I went to Maker's Faire this last May and it was a clash of hippies, motor heads and nerds. I enjoyed it mightily and would go back next year. Here's a clip from the SRL show (click on the pic to start). Turn the volume on your speakers up to 11 and put your ear right over the noise hole before viewing if you want the semi-authentic experience.



Edit: that embedded video link is utterly broken in IE, here's the link to the movie. I'll try to figure out how to make that work in an object later...

Too bad I ran out of media before things got really nutty. The thing making all that noise was some sort of hovercraft powered with/by propane gas. Those cannon looking things on top were supposed to steer the craft around via compressed gas (propane?), but it wasn't behaving properly as you might be able to make out. I'm guessing it was compressed propane because at one point the craft wobbled its way close enough to the giant ball of fire in the background and actually managed to ignite those cannons. Flames went fwoosh, I went eep and steeped a bit further back behind the barracade.

It kept wanting to careen its way into the corner where I was standing with one hand jammed in my ear, the other trying hard to steady my camcorder. I didn't ever actually fear for my life or anything, I mostly felt bad for the people who had taken up position directly downwind of the giant ball of fire. The Fire Dept eventually showed up and started pouring water on whatever was on fire at the time.

The day featured all kinds of stuff I'm still trying to figure out how to get off the mini-DVD media I have for the camcorder. This SRL bit was at the very end of my second disc. Most of that disc was sadly taken up by a very long presentation of a human-sized Mousetrap game (like the boardgame, but done large with real bowling balls and falling safes and whatnot).

Can't wait for next year.

Tags: makersfaire