Flickr Set here.

Nile likes to stuff animals down his pants. And they also like to wear cookware. Very nice. Also note the tendency to do something cute until the parents try and take a picture of it.

Cyrus is a grazer. So after some weak attempt at eating, he would scream to be let down, and then he would wander around and every once in a while eat something. Anyways, he would periodically shout “Up!”, asking to be picked up. Then Bruce or Tina would say “No Up!”, denying his request. And then he would cackle loudly, walk over to the other parent, and then repeat.

Nile pushed his toy something-or-other (maybe it was the lawnmower?) through the snow. I can only imagine what an experienced tracker would have thought if he came across these tracks in the middle of the woods.

I think this preceded some episodes where Nile pushed how close he could get to whacking Cyrus without getting in trouble.

A perfect metaphor for being a parent. In case you don’t notice, Nile is in the background, ready with a baseball bat in case Cyrus can’t finish the job.

When I visited, Cyrus had a bit of an awkward sleep schedule. He would get really tired at lunch. If they let him go to sleep, then he didn’t really eat much lunch, and he would wake up later hungry and pissed off. So the main effort was to try and get him eat as much as they could until he conked out.

I just can’t imagine how this is a comfortable sitting position for children.

There were times where he would fall asleep with food in his mouth.

Flickr Set Here
Slideshow Below
Pictures & descriptions after the jump

This is a blurry picture of Itsuki in our hotel room. Check out the crocs! Keep her away from escalators….

Apparently, she’s had enough of us, and will see us later. But what an adorable exit!

This is the dress that Itsuki was going to wear to the wedding. She kept on asking us if it was cute. Such a typical woman, always needing compliments.

Juvenile, I know, but I couldn’t help but take a picture.

We made our way to the church, and stayed outside for a bit.

Itsuki and Megumi pose for my camera.

Lindsay and Russ, sealing the deal.

After the ceremony, we all gathered out front to congratulate the couple. Yusuke is playing to his Japanese stereotype, taking pictures. Next to him is Steve, one of my roommates in Grad School one year.

One of the wedding favors was bubble making..uh…fluid. So of course, Russ had to walk through a small cloud of bubbles.

This was a bit of a reunion for Russell’s high school friends, a group that I’ve hung out with on a number of occasions. This includes Cameron, of course, but also their friend Liz, who brought her date Tonya. Here we all are entering the reception, and apparently dancing. And apparently I gave my camera to someone to take the picture. I don’t really remember this.

Cameron and Liz are still dancing.

Lindsay greets us all at the reception.

Adam does the honors of the Best Man’s toast. Also, he rocks the cummerbund.

Liz, me, Cameron, and Adam at the end of the night, probably.

With all the rugrats running around, long hiking trips were out of the question, but I’m a pretty low maintenance guest. All I look for is an opportunity to relax with friends. So we did a little wine tasting (Walla Walla has a huge number of vinyards), a little light hiking, and played some Axis and Allies.

Flickr Set Here
Slideshow below
Pictures and Descriptions After the Jump

We decided to go on a little adventure, and part of that adventure involved having lunch at Palouse Falls. Just in case you were wondering if falling would be healthy for you or not, this sign lays it all out for you.

Washington and Oregon have a lot of waterfall cred. Here is Palouse Falls.

I like this picture because it kinda looks like Cyrus is either being punished or forgotten. I think he’s just being free range at this moment. He’s definitely a grazer, not the type of baby who’s good at sitting down for a meal. By the way, Thanks Tina, for actually smiling for the pic, rather than being surly like Bruce.

Here’s me in the process of abducting Nile. I’m assuming that I just put the camera on a nearby, convenient pedestal. Cyrus is barely visible on the ground next to Bruce.

At this age, Cyrus hasn’t quite mastered natural walking yet. Bruce thought he “walked like a convict”, in that his arms were raised like he was saying “I’m Innocent! I’m Innocent! Don’t shoot!” I thought he just walked like a chimp, a more accurate but more boring analogy. Anyways, here I think he looks like a dinosaur ready to pounce.

I like how the “shock waves” from the waterfall are clearly visible.

I wanted to prove to you that the waterfall was not just some sort of illusion, a trick of perspective, so I’m zoomed out a little bit here.

I think that Cyrus is staging some sort of sit-in. No looking at the view unless his demands are met!

After Palouse Falls, we visited a little reservoir, in the hopes that it would be a viable watery playland for Nile and Cyrus, who love playing in the liquid stuff. In reality, it was kinda dingy. But that didn’t stop them from wanting to jump in. Here, Bruce wades in with Nile, just in case there are some sea monsters.

We brought tools to help with the playtime. Nile decided to help clean up the water by removing all that disgusting dirt.

When we all drive together, I get the front seat, so I don’t have to deal with the monsters in the back. But the Highlander has this special wide-angle mirror up front so that you can keep track of the troublemakers. I like how both Nile and Cyrus are asleep, and leaning towards Tina.

Bruce and I decided to check out a trail that he had read about it, and took Nile along so that Tina only had to deal with one crazy person in the house. This is the trail head. I don’t know what that horizontal bar was in the background, but I liked to think that pygmy bears live in the area and that bar is for hanging food from.

I took this picture at the start of the hike as well, before Nile settled into his carrier. I love how if you look super carefully at Bruce’s shades, you can see me in the reflection. I feel all “CSI” when I do that. Enhance!

Bruce and I went on a small hike….somewhere. The hike itself wasn’t so great. It was very well signed. In fact, we ended up on the wrong trail and inadvertently ended up back at the car well before we intended to. But this was an excuse to get Nile outside. Here, we took a little break to let Nile out of his hiking cage. He promptly took the hiking poles and tried to mosey away.

Every meal is an adventure in not eating stuff.

Cyrus tries to escape his dungeon, and Nile tries to wear Daddy Sandals.

Nile and Cyrus work with each to try and escape their horrible prison (filled with toys)

Nile loves Big Bear….did he just ask me to smell Big Bear?

Nile has an encyclopedic knowledge of heavy machinery, even at 2 1/2. He can correctly identify bull dozers, backhoes, excavators, steam rollers, dump trucks, tractors, etc etc. That said, I don’t really know what he’s talking about here.

Nile loves to vacuum. Not that theres anything wrong with that.

I gathered that this was a decently popular game in the Dumser household when I visited.

I had heard that Seattle put on a decent fireworks show, but due to budget restrictions, they canceled it that year. After a furious donation drive effort, though, Seattleites raised enough money to put on the show anyways. Personally, I think that’s a bad precedent to set. Now, they’ll never get funding for a fireworks show. Anyways, we were going to go to the fireworks show, but the weather was somewhat uncertain, and we had a baby to transport as well. So we decided not to go to the fireworks, but try and check it out from the upstairs balcony, which technically had a view. But some trees were blocking the view of some of the shells, so we decided to check it out on the TV. After watching it on TV for a while….we remembered that watching fireworks on TV is usually not very entertaining. So we watched a movie. However, I did enjoy reflecting on this gradual descent through various levels of laziness.

Flickr set here.
Slideshow Below.
Pictures and Descriptions after the Jump.

Since this was Dave’s first time in Seattle, we did the rounds of some touristy places. First up, Pike’s place market, since that’s a very touristy thing to do. I almost picked up a hand-made Kindle cozy.

Here are Dave, Gina, Cameron and presumably Ari hanging out in front of Kerry Park, which affords a nice view of downtown Seattle.

I just liked how Ari’s feet poked out here. Just airing them out!

Cameron and Gina live quite close to Green Lake, so they often walk around it to get some fresh air. Dave and I joined in the fun as well. Cameron is doing his part to reduce the mosquito population around the lake.

That night, we did a little grilling outside. I noticed that there were quite a few slugs crawling around. This was a pretty good example.

Dave gets his first experience with being a baby’s pillow. He found the experience quite enjoyable.

Oh, Ari, your head is so round! Amazing.

Bad Dream? From this picture, it looks like she’s about to cry.

It’s probably one of those dreams where she has to give a speech in front of her classmates and then realizes she forgot to wear pants. Or she can’t stop sneezing.

Nevermind. False Alarm. It was just probably some gas.

We stopped by Gina’s office at the University of Washington. This little plaza is conspicuously oriented so as to showcase Mt. Rainier, which you can just barely make out in this picture.

Rainier, closer.

Mt. Rainier is a pretty nice looking mountain, I have to say. But I feel that way about most volcanoes, I think, mostly because they are always so spectacularly solitary.

Most of the hikes I go on are in the Bay Area proper. I’ve joined a few Bay Area MeetUp groups, so the selection of hikes is usually some sort of compromise where each location is reasonable no matter where you live. This week was a bit different, in that the destination was quite a ways south, near Big Sur. If I lived up in San Francisco, this might be prohibitively far away, but it works out decent enough for those of us down at the South end of the bay.

This weekend’s selection was Andrew Molera State Park, which lies right along the ocean near Big Sur. The trail is mostly exposed, with all the vegetation being scrubby bushes, probably because of all the salt mist. I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of wildflowers, though. We started out from the parking lot heading towards the beach, then hung a left and took the ridge trail up some steepish hills. The view would have been spectacular…if it hadn’t had been cloudy. The clouds in themselves weren’t so bad — mornings are often cloudy in California. The clouds/fog gradually retreats towards the coast as the sun rises, until only blue skies remain. However, since we were right on the coast, and not particularly lucky this day, the clouds lasted most of the hike. This was good news for those easily sunburned, but a bit disappointing to me. The ridge trail loops around to the Panorama and Bluff Trails, which skirt the coastline at a lower elevation than the ridge. From there, there are a few easy opportunities to head down to the beach, which we took advantage of before heading back to the trailhead. All in all, it was pretty enjoyable, and we went a little further south to grab an early dinner at a nice restaurant with a view.

I ended up taking some pictures of plants, but as usual, I didn’t know what they were. I figured that there had to be some wildflower identification sites out there, so I did some searching. The first resource I found was sponsored by the California Academy of Sciences, and was a database of flowers. This was exactly what I was looking for, in that it allowed me to search by color and and number of petals, which is about as much as a flower ignoramus such as me could handle. However, it wasn’t quite as comprehensive as I needed. That’s when I stumbled upon Calflora.org, which is a database of all sorts of California plants, both flowers and non-flowering plants. The awesome part of it was the What Grows Here? database, where you could put in a city or county or a state park and it would list all the species that they’ve found in that area. Pretty sweet. Due to that, I think I identified most of the flowers that I took pictures of.

Flickr Set Here.
Slideshow Below.
Pictures & Descriptions After the Jump

Before the hike, we generally mill around, aimlessly, until the “hike leader” steps up and calls order, and then we review the hiking plan.

I rarely pass up a chance to use my GorillaPod, so here I attached it to a convenient sign and snapped a group picture. What, you think it would have been better if the car wasn’t in the way? Well, then we would have been in the middle of the parking lot. That’s just unsafe.

Disappointingly, the fog stuck around for the start of this hike. I believe this was taken at probably 9:30 or 10 AM, and the sun had not yet burned off the cloud cover. Otherwise, I think it the view would have been quite nice.

This picture would’ve also blown your mind, if it wasn’t for the fog, that is.

I think this flower is called Indian Paintbrush. So, it is quite fitting that I took this picture.

Based on the pictures I’ve been able to dig up, I think this is Monterey Cypress. We are close enough to Monterey that this is plausible.

This is a much safer “natural rattle” than a rattlesnake. Don’t believe the pro-rattlesnake propaganda you hear on tv ads!

I think this flower is called the Farewell-To-Spring (Clarkia Rubicunda)

This plant is, frankly, alien looking. The garish colors just seem out of place, and I swear I’ve seen movies or video games in which plants like these were planted ahead of some sort of extraterrestrial attack. But according to The Internets, this plant has many names, including “Bluff Lettuce” and “North Coast Dudleya”. However, its best name is the Powdery Liveforever. If I ever have a child, that name makes the shortlist.

I liked this view because the brightness of the flowers shines out from the mostly dark background. It abstractly reminded me of a starry sky.

We began the hike at more or less sea level, but our path quickly ascended up some steep hills. But finally, we are making our way back downward. Here, I can catch a glimpse of the ocean through the fog.

There was a lot of “scrub” in the area, not grass. Lots of bushes. I imagine that whatever grows here needs to be quite tolerant of salt.

That little glimpse of beach was quite enticing. We knew that we would find a way to get there.

Not quite sure what this flower is. Maybe Mexican Elderberry?

We found a path that led down to the beach, but when we approached the end we found this odd driftwood graveyard. I guess that whatever wind/ocean currents exist, they tend to pile up wood in this little section of the beach. Either that, or periodically people come and clear wood off of the beach, and pile it all over here.

I danced nimbly from log to log in order to get to the beach.

This section of the beach had an odd purple tint to it. I tried to convince the other people in the group that it was elephant seal blood, perhaps from a shark attack or maybe an ultimate fighting tournament.

The color of the sand probably had some sort of basis in the salt or something. It made the sand very crusty, so when you walk on it it breaks though and leaves a mark.

There were a number of places where water dripped down the beach rocks to make its way to the ocean. But with all the lichen and whatnot, it just looked like the rock had snot.

Help! I’m pretending to be trapped under a rock!

Finally, the fog (mostly) burned off, leaving just the thinnest residue. Of course, by this time….the hike was just about over.

After the hike, we moseyed on down the road to Nepenthe, a nearby restaurant with a very darn good view.

I hate crossing time zones for personal trips. The flights are always so inconveniently timed and long. So when it comes time for the year-end holidays, I tend to stay on the West Coast. For Thanksgiving last year, I visited my friends Cameron and Gina up in Seattle. Looking back, most of these pictures are of their < 1 year old daughter, Ariana (aka Ari). Partially, that's because we didn't do a whole lot of exciting, picture worthy things. But mostly, it's because she is phenomenally cute. So yeah, enjoy pictures of squirmy happy baby. Again, I was too lazy to grab my camera most of the time, so most of the pictures and videos are with my phone.

Flickr set here
Slideshow below
Pictures & Descriptions after the jump

Ari has an interesting hair pattern at this age.

I hate using flash on kids. But here you can clearly see the “forelock”.

Babies are surprisingly strong. Ari is a pretty giggly baby, especially when Daddy is involved.

Here is Ari along with the Thanksgiving feast. Now, you have a frame of reference for how big the turkey was. Note : the turkey was purchased from a farm which practiced humane raising of turkeys (up until the killing part, as well), so we could rest assured that the turkey had a pretty good life, at least as far as turkeys go.

Ari is really good at picking up things and banging them on the table.

The sound got screwed up on this one, but it’s really just Ari squirming and trying to hit the table with a spoon.

Shame on Cameron for using a baby to shield himself from my camera.

I was very impressed at Maki’s ability to rest her head on all of her feet as well as her tail.

Ari already has a leg up on joining the information age. And being a pretentious Mac user.

I find it enjoyable when children take pleasure in the simplest things. Woo-hoo! Paper!

Ari looks pretty happy here….But what girl wouldn’t be happy in Jeet’s arms?

I have no idea what her parents are doing to make her giggle so much.

I felt like there was some sort of Picture of Dorian Gray thing going on, because Ari’s hair is concentrated on where I’m losing it the most. I was hoping to capture that in a picture, but no dice. If there was more flash, you would probably be able to see it shine off of my head.

Wait…if Mommy and Daddy are looking at me…who’s holding me???!!???

Maki loves it when I visit, because I’m the only one who pays her attention. As soon as I show up, she runs up to me and rolls over so that I can give her a belly rub.

Flickr set here.
Slideshow below
Pictures & Descriptions after the jump.

A while ago I found this dinosaur rocker on kids.woot, and it was just too adorable to pass up. There was also a cow version…but my Hindu background felt that it was kind of sketchy.

Here is Sachin demonstrating how it’s done. I was concerned that he would be so enthusiastic it would keel over.

Yeah! Sippy cup!

Unlike most babies, Sachin is not suspicious of me. I think.

My cousin Girish was also in town for the wedding, so he got some Sachin time as well.

Sachin shows off his Halloween costume. It’s a really cute monkey suit, but he’s moving around too much to get a clear picture.

I like this picture because it sorta looks like he’s gone crazy, out of control, jumping on furniture and running amok! My sister tries to grab a hold of him, but he’s unstoppable! At least he’s not throwing poop.

Thankfully the monkey is now under control.

Here’s someone else’s picture, using flash so it’s not blurry.

I asked if the banana was sewn in or was velcro-ed. They said that if it wasn’t sewn in, it would have already been eaten.

Nicely enough, this wedding coincided with my birthday. This was quite a unique occasion — it had been probably 10 years since I celebrated my birthday with all the rest of my family. My sister got me a Whole Foods cake. I could taste the hippiness.

Okay, so I forgot my camera, so was forced to rely on my cellphone for everything, which resulted in pretty horrible pictures. But you can see some blurry bridesmaids and a blurry pastor and a blurry emcee, I think.

The bride and groom exit the ceremony. Blurrily.

By the many arms of Vishnu, that’s a lot of Indians! Here’s a picture of all sorts of people that are in some way related to me. I think I spend a lot of time out in the sun compared to everyone else.

Sachin cleans up pretty well, although I think he forgot his dress shoes. He had a good time picking things up, and then throwing them on the floor.

Here are my sisters along with the bride. I like how every person is looking at a different camera, indicating that there are at least 3 cameras pointed at them.

Here are the bride and groom, Michael and Shiela.

Anyways, here are some pictures of the trip. I didn’t take very many; it was raining most of the time and I didn’t get to really explore so much.

Flickr set here.
Slideshow below.
Photos & descriptions after the jump.

On one of the free afternoons of the conference, I rounded up some people and headed out for some hiking. The weather did not look like it would be cooperating very much, but we headed out to the gondola during a dry spell. Here’s a picture of me with mountains in the background. I’m pretty excited, because this will be the highest altitude I’ve ever been at (air travel not included). My camera is pretty far from my target bench, so I kinda had to book it to get into position. A group of old ladies nearby found this quite amusing.

We took the gondolas up to a ski lift, which would take us up to about 12,000 feet. The ski lift entrance also had this sort of low-tech amusement area. Here’s a combination bungee thing and trampoline. It seems like it’s designed to exert the maximum amount of g-forces on young children. I forget how exactly it worked, but I guess all that harnessing keeps the child from flying off of the mountain.

I kept a lookout for bears, but couldn’t see any. They were probably camouflaged.

Breckenridge is at about 9,000 ft, so we’re well above 10,000 feet now. The clouds look ominous.

We found this sign up on the mountain, which I thought was a little curious. Our thought is that there are explosives of some sort stored here, maybe for pre-emptive avalanche maintenance. The other thought is that perhaps fire is an endangered species in Colorado, and this is some sort of Fire Preserve.

This was a decent shot down into the valley below. The wildflowers were still around on the mountainside.

The altitude was definitely getting to me. This path was quite a hard slog.

The weather was looking worse and worse, and we knew that the ski lift back down would stop running if the weather got too bad. So, this is where we decided to turn around. I found a decent looking rock (seen on the previous image) where I could place the camera, and I was frankly just impressed that I got everyone’s head in there.

We managed to get back to the lift before major weather headed our way. We were one of the last ones to leave the mountain.

This wasn’t a very long hike (actually, it was really really short), but I did achieve a personal altitude record, so it was a good novelty run.

Back last May, I visited Mount Tamalpais State Park, great wilderness area just north of San Francisco in Marin County. I’ve hiked in MTSP three or four times total, and each time has been fantastic. There is a nice mix of landscapes and wildlife that I just find really pleasant and relaxing.

My itinerary for this day was the Matt Davis – Steep Ravine – Dipsea trail route, a highly recommended one from a number of hiking guides. The trail starts out high, descending through a beautiful ravine centered around a creek (still flowing pretty well, as it was still May). The trail crosses the water multiple times, so there were a number of bridges. The trail emerges from the trees into a great view of Stinson Beach and the Bolinas Lagoon. The trail descends to sea level, and passes through the downtown of Stinson Beach, before heading back into the hills. After completing this ~ 7.5 mile hike, I took some scenic pictures of San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge from the Marin County Side.

Picture set on Flickr, here
Slideshow below
Pictures & descriptions after the jump.

This ominous sign awaited me before I embarked on this trail. 10 foot ladder? Frightening. I hope no one tries to take horses down that ladder.

About 15 minutes in to my hike, I rolled my ankle on this stupid rock. It was excruciating. I actually felt nauseous (probably because I’m a wimp). I heard things “pop”. I hobbled over to a nearby fence and took a seat to take stock of my situation. After doing a cursory examination, I decided that the swelling wasn’t too bad, and that as long as I kept it warm, it would be okay. I didn’t drive 90 minutes to stop after 15.

That blur down by the bottom of the image is a passing hiker, just to give a sense of scale.

I have a thing for shots of fallen trees over water.

I’ve noted this before, but whenever I see the grooves on redwoods spiral in this way, I think of the right hand rule.

At the beginning of this trail, there is a warning sign stating that there is a ladder on the trail that hikers will need to navigate. Well, here it is. Quite imposing.

The giant runs and solid construction of this ladder means that it’s really not much of a daunting task.

If I was a lazy pirate, I would choose this spot to bury my treasure. You know, that’s not a bad euphemism for outdoor pooping.

I just found this bifurcating waterfall pleasing.

With all the bridges around, I could not help but pretend to be Gandalf in the Fellowship of the Ring, defending the passage from an evil Balrog. I know, I’m terribly lame. Normally, I might not subject myself to such potential internet-verified ridicule, but the next picture was disturbingly appropriate.

If it’s hard to make out, the words there under that piping are “Not All Who Wander Are Lost.” This is, generally speaking, a good quote about hikers. I mean, it’s a pretty romantic sentiment for those of us who enter the woods without need for a stunning vista or a wonderful payoff; we just want a chance to enjoy nature and get away from all the extraneous stimulation that modern society demands of us. However, truer nerds will recognize the words reference Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. This is from Bilbo’s “Riddle of Strider”, describing Aragorn : All that is gold does not glitter / Not all those who wander are lost / The old that is strong does not wither / Deep roots are not reached by the frost / From the ashes a fire will be woken / A light from the shadows will spring / Renewed shall be blade that was broken / The crownless again shall be king. Consider that your nerd-lore lesson for the day. I forgive the vandal for his imprecise quoting.

I just thought this was a pretty picture of a bunch of wildflowers.

I tried my best to show my sensitive side and take some closer pictures of flowers. I think I was experimenting with using the flash here.

As I was walking through the forest, my path took me up a hill, and I could just sense that there was going to be a great view coming up. Here we see Stinson Beach, the Pacific, and Bolinas Lagoon off to the right.

The same view, but from a slightly different perspective.

Okay, this picture doesn’t have a whole lot more to offer than the previous two, but man, look at the difference in height between those two!

At this point, I was off of the Steep Ravine Trail, and on the Dipsea trail. Apparently, there’s a race here.

I wonder…does this count as a legal disclaimer?

Okay, I don’t really know why I took this picture. Maybe I just saw the predator, camouflaged.

I started my day descending a ravine, and found myself on the beach. Due to the annoying facts of basic physics, that meant that the second half of my hike had to go back up into the hills. Here’s a look back into the ocean.

Another mysterious picture. What the hell was I thinking of? I really need to bring a voice recorder to take notes.

Here is my attempt to take a picture of myself next to a waterfall. My aiming needs a little work.

This just seemed like an interesting bloom.

I’m probably about 75% of the way through my hike. The trail emerges from the forest and I found myself climbing through steep grassy hills.

The main point of this video, which may or may not be readily apparent, is the motion of the grass rippling like waves as the wind passes through the fields.

I’m pretty sure that this is a view looking south, across the mouth of the San Francisco Bay.

After getting back to my car, I headed back towards San Francisco. Right before hitting the Golden Gate Bridge, though, I took the last exit and traveled up a dirt road to some of the most popular vista areas. The better areas were too busy to park at, so I took this picture first, farther away.

Now, a picture of the bridge that isn’t ruined by an indian.

Just in case you prefer your bridge pictures with a bit of San Francisco in the background, here is another picture.

Proof that I was there.

Here’s a picture of the less exciting portion of the bridge, where it actually connects to Marin county. However, you can see S.F. and Oakland in the background, along with Alcatraz and the Bay Bridge, sorta.

It’s a very nice, bridge, okay? I can’t help but take pictures of it.

It was very windy this day, and a ill-timed gust of wind ruined this timed self-portrait, which otherwise would have been perfect.

The best part about this one is that you can totally block me out with one thumb and still get a stunning bridge picture.

I think this panorama came out surprisingly well.

I am more of a scientist than an engineer; I might be able to talk about the fundamental thermodynamics of how an engine works, but I wouldn’t be able to make even a rudimentary engine. The mere thought of putting that all together leaves me dumbfounded. That’s one reason I love Maker Faire — it’s full of people who can take an idea from the flimsiest (and sometimes stupid) thought all the way through to an actual object. Anyways, I took a bunch of pictures, so hopefully you will enjoy them.

Pictures here.
Slideshow below.
Pictures & descriptions after the jump.

This is pretty much the first thing that I saw when I entered Maker Faire. I think I saw this two years ago as well. I can’t believe that I cannot definitively remember whether or not I saw a sculpture like this before…its not like its something you see every day. Basically, this sets the tone for the day.

Just like two years ago, there was a full size version of Mousetrap, a large and complex kinetic sculpture. There were a few changes to the presentation. For instance, the mice weren’t wearing such tight shorts, I believe. Also, two years ago the safe came down and crushed a cardboard piece of cheese. This time, it crushed a car! However, some things stayed the same — it didn’t work the first time, and the sculpture-minders had to cheat a little to get it go through all the steps.

There’s a Cardboard Institute of Technology? I…I really wish I knew this before I decided to become a materials scientist.

The driver looked like she was having a lot of fun being behind the…uh…levers of this beast.

This is absolutely terrifying. It looks like its just barely in control of itself. And hungry. This kinetic sculpture (the Mondo Spider) was built by a bunch of Canadians, who were adorable in their geekery. Al and I were talking to them, asking them some questions about how long it took them to make (only 9 months!), and he was distracted in mid sentence by an attractive woman with some tattoos across the way. He apologized with a “Sorry. We don’t have hot nerd chicks like that where we come from.”

Andy Graham is awesome. View the next video to find out why.

This guy, Andy Graham, was making noises that I only thought synthesizers could make. He was like a one man, unplugged techno band.

Apparently, there is a Bay Area R2 Builders club. While this is hilarious, it isn’t suprising.

This woman was leading around this monster of sorts from a long leash. I don’t think they were going for “Bigfoot”, say, just an odd looking creature. It has horns and moss-like fur. I thought it was quite skillfully done, in the sense that it was hard to see the guy inside the costume. I think the chick was on a bit of a power trip, though, enjoying being the master of the monster.

Overall, a very fluid monster in motion.

It wouldn’t be a good idea to cut off this car on the highway; you may soon find yourself feeling like you’re being stuck with pins all over.

If only these pinwheels were little turbines….then you can power your car by just driving fast into the wind!

This was an example of an above-ground wetsuit. Now, this is eccentric in itself. But then they claimed that through the power of the wetsuit, he had gained the knowledge of the Universe and attained Oracle status, and they started asking people to give him questions. They would use hydrophones to make sure that he could hear the questions. Odd. I heard that OK Go! performed at Maker Faire, “Underwater”, and thought they were related, but watching that video, I guess not.

Watch out, Chevy Volt

This is the car referenced in the previous picture. It’s definitely got a sleek look. This area of the exhibits was all about car mods. Either converting cars from gas to biodiesel, or hybrids to plug-in hybrids.

I thought this was a pretty cool little experiment. Basically, this little wheel has a bunch of cups attached to its outer rim, and the cups have holes in the bottom to slowly let water leak out. The hose up top constantly spills water. You set up an “initial condition” by filling some of the cups with water, and then you let it go. The cups filled with water are heavier, so whichever side is heavier, the wheel rotates in that direction. It’s basically like a pendulum, so the wheel slows as the pendulum reaches its apex…at which point another cup gets filled by the hose, adding more Lose Weight Exercise to the system and adding more dynamics. Pretty inexpensive yet versatile. The creators of the exhibit were setting up various initial conditions and asking the kids what they thought would happen.

I spent some time figuring out how complex the pattern was here. Obviously there’s some pulley action up there, but given that some of the cylinders are moving independently, either there are a lot of motors up there, or some interesting way of moving multiple cylinders at one time. I imagine that any mechanical engineer out there thinks I’m a simpleton for being fascinated by this.

While this sounds like a creature that would normally be fighting Godzilla, the Gamelatron is an automated Indonesian orchestra. This seems odd all around, but it was really cool in practice. It’s basically a large set of Balinese and Javanese percussion instruments, played in a computer controlled sequence.

Here’s a still shot of the Gamelatron. It’s quite an impressive array of instruments, at least in number if not in variety.

The Gamelatron in Action

Here’s a MakerBot Cupcake CNC 3-D printer, a cool and relatively cheap printer for making small prototypes. Basically, you give this device a three dimensional object, via a CAD drawing, for instance, and it divides that 3D object up into 2D slices, and then prints those 2-D slices one on top of one another to make a structure. In this case, they are just using wax. You can see the coils of wax underneath. The tip is heated, so it melts the wax and pushes it out into a little bead, and prints it like you might print icing for a cake.

It would make me sleep a lot better at night. Although really, I question its efficacy. There’s a big baseball bat for bludgeoning, an axe blade for chopping, and stunning probes (a taser, I guess) that you can shoot as well. I think that tasering would fairly ineffective for zombies, especially if they are actually undead creatures.

This is something I might argue about over a few beers with other belligerent geeks. This dude actually did something about the questions. However…uh…I don’t remember what his results were.

In the battle between Zorro and a Tesla Coil, I guess it was a draw, thanks to Zorro’s grounding foil. I had to admit, when the guy walked up with the fluorescent tube and showed how the energy from the tesla coil was sufficient to ionize the gas inside the tube from afar….I wondered if all my pictures would be erased.

Thanks to the Faraday cage suit and the grounding strap, the high voltage arcs from the Tesla Coil travel safely around the person in the suit and to the earth. The guys here are from UCSC, and they do a traveling Tesla Coil show.

For this demonstration, they removed the grounding strap, so that the electricity didn’t have that easy path to follow. Instead, they had the subject stand on a wooden plank suspended over a metal grounding strip, with just his/hers heels sticking over the back. As that was the path of least resistance, that’s where the electricity went. Again, this is the UCSC-SCIPP group. We were hoping to catch the “Arc Attack” people, who used the Tesla Coils to play music, but we just missed them.