Episode: 1589
Title: HPR1589: KC MakerFair 2014
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1589/hpr1589.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-18 05:30:09

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This episode of HBR is brought to you by AnanasThost.com.
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Better web hosting that's Aniston Fair at AnanasThost.com.
And once again, a long time no here.
I am back to report on Nicarphere in Kansas City.
Which was the fourth annual Nicarphere.
And as is my once, I live there for the fourth time at the Union Station
in downtown Kansas City on June the 28th and 29th.
That last weekend in June of the year of our Lord 2000 and 14.
I did it a little bit different this year.
I have some cards and literature that I picked up from various booths
that I was really interested in.
And I didn't just record it driving on my way home.
So I'd be a little more organized in.
That was a couple of weeks ago.
It was a holiday weekend in the US, the week following for our independent state.
And then I was at a client site on the east coast of the United States.
And so got back from that until I record the show.
So some of the things that I saw.
I'm going to go over a few things that might be of interest to people more locally
and will get to some of the really interesting and I think even important things
that are non-local and will be an impact on the community itself.
So that and enjoy my little story around my little walk around on the Saturday
of the Maker Fair this year.
I did not participate as actively as I have in previous years.
Our little local Make KC group has kind of not been very organized over the past year.
And there were a few of them there representing that there wasn't any call for people to help out
things. So I was just there to walk around and see things.
That's like the first year that I was at the Maker Fair.
And this is interesting because as I go through some of these things,
there's been kind of a gradual, shall we say, evolution and even some of the things that
have been really refined over the years.
Some of the things that are just strictly local and I'm not sure that this will make
difference for anybody outside of you in Kansas City.
But corn-label brewing company is a new local micro-probe room.
It's going to be right here in Kansas City, kind of locally.
And they're going to be opening for business in not too many months.
So if you're in the Kansas City area, you and I should get together and I'll buy you an adult
beverage at that place or perhaps some other ones.
Another really interesting one was Nerdbox N-E-R-B-B-O-T-F.
It's Nerdbox.net.
And there's someone named Nicholas at Nerdbox.net that was,
this was really interesting.
I actually have some things in my pile of carts.
That's a nanogram.
He's in both the basement and the attic.
But I might take over the Nicholas just because I know he'll do something
create with it instead of them just going into the landfill.
I may have some comments on that.
There is a new cable TV show called Hold and Catch Fire
that's on the American television cable networks.
I can't remember which one.
I've seen a couple episodes of it.
It's about, basically, about contact computer in Texas building my viewing home.
That's not, you know, that name because you have to change the names of things, right?
But that's essentially what the situation is.
I have a box that I want to get a hold of the producers of that show.
You can even notice the producers of Hold and Catch Fire.
They should email me.
H-P-R, at Mr. Gadgets.com.
Because I actually have a box of documents,
archival documents that they could use in the show.
I have some of the boxes with some old bite magazines and some other
magazines of that era.
I'm in the 70s era.
If anybody wants those, they're more than welcome to them.
But you have to pay the shipping and it's a box of papers.
So that's going to be really, really expensive.
What Nicholas does is take old tech and make little robots out of them.
Now they're not working robots.
They're just kind of little models of robots.
But it was very cool.
It was very interesting.
I might take into things and see if I can't condition the work out of some old tech that I have.
And at least your old tech is becoming part of the source and not just really into the landfill.
So that was an interesting one.
I also met a young lady who had a very interesting steampunk jewelry.
If you're interested in that, there's a lot of crossover between the steampunk crowd.
I think and the maker crowd.
And in fact, one of my local KC makers had his boot this year.
And his the steampunk seems kind of a boost.
Her actual Etsy website for some very nice steampunk style jewelry
is steampindjoolery.fc.com.
And so if you're interested in steampunk and specifically in steampunk fine jewelry,
I encourage you to go and check out her things that she has.
Another semi-local group.
If you're in the Omaha area or up in Nebraska or Western Iowa, let's say,
the Omaha does have a maker group now and gets Omaha maker group.org.
And apparently they are going to have a mini maker fair.
If I remember it, it's something like the 60th of September.
I remember that because I actually have several different things which are possible to do
something I might be interested in.
And probably the Omaha makers groups mini maker fair is going to lose out because there's
some that are a little bit closer to why would be more interested in.
But if you live around there want to head that direction, I believe if you look at their site,
they would be talking about this mini maker fair that they are going to have.
Of course, that's what at least make KC guys like to claim they did mini maker fair.
Stopped in Parkville, a little town just up over and across over from Kansas City for a few years.
Before the big maker fair officials, maker fair came to the Union Station.
There was also another little interesting kind of 3D modeling,
but there's a lot of CG modeling and things.
They called them PIEHECKERS, P-I-HECKRS with the H and the R capitalized.
And I don't know if they have any kind of website or anything.
The most interesting, you know, you see a lot of 3D printers.
And in fact, I have a comment about that a little bit later, but you see a lot of 3D printers
of the maker fairs and that's a lot of the maker community is very interested in those.
This one was really unique because not only was it a 3D printer mostly made with wood rather
than plastic or metal as, you know, the fringing and everything like that.
But the kids who made this particular 3D printer had some of the most unique hardware
because he had actually taken apart an office desk and was using like the rollers for the
office desk door. Well, that's what he was using as the basis for the rollers for his table
that he was moving and things like that.
So that was really a kind of unique 3D printer, but he's not going in the commercial justice
use just making that for himself. Now, the last local thing that we're really making
the transition now into things where there is a, this is a local company, but they are
transitioning to selling things online so that you have an online and I think this is a
another situation where there's a strong thin diagram and a strong crossover.
If you do that thin diagram between, as I mentioned before, the steam pump community
and the maker community, the hacker community and the maker community, right?
Would be another thin diagram like that. In fact, if you did a three-way thin diagram
and it's still probably a pretty good crossover. Also, the sci-fi community, my friend Kevin
who used to be with the Ohio Linux system, you hear him all the time on hacker public radio, he
actually participates in really cool combination sci-fi and hacker Linux kind of convention
that they have up around the Great Lakes where he lives. And that one would be perfect for me.
Good, good thin diagram. Sci-fi, good. You know, Linux and open source, good.
Anyway, so these are my new friends at TAPAQ. That's T-A-P-P-E-C-U-E and of course it is
www.TAPAQ.com. These guys have a wireless Bluetooth thermometer that you can use with your
barbecue. So if you're doing any grilling or smoking, the TAPAQ people have you covered.
And I think that's pretty strong, you know, thin diagram crossover between ghosts who like to,
you know, could meet, meet, good. And it also would like to use technology in regards to that.
And I'm thinking this is Bluetooth that have smartphone apps, right? So you can monitor and
try to remember whether it was really, it might have even been Wi-Fi. You see, they're just Bluetooth
so you'd have even farther that you can get away from your grill or spokeer and still be monitoring
exactly what was happening there. So the TAPAQ temperature monitoring system might be just the same
for you. And they're right here in the Kansas City area, but see their stuff. Very, very interesting
about the only complaint I had is they didn't have anything that was grilled or smoked
free. Give away, you know, samples of the pizza product. But I saw several things that were very
interesting, wireless technology kinds of things. Control, you know, remote control,
automation, that type of thing. And there was a lot of that around various types of technologies.
I didn't bring a cartridge down, but there was one person I talked to that had some of that
smaller sized microcontroller boards. A lot of the Arduino's, right, or the propeller boards.
The Raspberry Pi might be a little bit on the high end of that kind of thing, but those, you
know, the small controllers types of boards that are driving a lot of the maker community and then
be catching up electronic stuff. He had a set of boards that were very similar to that. And it
has some wireless capabilities so you can have, you know, things as remote centers and having
them communicate and things like that. What I thought was interesting about his particular project.
It was designed for the .NET programmer in line. So it used a kind of micro.NET that was available.
And you could use your same tools that you're familiar with and your same skill set that
you made familiar with if you make your living with .NET. You don't have to relearn some new
little Arduino-specific language or anything like that. You can use your standard tools and you can
write against your library that you're interested in and a new set of libraries with the sensors.
And there you go. Now, I know a lot of people think, oh, .NET, it's proprietary and all that kind of
thing. But, you know, if you don't want to have to relearn everything, it's a good way to get
in on some of these types of things and not have to burn an entire new programming skill set or
a whole new set of tools. So if that's interesting of interest to you, I can probably find somewhere
just don't have it with me, his card and things like that. In terms of controlling, there were a
couple of interesting ones like I said. There's a lot of kind of home control kinds of things I was
seeing and some of them where people get customized to spoke. You know, this is what I'm doing to
hackers, you know, doing that kind of thing. Some of them were commercial entities. A couple of
those. There was a Kickstarter for this one. It was called My Nerd. That's nerd like, you know,
what you are. My nerd.com. And it was a app that you can use to control various and
secondary types of things, lights, open up your garage, you know, things like that. You know,
you're home control type of thing. They had a real interesting little setup where they had
taken some old style for my, you know, press board and made themselves kind of little very flat boxes.
So it looked like it was the top of the table, but it was actually, you know, maybe a few centimeters,
you know, a couple of inches, uh, call and fit right onto the standard, you know, just
put tables that they had, but they had those things that it was wiring so that you could plug a
light bulb in and use the app to turn on and off the light bulb so they were kind of doing a demo
of their stuff. And so that was there. The most interesting one for me though was another one
called Kumo Connect. Now Kumo is KUMO. So it's not a CC name. It's a KC name, right? And they're
from Kansas City. So you get RR. Anyway, uh, Kumo Connect. This one is real interesting. I took
a young man's name, uh, the Blake and it's KumoConnect.com. They had some very sophisticated
home, uh, kinds of automation ideas and products to sell. The interesting thing about this is
I think I remember sitting Blake all the way back at the first maker fair when he was in the
general area with the hackerspace group that we have here in Kansas City. And he was kind of
talking about ideas and things that he was hacking together. And here four years later,
he's got a company who has actual products that are either available or will be in
in your future to sell you on doing these kinds of things. And I think that's asking more
beginning to see this in maker culture start, you know, actually getting into, uh, practical kinds of
inner and other things that we can sell to the public without them having to be super techy
oriented. That's the revolution folks. That's what we need to see here is more and more of
X. Along the lines of very interesting things and I had never heard of this before. They had a
Kickstarter, which is, uh, unfortunately for you over, but then again, uh, it wouldn't have
mattered if I even had done it on my way home that day. Their Kickstarter literally ended the
Sunday of the maker fair in Kansas City. They're called Volt sets, the O-L-T-F-E-T.
And they have a tiny URL, so you can do tinyurl.com slash Volt sets. I think that would probably
take you to their Kickstarter, but that would of course take you to their website and everything
like this. This was a Volt meter that you had frequency and capacity and check. I think if you
got the higher priced option and it's a Volt meter that interacts with your smartphone.
And turns your smartphone into a little weir. It's just a separate little wireless, you know,
measurement and then it communicates with your smartphone for the display. Nice little piece of
kit. When I get it, of course with and did the Kickstarter. And they don't call me a
strict answer for nothing. And so they have that and I have that and we'll do a report on that
when I eventually get that. But I'm looking forward to having that in my bag and some type of
slightly protective for it, you know, so that I think it's broken and I, if I need to do a little
little work, I'll have something much smaller than the standard Volt meter. And I can have a
Volt meter, a very, very useful kind of thing. Let's meet at all times. Another thing I saw
at the real maker fairs like this have a real make magazine, you know, kind of
to sell you things in the maker shed and also feature certain things from the maker shed.
And the real interesting, two interesting things about that. My friend Michael, I say that because
I have his card and I noticed name from that. But I had his card for my last year also.
You might remember this. I think I mentioned this last year. I was I was sitting at a
table that is talking with some people from the publishing company that are right from nearby
here in Kansas City over in Lawrence, Kansas. A little bit west of Kansas City that are the
people who actually publish several limits oriented magazines. In fact, they were back this year.
Doing their Raspberry Pi kinds of for you to magazines are very good for maker fairs.
And they were selling bundles of those and things like that. I already have them all digitally and
I don't want those atoms. I want the electrons right. I was sitting there and I was looking over
the maker fair business where Michael was. And there was a very nice lovely winning case.
And it was I had a display on it. It was about the size of a typical pad, androider, you know,
apple, your standard 10 inch or so, this way. And then there was a Raspberry Pi sitting right on top of
on top. Oh, how cool. He's in the Raspberry Pi and he's got a clip into this little portable
display and he was actually streaming movies. I'm going to find out and go. There was a Raspberry
Pi inside of the case, which he had had made. And he had his own little Raspberry Pi based Linux
tablets. I said this before, but I will take every opportunity to say it again. And hopefully this
year somebody's actually going to give this to me. I want my Linux tablets. And I just
not Linux. Yes, there's a Linux kernel underneath there. But what I want is a true Linux
tablet with one of these touch compatible user interfaces that we all know and all hate because
they're making us do stuff new and different. And we all know that they're designed for touch
interfaces. Somebody needs to make this for me. Okay, I will buy it. I want to be able to do all
of the normal tablets. These things that I do, but when I want to, I want to command line.
And I can cook up a Bluetooth keyboard and do lots of interesting things. And I want to be
able to use my favorite either aptitude or aptitude or some aptitude to install things that I can
run in that environment that aren't standard apps. I want to be able to get to work. Of course,
that would be something legal like you know, they knew Linux distribution. When I'm on the road,
I don't want to be able to do that. I want to create one item to do that. I don't want to have to
boot up my laptop into Linux that's in order to do those kinds of things. I want it. I want
it. They do the next tablet. He had built himself one. And he was back again this year. If he
want to see his Linux tablet, it was written up in make magazine so I congratulated him for
being published. And I believe the January issue of this year. And so he was back again and had his
little tablet on display. And of course, his face now because it had been in make magazine,
they also had some tiny circuits, which are like even smaller. These are about just a few centimeters
by a few centimeters. It puts some comparisons here at the tiny circuits. They have little square
kinds of boards. They have tiny lily, which are about the size of a United States dime.
Most of these boards are smaller than a United States quarter,
such as a few centimeters across. And it's a whole set of boards and actual processor boards
and daughter boards, all the standard kinds of things. You have Bluetooth, Bluetooth,
LE, Wi-Fi, gyroscope, compasses, seven type of displays, LED matrices, all kinds of things.
And you can make this little stack. It's a very small set print. It's only a very small amount
of centimeters or inches tall because you're stacking these right on top of one of them.
You're all tiny little boards. So if you're wanting to do some things, but you need
very, very small space and you don't need to spin the huge amount of R&D that we all know,
it takes to get a lot of tonics to be very, very small. This is something that is a prototype board
that will allow you to build up the layers, right? You know, things in the layers. And it will allow
you to build up your small electronics into a tiny little space for your prototype.
And that, of course, is available as a commercial venture. And then we have the last three things
I'm going to talk about. And this is by far not the only things that I saw. I actually have some
stuff. And later on tonight, I'm going to go to my first meeting of a little group here that's
called the Medical Reserve Corps. It's the Kansas City version of that. And also I am not a
medical professional. I am an amateur radio operator now in getting more radio active here. So expect
to see or hear some shows in the non-judicial future about amateur radio and radio as a hobby
and software-defined radio, things like that. Things I'm going to be experimenting around with.
I'll tell you about those kinds of things. And I saw lots and lots of different things. These are
just the highlight ones. I've got a bunch of cards and literature that I've already thrown out.
But the three major things that I think were the most interesting to me. And then I'll tell you
the highlight of the show. And so the three things that are the most interesting to me were
there's a group of young men that I met last year from the maker group down in Arkansas.
They're in a suburb of Little Rock, Arkansas. They had come up last year and we're showing
there are 3D printers that they have been developing at things like this. You know, your standard
kind of thing at a Baker Fair. These are ones that built ourselves. I remember they were all
repwrap-ish kind of ones. You know, there's kind of two maybe three schools of printers up there
and repwrap kind of is one of those. They were here this year. They come virtually available
products for a 3D printer. Now this is mostly plastic parts with only the bare minimum of metal
that you need. So this is, if you think of the repwrap as being kind of in general a lot of
the cool thing about repwrap is you can, if you have a 3D printer, you can create a new 3D printer,
right? It's like the robot is still the robot. So you can print on a repwrap. Most of the connectors
you need, all you need for a repwrap is some metal rods and a press threaded metal rods.
And of course you need the electronics and you need to do the step promoter and you need all
those other kinds of things that are not going to be plastic or just metal from the hardware store.
Well this is kind of that in a much more reduced form. Absolutely. Every thing that possibly can be
is plastic. But they're selling it commercially for $199. This ladies and gentlemen is the
Revolution. I lived through it before with micro computers where everybody was building their own.
I soldered together my first Cosmic Elf. I think I've already talked about that. And up until this
time 3D printing has mostly been a nerdy kind of techy guy thing and not something for the general
public. And what I've been waiting for is both the Apple 2. I know a lot of hate Apple, but
go with me here. This is the first one that is the commercially applicable. You just buy it,
you take it home, you don't have to know a lot of stuff to get it working kind of thing. But
you got to have money. They're expensive. Apple 2s were I could never afford an Apple 2 back when I
was a starving college student and just after college as a single guy. I could not afford an Apple 2.
There are some of the maker bots that are commercially available now that are coming into that
kind of a price range. And then actually if you consider inflation between the mid 70s and now
the even the $2,000. There's a one that Repetus came out with. If you talk about actual dollars
in the mid 70s, those are already as cheap as an Apple 2 was if not cheaper, okay?
But this one is really amazing to me. $199 in 2014 dollars. Compared to this, I like
him to what all of his head could put in a Ford Apple 2, which was the Color Computer from Radio
Jack. And somebody is actually not. He didn't have any of the cells at the show because they're running
behind in production, not because of problems, but because of orders. But if there's a revolution
you could buy, admittedly, no. This will not print everything that you're $2500 or $4,000
printing machine will do. But it is so cheap that you could actually get it and put it in the
hands of creative people that you know and love and let them know at it and see what they can do.
I probably told this story before, but I'll tell you again when I was a senior in high school
in 1973, okay? Yes, I am that old. I was taking physics class, okay? And for the first half
of the year, everybody in class did the same thing that I did. We all used slide rules.
And we were approximating these calculations. The slide rules weren't exact, but they got us
close enough in the neighborhood that we did to what we needed for class. About half of the class
that year got a Christmas present, which was way back then before there was a wall mark,
before there was K-Mark. It was just crazy with K. For those of you in the United States,
there was actually another kind of department store chain back in that time frame.
And that one chain had a four-banger calculator, a four-function calculator, no memory,
no programmability, no nothing it could do and subtract multiply divide.
And it came in at the unbelievable price of $200. Now, this is $1973, fine, too.
And that revolutionized everything within quote-unquote scientific derby at my high school. I mean,
we were a bunch of, you know, taxis and nerds for the 73 days, right? We didn't have any computers
computers in the exhaust yet that you could get for us, but we had a road rally every year.
And up until then, the road rally was based upon the navigator using the slide rule to work out
what your average speed was for the different segments of the rally. That year, the number one,
two, and three of the road rally were of course cars that had the calculator and could get more
in a more accurate calculation. A four-function calculator, I know it's hard for you to
conceive of this at this point, but a four-function calculator that was a breakthrough price
of $200. So that was $1973. This was $200 in 2014. This, as I said before,
a leading gentleman is a revolution. This is a start. I've seen it before, and I'm telling you,
this is another one. Get on board. If you can catch the wave, you can have yourself a very
lucrative career here. If you understand this and can teach others how to do it, can do it for them,
can be involved in developing the systems for this, you won't have to worry about where your
next meal is coming from. I'm self-taughting computer programming. I know what I'm talking about,
and people can't see on one side what the difference is on the other side. When I first started
seeing the hints of microcontrollers and microcomputers that would be available for a normal person
when that first radio-electronics or popular electronics came out with the inside computer
that Bill Gates called college to go write basic four, I got an inkling of how important this
would be, but I didn't really understand everything about it until it got to the other side,
until it was four or five years later. I started to see really, really how big this wave was
going to be. It's kind of like being in the ocean. You can't really see how big that wave is,
you know the water is moving up towards you, but sometimes it's really foolish about how big
that wave is going to be, and I'm telling you, you're not seeing how big this wave is going to be,
it's going to be huge. People aren't going to need trucks, they're going to be able to print things
locally. It's been a revolutionized world. Get on board or move out of the way because they
ain't no stop them. Q3dprinter.com, that's Q as in question 3dprinter.com, $199 to a basic model,
I think it's $250 for the one with a bigger bet. And then the two best open-source things I
ever heard about because they're right here in my backyard. So there is a KC open hardware group.
They don't have any regular meetings, but they have occasional events that they get together for,
and there's one coming up. Once again September, mid-September, there's 16 there,
whatever that Saturday is, and at the Kloppin Foundation, which is also the people who kind of
are the big sponsor for the mid-care fair. And so we're going to have an event there to discuss
open-source hardware and the ramifications of that. If you want more information, if you are in
or are within driving distance of Kim City area, that's info at kcohg.org. That's kcprinter.cohg.org.
And that event is coming up. I'm really looking forward to that. And if you have any questions about that,
of course, you can get hold of me. And then I also met another young man at the
liquor fair who was burning people Linux CDs to try that on their systems at home. In fact,
while we were shipping, they were talking, he burned me a bode because I've been meaning to check
out bode, and I've never actually did the download and everything on it. So he burned me a bode
while we were talking. In fact, we talked a couple of times. He has started the Free and Libra
Open Source and Open Knowledge Association of Kansas. So that's www.openchances.us.
Opencances.us. The thing that really excites me is not only is this a Free and Open Source
kind of software to go with hardware of the other group. And it's been another person locally.
But he has a venue in Lawrence, Kansas, which I mentioned. It's just a little bit west of
Kansas City. And he started talking with me about this and we're trying to get together some
more people here who would be interested in doing this. And if we can get everything together,
at some point, and not too hopefully distant future, we're going to have ourselves our own
Linux and Open Source Linux Fest in the Missouri Kansas area. I'm sure it will not be a deep thing
like Ohio Linux Fest, maybe even ever, but at least we will have something that I don't have to
drive 10 plus hours to get there in order to have a Linux. Of course, this will be practically in my
backyard. That anybody in Nebraska, I meet these people from Nebraska and Arkansas and
that people from St. Louis were here at the Maker Fair again. All these makers come in from
other states because this is their only place to get everything together. I'm together,
together, and see what other people are doing. And I'm thinking that a Linux Fest in the
central states here in the Great Plains area will have a lot of people. I met people at Ohio
Linux Fest that had come from Missouri and from Iowa. This will be a shorter drive. So hopefully we're
going to have our app together and have more, and you'll hear that from a censure episode.
So then the last thing I want to talk about because really kind of the two open source things for
my highlight, including the fact that we might get together to get our together for a local
Linux Fest. But just on a personal note, you're a mentionist before what it talked about
Maker Fair. And it's continued on this year. There's a point where the Maker Fair kind of
slides over into the closest thing that we have to comment on in Kansas City. And this year,
like many previous years, there were some guys that have some very, very elaborate rock
Iron Man uniforms or aliens, you know, from a predator series, you know, with the dreadlocks
and things like that. There are several people who have lots of costumes that come and show off
their costuming skills and things like that. And they were of enforced, again, this year, and
the people with the predator suits actually were giving a talk. Apparently they had been somewhere
and got a chance to actually escort, kind of let these security guards, if you will, for Stan Lee
at a big con where they were. That sounds like fun. And then I saw them walking around and people
taking pictures with them and things like this. There's, as I say, there's this other,
I don't know if the same guys, different costumes are a different group, but they have Iron Man
costumes and one has big boom box built in the shoulders so they can turn on the boom box and
they can't turn around and people make videos and lots of picture-taking capabilities. And of
course, there's the Star Wars contingents. And they had people who were, there's a large
group of people who do Star Wars reneclet, if you will, you know that they have Stormtrooper,
you know, armor that they wear or Jedi Nikes and that kind of thing. And so they were there. That
contingent was there. So I was just after I went and walked around for all the outside things,
because there's such things that are outside, including architect this year. They finally found
the perfect place for architect, close enough to go over and hear them about Tornado's
away to not drown out everything that people were trying to talk in other places. And that was
outside a whole beautiful row of model A and model P4s, just very cool. If you are interested
at all in older automobiles, holy restored, beautiful. The guys who I was here again,
who were hotting up to this. Really, this has turned over the year here. It has turned
away from last year. They were racing little kids electric powered cars, you know,
little mini jeep that the four-year-old can drive. Well, they were full grown and sitting in these
and they increased the voltage for the batteries and make them go faster and then they were racing them.
Well, they were doing that this year, but really it's kind of turned into look stock car racing
goes here in the States. I don't know. I know the UK has its own touring car racing and I don't
know it. Touring car racing is more like real cars, but American stock car racing and American
drag racing. Most of the time, unless it's a real person racing, most of the professional racing cars
is the plastic body that's supposed to look approximately like that model of car, but underneath
there's nothing about the stock car. If not, you know, a stock car frame, it's not a stock car
engine, it's not a stock car suspension. It's like a racing car underneath the plastic body.
Well, it's kind of turned that way this year. A lot of those were obviously not the standard kids
underneath. It was if they kids plastic body on top of a frame that they had told themselves.
And it's really kind of scary and entertaining to watch them racing around because you know,
they're really almost burning up the engine with the voltage that they're doing and they're
getting to be really, really pretty high speeds. They're just beyond dangerous probably,
but it's fun to watch. And so they were there. And so I just done all this outward,
kind of a walk of run. It was going to be a hot day and I wanted to get that done early before it
was too hot. So I come back into the big lobby that is the lobby you would go in from the train
station. And I turn to their bikes and started walking over there because they had a lot of
that high school robotics competition that was all there. And I like to go by and talk to them
and some of the high schools or local high schools that I even know some of the people that are
involved and things like that. So I knew I wanted to go over and at least go by their booths,
you know, and commits a bit and things like this. Well, just as I got to the first booth,
there's a door that leads to some restaurants and other kind of, you know,
rooms that aren't, you know, they're beyond the actual lobby. And I guess some of the guys that
were changing in the stormtrooper costumes were just coming out of that door because they've
just gotten into their full-scale costumes that were coming out the door to go over to their
area where all those people were kind of gathering together. And so it was a perfect time,
the perfect place. And unlike so many times, I knew the perfect thing thing to say. So I stopped
and I looked at the two of them and I made a little hand gesture. You know the one I mean.
And I pointed over to the high school robotics groups and I said these are not the drawings
you are looking for. And they laughed and the guys from the booths who started laughing
they said that was just perfect. Anyway, so that was my highlight. So to show, I had to use my
Jedi make tricks on the stormtroopers. So that is my report on Make a Fair 2014.
And I know they are wanting shows. Maybe not one so long to try and edit this one back,
shows for heck of a little radio. So if you've done something like this, why don't you call in and
you tell us about something you have gone to that's all techier, dirty, something that has
people dressing up in. They have a movie, costumes, or doing interesting things, making things,
or things like that. And I'll look forward to hearing your show. But until then, this is Mr. Patents.
I'll be here from me soon. Not nearly as long as the drive between the last time I called in
a show. And until then, I'll be out here on the technological frontier, kind of blazing the trail,
finding interesting things, and marking the trail for you. And until we talk again next time,
remember, go out and do something to make something, do something. Bye now.
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