Eli also saw someone looking around at a stand while wearing 'Google Glass'. Of course he wanted to try this, which the guy happily let him do. The guy turned out to be Daniel Fourie, who actually works for Google, and then on a very cool project: Loon! You gotta love serendipity again for just meeting this guy at one of the stands and then having a very interesting conversation.
Besides the artsy and make stuff, there were also some displays that were a little more 'out there'. Such as this dissecting cabinet, where you could witness live dissecting of chickens and rats... stinky! There was also a bio-hacking club, which had genetically modified worms, and gene sequencing on bacteria and other weird stuff... San Francisco is an area which offers lots of opportunities for acquiring weird hobbies!
Dissecting stuff stinks!
Check the display: their own genetically modified worms!
The program also allowed for a host of speakers. The most fun talk I heard in a while was done by Chip Yates. He's a motorcycle racer that suddenly got the plan to build an electric motorcycle to set some world records. He managed to do just that, and afterwards continued his streak by creating an electric airplane as well. A high energy speaker, entertaining and inspirational: he started his speech while hanging in a steel box behind a curtain, to demonstrate the way he tested his parachute system :-D.
It was fun to hear about his adventures of building and testing his systems. Such stories always remind me of my days at Solar Team Twente. Somehow the energy of the 'impossible is nothing' attitude I had after that experience has been slowly dying the last years. Seeing someone right in the middle of his zone, carrying this attitude around and taking it to the edges of technological possibility is very inspirational. We watched two more speakers, but to me Chip Yates really stood out.
After these talks I visited the 'Fiesta hall' which had the lights dimmed and housed all the light related stuff. Some very cool displays here, of which sadly I cannot show you the video's right now (shot in a format that my video editing software won't handle). For instance there was a high resolution screen consisting of a projection onto mist, dancing robots and animatronic puppets.
What I can show you: stainless steel art and lighted clothing:
Nice art, working with reflections and colored LEDs.
Neat light display, but never forget marketing lesson #1: let a hot chick show off your products!
Pretty cool effect on this dress
After this artsy stuff it was time for some old school mechanical engineering: steam power, bikes, flames and moving heavy stuff! Not much to tell about these things, just some cool gizmo's to fill all your senses with lots of input all at once!
Steampower!
Crazy bicicles
A working mechanical snake, weighing a couple of tons
Youtube: http://youtu.be/Ov0sJfwXqQY
Pyrotechnics!
The steam engine was used to power a 19th' century inspired 'hysteria cure'. Basically a vibrator embedded in a couch. Somehow the men quickly got off the couch while the women remained sitting for a lot longer.... Besides this crazy thing they also had a working two-color printing press: pretty cool to see this! The hydraulic powered snake was incredibly amazing: a couple of tons of aluminium, lots of hydraulics, 4 Arduino controllers and such an impressive sight!
Apparently the special effects business is alive and kicking in San Francisco (it spawned the Mythbusters for instance) and some of their work was on display.
A working (remote controlled?) model from Robocop (?)
Fantasy models. The robot thing on the right was fully functional and housed a person to control it (you could look inside). Very impressive stuff!
Straight out of 'The dark crystal'
Drones also played a major role in the MakerFaire. You could see them being flow outside, but inside were two area closed off by netting where people would really fly em: an obstacle course and a battle arena. You can see a small video of this in the impression below: it was pretty impressive (albeit completely useless) to see these drones smashing into each other.
All in all it was an interesting day, I saw a lot of stuff that I had been reading about on line in reality, met some interesting people and also learned a bit here and there. I was particularly impressed with the huge amount of work going on in the San Francisco area. It really feels like a great place to be working on these kinds of things: high pace, so many things happening! Actually it was so much that I was overwhelmed at the end of the day, perhaps I should have gotten a two day ticket to take a little more time to explore everything at a slower pace. What was also quite nice to see is that there were a lot of people building beautiful stuff just as their hobby, kinda showing it off for free. That's a vibe that you don't get in many places.
I'll end with a short video impression:
Youtube: http://youtu.be/9M39RUfanrE
There's more pictures on Picasa, also of funny stuff that you could see all over the maker faire area so I'll let you discover those on your own.
The day ended with very nice sushi in down town San Mateo. Eli and I shared our impressions of the day and headed back to his place for a good night of rest: I wanted to get moving again early and Eli had another day of MakerFaire to visit one of his friends who was manning a stand.
More of the last days in LA in the next post!
Picasa:
Day 58: Maker Faire San Mateo
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