On a different topic today, I noticed something that, even as much as I played the game back in the early 90’s when it came out I never remember seeing or at least I don’t REMEMBER* remembering it…

Look, it is the Charlotte Skyline in there !?!

(Picture of the Amiga version of the found on GameSpot)

* Could be the 40 year old Memory Allocation Table getting corrupted, too…

It’s been a few days since I attended the first (hopefully annual) MakerFaire:NC in Durham on Sunday the 25th…  I was very impressed with the whole affair.  I’ve have been following the whole Maker meme since I first ran into it quite a few years ago, and when I saw that there was talk of creating a magazine specifically aimed at the DIYer, I signed up for a subscription almost a year before they published the first issue!

I’ve been making my own things (and breaking other stuff) for as long as I can remember – its a knack that I picked up from my Dad who has built some of the coolest and most practical things I’ve seen – I’m mean, he built a car rotisserie for working on the bottom of old Mustangs he was restoring… I’ll have to get pictures…

Besides all the useful or off the wall things that people were demonstrating at the faire, the coolest things that I remember seeing while I was walking around were the kids with their parents. A father sitting on the floor with his son at the Chaos Machine describing how to put things together so the balls will keep moving, another explaining how the ShopBot works; A Dad and his daughter playing with the Beam bots from SheekGeek or the learning how to sew on the quilt…  It took me back to working with my Dad in his shop, sitting on the radiator support of the race car, pulling the intake manifold off when I was 6, when I should have been in bed asleep… He has always told me that I should work with my Brain and not with my Hands… but I’ve found ways to do both – it is hard not to make things when it’s in your DNA.

This didn’t start out to be a post about my Dad – but as I wrote it, I realized just how much of an influence he has been on me, my ability to solve problems, to build it if I need it and to fix it instead of throwing it away… So I guess my Dad is an original Maker, a builder of things… and that is why he is Awesome. And so are all the Parents that take their kids out to the NC faire, to San Mateo or Detroit or just to encourage them to learn and to Make instead of just buy and throw it away.

Using any excuse I can to practice taking pictures and not having a good place to setup at home, I used Karen and Randy’s Awesome 12th Night party as the perfect place to get a few practice pictures…

Karen was nice enough to let me use her “Heated attic / Junk Room / Sewing Room” as a studio space at the last minute.  I pulled out all my equipment, put it together and set to taking a few pictures… well, what I thought was going to be a few pictures… After a while I noticed there was a line 0ut the door and down the hall! Talk about pressure! And the fact that I enjoyed myself, maybe a little too much!

I hope everybody likes the results – and the humor that’s in there too.  It was a blast and I want to do it again sometime soon!

I learned a few things too

• Black backgrounds are interesting to shoot against – a backlight helps A LOT! But dark hair and clothes make it a challenge sometimes… but you can have fun with it.
• Make sure the diopter adjustment on your viewfinder is set correctly – especially when you are using manual focus - otherwise you are going to end up with a lot of slightly out of focus photos (DOH!)
• It is amazing how much space you really need when you are shooting with a backdrop, multiple flashes, soft-boxes, etc.
• Drink Water

That’s just a few – I need to start keeping a better notebook.

As I was leaving work tonight I happened to see that they have started turning on the LED lights on the Duke Energy building… and boy does it add a lot of color to the skyline… I can’t wait until they get it all synchronized and coordinated…

And on a side note – this particular view has changed a lot in the last couple of years – here is a picture from the same location in July, 2006

On October 4th, 1969 (That’d be just over a year before I was born) Monty Python aired their first episode on BBC…

And the search for the Holy Grail has never been the same.