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The telephone keeps ringing, so I ripped it off the wall.
I cut myself while shaving, now I can't make a call.
We couldn't get much worse, but if they could they would.
Von Diddley Bonk for the best, expect the worst.
I hope that's understood.
Von Diddley Bonk!
I hope that's understood.
And a very good evening to you.
This program is, there we are, this program is Off the Hook.
Rob T. Firefly here with you, and I'm joined in the studio by nobody, no one, not a soul,
apart from me.
But, I am joined on the telephone by Emmanuel and Kyle.
Are you there guys?
Yeah, we barely hear you.
Hopefully you can hear us.
I can hear you, yes.
How's that?
Is that any better?
Yes, it is better.
Okay, excellent.
Yeah, I can hear you.
Very cool.
Wow.
So, nobody's there, huh Rob?
Nobody, unless you count me, and someone else if you count me twice, but no, just me here.
The rest of you guys...
I feel like I have to apologize, because I, just as a social experiment, I spread some
really nasty rumors about you earlier.
Oh, well that explains a lot.
Apparently they landed, because nobody wants to be within a mile of you.
Typical, that's what I call, usually that's what happens to me on Thursdays, but Wednesday
is a novelty.
But, no, this is a very...
Folks, whatever I told you, it was just a joke, so please, gather round again.
Okay, okay, well I'll need that in writing, and a copy filed with my lawyer, but before
we do that, there is a lot to talk about, because this is a very special week.
I mean, today is Talk Like a Pirate Day, so, you know, yo-ho-ho, et cetera.
Oh my God, I hate that day so much.
I'm sorry, I just do.
Well, you're not here to stop me, so, I mean, this is what happens.
But, it's also, we've got something coming up this weekend.
What have we got coming up, Emmanuel?
Oh yes, that's right, this weekend.
This weekend, well, okay, maybe I should tell the story.
We intend to be at World Maker Faire in Queens this weekend, because it's that time of year
again, and it's always a blast.
We're going to have a special guest on in just a few minutes to talk all about it, and
we'll have an opportunity later in the show for you guys listening to win a couple of
tickets, but we were preparing the 2600 van, the old phone company van, along with the
old 1950s payphone booth, to be present again at World Maker Faire, and the van sort of
engaged in some civil disobedience yesterday, and refused to move.
So right now, the van is being worked upon to make it possible for us to be there this
weekend.
I don't want to say it's touch and go, it's not minimal, it's something that we really
have to make sure is taken care of, and that we get this thing fixed.
So that's why we're not here tonight, because we have to deal with that, and we're going
to have to deal with that all day tomorrow, and possibly a good part of Friday as well.
So we're going to do everything we possibly can to get the van there by the weekend, because
Maker Faire is awesome, and we will be moving, what's the phrase, Kyle?
Hell and high earth, or?
Flood water.
Undeterred.
Yeah, we're going to do everything we possibly can to get there.
So folks, if you're thinking of going to Maker Faire, you should do everything you can to
get there as well, because it's the event that you remember for the whole year, until
next year when you do it again.
Get there safely, too.
Yes, we're going to try to do that.
Absolutely.
And as you said, we'll be talking more about that in a little bit.
We could talk about a couple of other things that have been in the news this week.
How has the news been where you are?
We've been following a bunch of things, because we always pay attention.
Even though everything is falling apart around us, we still pay attention to what's going
on in the world, and I think that's important to do that.
One of the things that kind of struck me, that I thought was highly amusing, this was
supposed to happen tomorrow.
They were going to run a test of that feature on all of our cell phones called the Presidential
Alert.
This is the one you can't turn off.
Right.
So what they were going to do tomorrow afternoon was basically send a test message that would
go to every single cell phone in the United States, and this has never been done before.
That feature exists, and while you can get emergency alerts and amber alerts and things
like that, you're always able to turn those off.
This is something you cannot turn off.
So what the Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA, was going to do was test the system
on Thursday tomorrow, but because of Florence, of Hurricane Florence and the aftermath, they
decided that that probably wouldn't be a good idea, so they're pushing it back to,
I believe, October 3rd, two weeks from today.
So that's going to be something really interesting, something I think it's an awful thing, and
maybe now we don't see the danger, but if one day, say, we had a president that liked
to hear himself talk and was irresponsible and maybe even a little incompetent, a general
blowhard, somebody who never knows when to shut up and always says the wrong thing at
the wrong time, if we ever got somebody like that in the White House, it's possible they
could abuse a system like this, and so I fear for the future, and I think I'm fearing for
October 3rd.
It's going to be interesting, though, when that happens, assuming they don't chicken
out.
Yeah, I'm really curious about phones that aren't even subscribed, in other words, ones
that can make emergency calls.
I noticed on a phone I have that doesn't have a SIM or any provider, I got a weather warning
when there was some of the storm and flood stuff going on on that phone.
I'm really curious that all phones everywhere will be getting these messages, whether they
are subscribed or not, and that's kind of interesting, considering the preferred method
for our president, you sort of have to follow him on that particular platform, and this
is something that you could not escape, and it will be really interesting to see what
kinds of messages, and as you said, how will that be used, and God forbid, how do we feel
about it?
It's something really interesting.
Could you imagine the current president having an open line to everyone with a phone in the
country and using it responsibly?
Honestly, Rob, it would be the worst thing to happen to the cell phone industry.
I think subscriptions would fall dramatically, but honestly, as a fan of landlines, and we
are, this, by the way, is a conversation landline to landline, you might notice it sounds better
than most interviews you hear on CNN, I think landlines would prosper as a result of this
because they certainly wouldn't be getting these alerts.
It's amazing, but yeah, they're pushing the test back, and we'll see what happens.
I know there's been some chatter online about how one might avoid this, and I think most
of the methods out there that people are kicking around generally seem to be just turn your
phone off for about a half an hour at the appropriate time, because if your phone is
off or if you're in a call, then you're going to get it the next time your phone is on and
So apparently, the theory is that if you leave it off for the full half hour, it will stop
trying to give you the alert.
So are you saying that if you turn your phone off and keep it off and turn it back on, the
alert will not show up or will show up when you turn the phone on?
Apparently, it will show up when you turn the phone on, unless you keep your phone off
for a full half hour, I think.
I think that has been put forth.
I don't know by whom or by what authority they say this, but the theory seems to be
that it will keep trying to give you the alert for about a half hour.
Right, so that the transmission is sort of cached, but only in sort of a limited way.
Well, Kyle, when you got the flood warning today, it was a flood warning from last week.
Was it because you just turned that phone on, or was it sitting around for a week waiting
for you to notice?
No, it was the first time I had checked it.
So yeah, it was really, it reminded me.
I was like, oh, wow, okay.
So even phones, yes, it was on, but it's not connected to any sort of wireless at all,
whether registered or connected, like over Wi-Fi.
So it had basically received messages through its baseband receiver from, I guess,
the same E911 or transmission scheme that you would use to make an emergency call
in an unregistered sort of SIM-less phone.
So if you're curious, people, if you're not trying to avoid it, charge up your old phones
and see what happens.
We'd love to hear what kind of gatherings or results come about.
Two of the more popular plans that I'm seeing people discussing right now is simply
canceling their cellular plan about an hour or so before the alert is scheduled to go out,
and then applying for a new account with a new phone number and everything
about a half hour afterwards.
So that's another way to avoid it.
The other popular way is actually aborting a flight and leaving the country
and staying there for at least a couple of hours and then coming back
after the alert has been finished.
These are ways you might be able to, it's not proven yet because it hasn't happened,
but these are possible ways of avoiding hearing the presidential alert
when it comes forth in two weeks.
And if nothing else, travel does broaden the mind.
So you've got that going for you.
Yeah.
You could also put it in the microwave for like maybe 15 minutes while it's being sent,
probably like on high, I think would be good.
It's going to be interesting.
It'll be an historic event, that's for sure.
But, you know, there have been many historic events, and I'll tell you,
you know, when you have 60, 70 homes blowing up in the Boston area,
that's kind of a historic event as well, and all sorts of things have been coming out of that.
I saw an article concerning things that were happening during this unfortunate event.
Basically Massachusetts State Police posted to Twitter a map of responses to fires
and explosions to sort of demonstrate how many, how large an area this was,
which was covering how many homes were affected.
And basically what it was, it was an image of a computer monitor that showed the location
of 39 incidents as confirmed by what they call MSP Watch Center,
and it included a message saying,
to all residents of Lawrence slash Andover slash North Andover who have Columbia gas must evacuate,
as should anyone else who smells gas.
But that wasn't all the image showed.
It showed something else.
It showed a bookmarked bar at the top of the browser window,
which listed several left-wing groups.
Yeah, they included a Facebook group for mass action against police brutality,
the Coalition to Organize and Mobilize Boston Against Trump,
Facebook MA Activism, the Resistance Calendar,
which basically notes timings for canvassing for Democratic or progressive candidates
and anti-Trump rallies.
The state police's official Twitter account shared that image at 6.26 p.m.
Less than half an hour later it deleted it and shared a new one which had been cropped.
But the first tweet had already drawn the attention of activists and reporters
who shared screenshots and began a social media debate about online police surveillance.
I just love it when the police inadvertently show their hand as to what it is they're actually doing.
We're just assuming the worst.
I mean, this could just be someone working at the police department
who also happens to be a very active left-wing activist and is Facebooking from work,
which you probably aren't supposed to do.
But maybe there's an innocent explanation for all this,
like there was for Alex Jones' other tab in his phone a few weeks ago.
You mean to tell me they only had one tab for this massivist explosion
and, like, six other tabs for political monitoring?
I mean, it seems like they're awful preoccupied,
and the people are getting blown out of their homes.
I mean, they're kind of in the lurch, right?
I mean, is that really what you're saying?
One must have priorities.
Well, I, for one, am pleased that apparently there are no neo-Nazi
or ultra-right-wing or supremacist groups in that area that the police are also monitoring.
It must mean that that is not at all a problem.
It all seems to make perfect sense to me.
Listen, if you guys—I think we should start talking about Maker Faire a bit,
and I'm going to go get our guests on the line, so I'll turn it over to you guys for a bit.
We will definitely start talking about Maker Faire amongst ourselves here.
Kyle, we've been going to Maker Faire almost since the very beginning.
Actually, I think I went to the first one, and you went to the one after that.
That's right.
And it is—for those who have never been a part of this,
it takes place in the—by the New York Hall of Science, that whole outdoor area.
If you've ever seen the two towers for the World's Fair,
you know it's in that general vicinity up on the other side of the Grand Central Parkway.
But basically the whole area is taken over by tens of thousands of people, kids, adults,
all interested in science, in building things.
How would you describe the overall theme?
Oh, man.
Well, I guess the thing you have to say from the beginning is it's a show-and-tell, right?
It's a massive display of kind of a cross between that of a science fair and show-and-tell.
And this year I think there's even more things in the artistic realm than I've seen before.
But, yeah, it just is this interdisciplinary confluence of just fantastically passionate people
that are into something, that use tools and use the resources available to them to create something
that maybe helps them, helps other people, does something fun, is beautiful in some way,
and maybe incorporates technology or some greater problem.
And maybe it's a demonstration of something that could help society or maybe not.
Maybe it's an aggravating robot just to remind people of what else is possible.
But tons of robotics, tons of electronics and art and art displays, thoughtful stuff, and enthusiasm.
Around every corner you have, like you said, multi-generations of people who are just starting out
or people who are getting back into things and everything in between.
And we've been doing it for some time.
I remember you kind of sharing and getting me a little bit inspired, to say the least,
and just realizing how much in what we do is influence.
It's important, and how many projects make up the hacking that we do.
Any hack may have a myriad of things to build and to create, tools and things to help you along the way.
And it's a great reminder for me of just how often that spirit is involved in something I'm doing,
and it really reinvigorates it every year, every time we go.
Absolutely. It's just a reminder of how many cool people are out there doing really cool things.
It's so inspirational.
Now, I believe, Rob, you have our special guest?
I do not yet. We're having a little bit of difficulty connecting.
We can go on. We can go on for quite some time.
Please do.
Because what you see is you basically see all kinds of gatherings of people who are involved in various projects,
learning how to solder, whether it's building some kind of a robot or drone.
The lock-picking people alone are there.
People from TOOL have come to many of these things.
Kids are learning how to pick locks, and that might sound like a dangerous thing,
but actually it's a really incredible thing because you're learning how it all works,
and you're learning how to design things and how to make things better.
I think that's the theme not only of the hacker world but of the maker world
and what you see displayed in a very healthy manner at the maker fairs that we've been to.
We'll make a fair is what happens in Queens, but there are maker fairs all over the world.
This just happens to be one of the biggest.
Yeah, I think they draw upon a lot of the smaller events
and encourage people to visit the larger ones that have an even bigger space
and variety of things on display.
I'm just noticing that the TOOLs themselves are evolving into things that people are building,
like 3D printing is something we've been talking about a little bit.
I know Rob has been involved with a lot, but I'm seeing just in some of the events this year
just making your own small 3D printer.
Instead of just using a 3D printer you have access to now, it's like,
okay, yeah, you can just make one yourself and then go on and do more things with that.
But that's something we've been watching just flourish and become incredibly common
in like you would use any tool.
It's something that people just integrate, whether it's an artistic way or just functional ways.
These kinds of things that are kind of new to us are something that people are working with
from the start.
As I said, whether it's for artistic uses or to build functional items or both,
it's really exploded as far as just the interest and a variety of things
that people can kind of get into.
I think everybody getting together also helps.
Maybe you've been working on something really hard that's really specific
and you get to see somebody else doing something that maybe you're into too,
but you've been so busy learning and teaching yourself about something
that getting to see how far they got with it can be like a vicarious thing.
I'm going to give a couple of examples.
Rob, I know you're trying to reach our guests.
I think we're getting voicemails.
Is that what's happening?
That is what's happening.
I think maybe we'll try again in a few minutes.
I've sent them an email asking them to fix that,
but there are so many things that we can focus on.
One of the things that our plan featured makers for this weekend,
this is what they call the magic wheelchair.
Now, what a magic wheelchair is it pairs a kid with a build team
and basically turns that kid's wheelchair into an incredible, epic costume.
You get to see this kid riding what looks like a dragon,
and he's got the happiest look on his face.
According to them, the child experiences what it's like to be seen
as simply a child in a cool costume.
You may not realize how amazingly important something like that is to a kid,
but when you see the joy in their eyes with something like this,
you understand the importance of projects like that.
You see that multiplied by so many when you attend an event like this.
Magic wheelchair, it started with one father building a chair for his kid,
and now there's a whole network of people doing this for kids all over the world.
These things, they spread.
A good idea is planted,
and it may not be something that makes you a million bucks,
but it doesn't make the idea any less valuable.
You see so many things like that.
Oh, man, Carl, the bicycles alone,
the kinds of bicycles that you see at Maker Faire.
Yeah, there's a variety of contraptions and transportation.
There's always different trends and different things going on,
people zooming around.
As you said, kind of wacky bicycles and tricycles and motorized things,
like hoverboard-type things, and on and on and on.
So you've got to watch yourself while you're walking around.
There's a lot of people.
But I like to see that,
because someone who might consider a wheelchair as an encumbrance,
something they have to live with, but they see themselves differently,
and it's that imaginative thing of modifying, hacking something,
making it your own, customizing it.
Maybe it's just a bicycle, but you want computers
and you want sensors and crazy lasers or whatever it is.
You can do that, and this is where you can get encouraged to do that.
The power wheel racing is going to be back.
The kids' electric cars are modified,
and they race those around on a racetrack.
I think it's basically a goal to keep it under a certain budget,
always a hit and always really lively.
Another interesting one I saw, E, was the Foldscope.
It's a paper microscope that is ultra-affordable,
but it's designed to be able to fold down and take with you,
but give you the same magnification of a proper professional lab microscope.
And I really like these kinds of things
because it's kind of democratizing tools
so that these instruments aren't left
in kind of the lofty scientific academic towers, so to speak,
but rather the people in the field that are doing research,
that are looking at different things in the field,
are able to just put something together right there
and examine and get back to work, in other words,
and be empowered by having that portability and affordability
that could actually go to really, really important research.
That's ingenuity to me, and the affordability across the board,
just looking at things differently and making them more accessible,
I think, is a strong, strong theme
and a problem that I think everyone is really interested in.
That's something that I've thought is so important
in the spirit of events like Maker Faire,
and it blows me away every time we go,
is just that whole thing about inspiring
not only the hacker maker community as it stands,
but the young people who are basically the budding hackers
just starting to explore and see what they can do
with the stuff to hand or what they can learn
and just doing all sorts of awesome things.
There's going to be featured young makers at Maker Faire.
There's a whole section.
There's someone called Ray who builds Ray's robots,
and this is a young person who is bringing a bunch of robots that she made
and another maker with something called Vestelli Labs
who is presenting different projects and concepts
and just looking at the pictures of this stuff,
which we can't show you on the radio, unfortunately,
but there's so much cool stuff going on
and so many really interesting and diverse people
throwing in and showing off what they can do in this.
I know Becky Button, who I met there last year,
who had a project.
She's a young hacker who had a project for Wi-Fi hacking sandals
that you could just walk around in,
and it would deauth things that you walked near.
Wait, wait, wait. What? Hold on.
Wi-Fi sandals?
Yeah, Wi-Fi sandals, Wi-Fi hacking sandals
that were 3D-printed sandals, basically,
that had, I don't remember exactly what board she used,
but basically the hardware in it to basically run Wi-Fi hacks
while you're walking around.
And it's very stealthy, very cool,
very nonstandard use of the tech,
and really, really just really imaginative.
And there's all sorts of meetups going on
of different groups in the hacker-maker community.
There's classes, crafts, things on display,
things you can get,
and just some of the stuff that we have there,
which I always enjoy.
We've been known to bring old telephones and stuff, haven't we?
We have been known to do that.
In fact, as I mentioned before,
we bring our 1950s phone booth.
I've got to tell you,
we spent a good part of last night,
Kyle and myself,
just hoisting this payphone booth from the 1950s
into our 2600 former phone company van from the 1980s.
And it is so heavy.
That phone booth is so incredibly heavy,
we've been crushed a couple of times doing that.
And then we got the thing into the van finally
after a good half hour of pushing and diving for cover
and figuring out our plan,
only to find that the van wouldn't start.
So we had to get that situation dealt with.
And it's still being dealt with, as I mentioned,
and I'm hoping, fingers crossed,
that we can get the thing going by the time of Maker Faire.
Even if we can't, Maker Faire is certainly an event worth going to.
Whenever we go there,
we meet so many people who have been at the Hope Conference,
and we also meet so many people who listen to WBAI.
And I think that is just an incredible mix of people
who basically learn all sorts of things from each other
and contribute all sorts of ideas.
It gives us enough to talk about for the remainder of the year.
3D printing alone.
I remember one of the earlier Maker Faires,
which we're talking less than 10 years,
seeing a massive amount of 3D printers
back when that was something that was fairly unheard of.
And now it's something that everybody is talking about.
And you just see continued advances and imagination.
You're talking about printing limbs now
for people who have lost limbs.
You're talking about in the future printing organs
and basically extending life in many ways through this technology.
You see kids just basically dreaming about what it is
they might be able to do someday.
And that is the magic of events like this,
whether it's a hacker event or an event outside like this one.
It's something that just makes people...
For the older folks among us,
you might remember something that took place
pretty close to where Maker Faire takes place,
the World's Fair from the early 1960s.
Everybody who went to that as a kid still remembers it.
They still remember the picture phones.
They still remember the various promises
that were being planted in our minds
as to what we might be doing in the future.
Some of it we are doing, some of it we never did.
But those events, they really are significant to young minds.
And I think if you have a kid,
it's really incumbent upon you to bring them to an event like this
so that their imagination can really begin to flourish.
Absolutely, and 3D printing is a great example
because as you said just a few Maker Faires ago,
this was on display as this crazy new thing that people can do.
These tools exist and you have access to them.
And now it's kind of more of an accepted thing,
but the wonder is now in what are people doing with them?
And not only that the tools are getting easier and easier to get hold of,
but people are doing so many more things with them
because they've had some time to play with them.
And the stuff that you go to this Maker Faire
and see is brand new and weird and out there,
where is that going to be in another five years?
That's going to be the sort of accepted workaday thing
that now is a tool that everyone can use.
So it's really wonderful to go to these not just once,
but over the years and see where things go
and where they've been and where they're headed.
Yeah, that is incredibly exciting for me as well.
I was saying just to see people building their own kinds of equipment
and hacking the tools that themselves were projects of other hackers and makers,
it just blows me away.
And I'm not going to lie, I'm very seriously interested.
I've been asking and talking to Rob about it
and very interested in rapid prototyping
and being able to do the same kinds of design.
This is it.
You see students doing incredible stuff.
You yourself, you can't help but start thinking,
what would it take to maybe incorporate that in this idea that I had?
And all of a sudden your idea is an object right there,
and then you can maybe test it out.
That is an incredible, incredible technology.
And I'm a little inspired and I can't help
but wish that I had the same kinds of tools.
It was still emerging when I was a student,
and now I'm basically able to observe
and see what is basically encouraged in the classroom today.
And as an adult, I just really love embracing it and learning it myself.
You can't let students have all the fun.
Some of the stuff, it's really just inspiring
and, as you said, can make an impact and further your project.
I just want to say, the phone booth too,
that emerged kind of from our participation.
Well, one thing you notice at Maker Faires,
and Rob mentioned this with the sandals,
packaging for your project can be anything.
It doesn't necessarily have to just be a box with the thing in it.
And you can make turnees.
Well, why not?
If I'm going to hack stuff, I want to walk around.
First of all, I'll build some sandals for my wireless hacking software
and hardware to fit in.
And so we started playing around with the idea of,
what if we could make a switch in a small container
and connect up all these phones?
And what if we got a phone booth?
And then it sort of evolved into this big thing.
So now I guess we call it like a tapped tele-megaphone,
and basically we've got two phones or three phones connected
and people can try it out.
And then we can amplify it so people can hear the conversation in between
as though they're being sort of eavesdropped on.
But we just blare it out along with all the other music.
It is so cool to see kids coming up and just playing with rotary phones.
Some don't even know how to make a rotary phone call,
so they're pressing the numbers and looking at it like it's from outer space.
But others get it right away.
Others really are appreciative of this whole technology,
just like sometimes young people like old cameras with film.
Well, similarly, they like old telephone equipment, as we do as well,
because it tends to last forever.
On that subject, just passing a message to Rob.
Ironically enough, the reason we can't get through to our guests
is because their cell phone died.
So we have an alternate number that we have emailed you.
So if you could connect to that, then we can actually talk to somebody.
Okay, I've got it.
So I will make use of that and turn it over to you guys for a minute.
Okay, well, I mean, I just want to continue on that note.
This is not necessarily all about high technology.
If you find yourself with somebody who isn't that much into computers,
robots, whatever, you think maybe you don't have as many skills
as the six- or seven-year-olds these days.
You're probably right, because we don't.
What these kids are doing today just simply is mind-boggling.
But it's not all about that.
It's about just letting your mind go free.
And here's an example, something called the beer duck.
Yeah, the beer duck.
It's a waterfowl delivering your beer when you're out for a swim,
boat, float, or any other water activity.
It's a remote-controlled duck.
Well, it's not a real duck, obviously.
It's a beer duck.
You stick a beer in it.
It has a 3-D printed outboard motor,
and your favorite beer tucks snugly on its back,
and it will go wherever you send it.
So these kinds of toys can do all kinds of things.
And, you know, whether or not you design something
or are just into looking at things, look at the tiny homes.
Have you seen this, Kyle?
I know you're into tiny homes.
Oh, yeah, well, that's a controversial thing now.
Apparently it's not all it's cracked up to be.
People want bigger tiny homes.
What do they got now?
I want smaller tiny homes.
Here's one.
It's a 54-square-foot self-sustaining micro-home.
It measures 6 feet wide by 10 feet long, 9 feet high.
It's self-sustaining, solar-powered, water-tanked, composting, toileted.
It lived in full time since October 2017, and you can see that at Maker Faire.
So this kind of thing is just so wildly inspiring
and also so completely full of a variety of different things
that it will just leave your head spinning.
Awesome.
You guys, I've just tied some soup cans and string together
and got this working, so we should have our guest with us on the line.
Awesome.
Is this Sabrina?
Yeah, hey there.
Hey, it's Sabrina.
Great.
Sorry about your phone.
I know.
You know, we're in show mode here,
and I think the phone's been working overtime and hit bottom there,
but we're here.
We're here together.
We're speaking with the managing director, Sabrina Murrow.
Correct.
Wow.
I can only imagine the anticipation you guys are feeling.
We've been talking about this nonstop now for about 20 minutes.
Great.
You guys know all the things that are going to be happening in the next few days.
Can you tell us something about the preparation?
Yeah, well, it sounds like you guys have been doing your homework there,
talking about the tiny homes.
That's new this year.
And I think that it is super interesting,
this like exploration of, you know, resourcefulness
and how folks can sort of design for efficiencies, right, and sustainability.
And that is definitely a scene where individuals
or groups are kind of owning those experiments in living.
So we've got some community-driven examples of people doing different,
you know, versions of alternative architecture.
That's kind of cool.
And we have actually this year we brought in also a homegrown village
for the first time.
We've done that in the Bay Area quite a few times,
but we've got more kind of food-centric stuff
and a hands-on homegrown workshop stage for people to do things
like make bidders or, you know, other kinds of food-oriented,
hands-on-making activities.
So, yeah, we're all super excited.
It's a slow-build manifestation.
We got there.
We got into Queens.
I guess we started building out on Thursday.
The first tents dropped.
So it's all seeming very, very near, and we're super excited.
And I should point out that this is a rain or shine event.
In the event that it rains, there's plenty of activity indoors as well.
But since we've had a tropical storm roll through here,
we had about two weeks straight of rain before that,
I think we're safe for this weekend.
I think this will be a sunny and rather pleasant weekend.
Yeah, we saw a tweet.
It's easy to get to on the number 7 train.
Yes, it is.
It's super easy.
We saw a tweet go around actually someone analyzing the weather saying,
this might be the best weather year for Maker Faire in recent memory.
So we're hoping that's true,
but there is tons to do both indoor and outdoor.
Can you tell us how people can get there if they're driving?
Yeah, we have – it's actually very easy to find all of our
Getting the Maker Faire instructions online at makerfaire.com slash alt, A-L-T.
That is the homepage for all of our transpo from bikes to train
and public transportation and parking.
We have parking at Citi Field and shuttles that get you from Citi Field closer to the show.
I'm sorry, last year there was a concert taking place at the same time,
which caused some competition for parking.
We don't have that issue this year.
That really is.
And the website is makerfaire.com, spelled M-A-K-E-R-F-A-I-R-E.
People don't know about the E at the end, dot com.
That is correct.
And you can find all kinds of information there.
Do you folks still need volunteers?
We can always put folks to some meaningful work in exchange for tickets.
I believe there's also plenty of information about our traveler program online at makerfaire.com.
If you have interest in putting some work in exchange for a ticket,
there are opportunities there for that.
Okay.
And we will have an opportunity in just a few minutes for some of our listeners
to get a couple of free tickets as well.
But I just wanted to talk about some of the other things that are going on this year.
Now, I know you guys are really big into robots, and there's robot battles, I think, going on.
Yeah, we have a whole tremendous amount of robotics.
Mass destruction coming in from Massachusetts has a whole series of competitions going on.
There's a lot of FIRST Robotics participants.
And then there's, of course, sort of iterations and creativity around people's different robots for different purposes.
So there's varying levels of robots.
And then we have maybe you wouldn't call it a robot, but, you know, if you want to think about it,
our machine, at least, the hand of man, that will be doing some interesting demonstrations of hydraulic strength.
It's 26-foot arm reach.
It's controlled by a glove riddled with sensors.
And the operator wears the glove, and the giant hand basically mimics the behaviors of the hand in the glove.
So a child can, by proxy, pick up and crush cars, for example.
Oh, wow.
That's my artist, artist Christian Risto, the fabulous piece.
Talking of art, I know you've got something else new that I'm pretty excited about.
It's the first time you're doing this.
You're having a cosplay prop contest at Maker Faire.
And that's something I'm a fan of.
But for those unfamiliar, how does that work?
Well, we were talking with some friends.
Actually, the whole thing started out of a conversation with Adam Savage, who was, you know who that guy is?
He spoke at our convention.
Yeah.
So we were having a conversation about it.
And we were talking with some folks in the cosplay community.
That was, in a way, we thought, a great angle for trying to generate a little bit more folks coming out who are doing the making in the cosplay world.
And so we had a competition.
Entries are still open, but the formal deadline was actually Tuesday night.
And we'll be doing sort of the live showcase of those props and the competition on Sunday at 1 p.m. on our auditorium, our main stage.
Excellent.
Also, apart from scheduled events, there are also just people walking around in the most interesting outfits and costumes and creative expressions.
I think last time we saw a gorilla and a Ghostbuster and whatever else.
But there's just so much creativity going on in every possible medium, I think, on display, both at the fair itself and just among the attendees.
And that's something that I love.
I agree with you.
I think that's why we're all so drawn to it.
I think it's the range of creativity that's showcased at Maker Faire that's kind of inspiring.
And the appreciation across disciplines, right?
You have this audience that's inspired by the deeply technical.
Maybe it's innovations in robotics or in digital fabrication, but also just in the plain goofy or even craft, like learning how to do lace making or learning how to make kombucha or whatever that is.
It's really this celebration of that engagement and that sort of open source culture.
People just really interested in kind of learning and sharing what they know.
Sabrina, can I ask how you got involved in the whole Maker Faire movement?
Sure.
Well, I've been on the team at Maker Faire since 2010.
And I came to Maker Faire, actually, I was an attendee with my two little kids the very first year.
I've been a part of the art and technology community in San Francisco Bay Area for, I don't know, most of my life.
And so when Maker Faire, the first Maker Faire happened, it was my community, really, that participated, people that I had done projects with.
I worked with a robotics group called Survival Research Laboratories in San Francisco.
I had worked at the Exploratorium there, a museum in San Francisco, a science and museum of perception and perception.
So it was, in some ways, an organic evolution, my involvement in Maker Faire as an attendee, then as a maker.
And then I started one of the very first mini Maker Faires in my town of Oakland, California.
So I really spent, since 2010 until earlier this year, I drove primarily the growth of the global Maker Faire network.
And all of the mini Maker Faires and also the featured fairs around the world.
So now we're at over 200 Maker Faires in 44 countries last year, which is really just kind of an astonishing bottom-up explosion of maker culture around the world.
That's amazing. And when you say it's from Oakland, I can see where a lot of the inspiration comes from.
That's one of my favorite cities right now, having visited it recently.
Mine too.
We love how the train goes straight down the street by Jack London Square.
You guys, we are running low on time, and we have something we have to do, because we're talking about Maker Faire.
Thank you for reminding me.
We are giving away a couple of pairs of tickets to the Maker Faire, World Maker Faire, taking place this weekend at the Hall of Science in Queens.
And what you must do is email us at oth at 2600.com, and say you want two tickets.
You can have either a pair of tickets for Saturday, a pair of tickets for Sunday, or you can have one ticket for Saturday and one ticket for Sunday, as long as the number is two at the end.
We have two pairs like this, so the first two people who write in and request this, and don't confuse us too badly, we'll get those, and we will send you the tickets by email.
Yes, you have to have email in order to do this, oth at 2600.com.
And also, if you have won in the past, you are not eligible for this.
This is for people who have not won in the past, so good luck to everybody, oth at 2600.com.
And those of you who aren't able to get free tickets, it is well worth going.
We can't mention prices on the air, but we can say that this is a worthy cause.
Sabrina, how many people do you estimate will be showing up at this?
Oh, I think we are somehow somewhere in the range of probably 70,000 to 80,000 over the three days.
We have a Friday education forum.
For those of you out there that are educators, I believe there are still some tickets left for our Make Education Forum,
which is a really interesting opportunity to kind of get the lowdown from the experts and thinkers and doers in the maker education world,
so that we start, you know, everything starts Friday morning, really, for us.
I imagine it starts a lot earlier than that for putting this together.
Well, we have an incredible team.
I will say we are a team of makers behind Maker Faire, and I think some of the energy around Maker Faire emanates right from the center
in terms of the people that put on the show.
It's really an incredible group of people with a myriad range of talents and real commitment to the show.
Well, our forklift drivers come back to the show every year.
It's a very special group of people.
I want to issue congratulations.
The tickets are gone.
Congratulations to Jerry and to Finn for winning the two pairs of tickets that we had.
Anybody else who is still typing a message, you might as well stop because we've given away the tickets.
But thank you very much for participating, for listening, and please come anyway,
because it's going to be an awesome event well worth it.
I mean, we've been talking nonstop about it for the last 40 minutes or so, and we could continue going.
It's just fun.
It is so much fun.
And I'll tell you, Sabrina, I'd love to go to one of these other events in another part of the country.
I've never been to the Bay Area Maker Faire, which is, I believe, even bigger than the World Maker Faire here in New York.
It is.
And next weekend, Maker Faire Milwaukee is a 60,000-person event.
Maker Faire Orlando is coming up.
That's an incredible event as well.
Check out MakerFaire.com slash map for a picture of all the maps
and the calendars of Maker Faires coming up near you.
Wow.
Well, Sabrina, is there anything else that you'd like to tell us, maybe previews of other things,
any particular displays or speakers or events that you want to make sure people don't miss?
Well, other highlights, we have Adam Savage for the first time at Maker Faire New York.
He's coming with the new cast of Mythbusters Jr., which is really great to see.
They're taking a pretty straight approach to Mythbusters Challenge.
They're not dumbing it down for the kids, so that's going to be an interesting one.
We have so many great presenters on stage, like Alan Lee.
We have Aya Badir, founder of Little Bits.
I mean, it's just an incredibly deep and rich catalog and opportunity to connect and rub elbows
with really an incredibly inspiring and inspired, creative bunch of people.
Really, really encourage folks who are slightly tempted to make the trip.
There's so much going on.
Check out the schedule for all kinds of activities.
We have a whole range.
We rolled out a whole bunch of deeper dive workshops this show,
so people can actually do hour or two-hour long kind of deeper dive things as an experiment,
trying to get some more Maker Shops.
This is something that spans the globe.
I'm just looking now at some of the featured makers that you have.
I see one that really captured my interest, Autonomous Robot to Carry Bricks.
This comes from India.
There are, I believe, five young makers behind this.
A group of students from India, they created an autonomous robot that can take bricks
from one place to another place with manual loading and unloading.
It works based on the count of the number of bricks
and uses a line-following mechanism to navigate around the place.
It's going to be just interesting to watch as it operates.
There's actually quite a range of international makers.
This really is world Maker Faire.
I think we have people from 20 countries, around 20 countries.
I could be wrong, but I think it's close to that, who are showing.
There's another good one that's kind of in that range of making for good.
That's called the Chi-Fi Kettle, which is a kettle that generates Wi-Fi,
like a tea kettle for low-bandwidth areas.
That's a good combination.
Yeah, I know, and I love the name, the Chi-Fi, right?
There's a cotton candy robot, too, I hear.
Oh, those guys are amazing.
I met them at Maker Faire Cairo,
and it's a group of ferociously talented young kids into robotics.
This was their idea of a fun project, not a serious, competition project,
but it just won my heart.
It's darling, and they came all the way from Egypt to show at Maker Faire New York.
Well, we have to see that.
We have to push the 2600 van there.
We're going to do it.
We're going to make it there somehow, and really looking forward to this.
I hope we meet a lot of listeners there as well,
in addition to all kinds of other people from around the globe.
The Maker Faire, World Maker Faire, takes place at the Hall of Science in Queens,
reachable by the 7 train.
There's all kinds of transportation information at MakerFaire.com.
That's M-A-K-E-R-F-A-I-R-E.com.
It takes place this Saturday and Sunday, September 22nd and 23rd.
What are the operating hours?
It's 10 to 6 both days.
Great, and definitely make an appearance, whether it's for one day or both days,
and be inspired because it really is the future here.
We haven't even touched upon space travel,
but I know whenever you get kids and science together,
the topic of space comes up, and there will be plenty of talk about that, I'm sure.
That's what it should.
Yeah, that's great.
Thank you guys so much for your ongoing support of Maker Faire.
We really appreciate your commitment to and interest in the event.
It really means a lot.
Well, we look forward to seeing you there,
and we look forward to seeing the tens of thousands of other people.
Very cool.
All right.
Thank you for joining us, Sabrina.
Thank you, guys.
Bye-bye.
See you at Maker Faire.
Bye.
We are just about out of time here.
But, yes, come to Maker Faire.
Come see us at Maker Faire.
Look for the 2600 van because I truly love when we get to speak with our listeners about stuff
because usually this is a one-directional conversation being a broadcaster.
And if you see the 2600 van pulled over to the side of one of the roads leading to Queens,
won't you pull over and give us a hand as we're probably in trouble of some sort?
We just have to get the van there.
It doesn't actually have to run.
It just has to get there.
That's what we're shooting for right now.
And the future, who knows?
Absolutely.
Well, send us email at oth at 2600.com.
Follow us on Twitter, Hacker Radio Show.
You can also follow us on Mastodon, hackerradioshowatmastodon.social.
And, yes, we hope to see you there.
Have a wonderful week.
Good night.