Kwartzlab Society Inc.

 
A funny thing happened on the way to the Site3 open house...
 

More after the break...
 

 
A bunch of...
 

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So we're rockin' on out of here today to go Californimakin. Maker Faire is happening out in San Mateo, California, so me and 5 of my buddies are flying out today to join in the fun. We're going out a couple days early to do a bunch of cool makerly stuff in the bay area. On Thu night we'll be hanging out at Noisebridge and I'll be giving a short 5-minute talk on my strawlenoid linear actuators that I developed for Animeyes as part of Noisebridge's regular 5 Minutes of Fame gig.
 
Ping me if you in the Bay Area this week(end). The more the merrier. And stay tuned for blog posts from the field.
 
Happy making,
DW

 
It should come as no suprise to anyone that the British have been hardcore makers all the way back to when you only needed 3 digits to describe the year. My trip to London this week illuminated that understanding beyond a yeah-yeah-of-course notion to a much deeper appreciation. It really blew my hair back to stand in front of Westminster Abbey and put my hand on stone that was cut and placed in the eleventh century to make this beautiful structure. What art and engineering!
 

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Gus, Eric, Karl, and I attended TEDxWaterloo on Thursday. Fantastic experience. Great crowd, great talks, great afterparty.
 
Here we are at The Gig theatre (the old Highland cinema), lining up to get in.
 

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Spoiler: Amy Krouse Rosenthal was my fave.
 

 
We just threw our money down for Maker Faire 2010. Tickets/flights/hotel. You should come too. It's going to be awesome! Any doubts? Check out my blog postings from last year's Faire.

Ping me with your travel plans when you actually book it. It will be cool to link up all the Canadians at the Faire.
 

Details on our travel plans after the break...
 

 
This is how many new creative work spaces begin: beer + talking. Our good friends Seth Hardy and Alex Leitch are kicking off the Site 3 Colaboratory in T.O. So Gus, Ben, Bevan, and I jumped in the car and headed to the city to support their kick-off meeting this evening.
 

More after the break...
 

 
Tonight, a bunch of us visited the UW Critical Media Lab to chat with Marcel Gorman who is the director of crimelab and an associate professor with UW. Marcel had contacted us about mashing up some crimelab students with our makers and that sounded awesome to us. We talked a bit at Culture Camp on Saturday and decided to continue the discussion Monday night when his students would be screening their final projects on the giant video screens atop city hall.
 
More after the break...
 

 
We went maker shopping in T.O. on Saturday. Hit a bunch of shops on Spadina, hacklab.to (nobody home), best Home Hardware ever, computer shops on College, Active Surplus, Steve's music store, and The Silver Snail.
 

More after the break...

 
While heading to DC for work a couple of weeks ago, I opted to go a day early so I could check out HacDC, the local hacker space.
 
Unfortunately, the person that was to meet me at the airport and give me the tour... didn't show. Luckily, I'm massively adaptive...
 
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