Last year at Maker Faire I met so many amazing people! The experience was overwhelming. In fact, on the plane ride back from San Francisco I told the big Aussie sitting next to me that my sniffling was all just due to allergies and not the fact that I was flying at 500 miles per hour away from my new friends!

One of the people I met was an artist named Suzanne Forbes. Suzanne had created a work to be auctioned to benefit the Electronic Frontier Foundation called Defending the Electronic Frontier it was a painting that included representations of some of my work as well as that of Datamancer and others. She and her wonderful painting joined us in the Contraptor's Lounge.

Suzanne is a portrait artist and illustrator living and working in the Bay area.  She will come to your home and paint you and make you look fabulous! She also has a selection of drawings and prints of her work available in her Etsy store.

For more information about her portraiture, click through to her website here.

Last May's MakerFaire in San Mateo was the highlight of 2008 for me! I had just about the best time of my life!  Now Maker Faire is coming to the U.K.!

Ian writes:

MakerFaire is coming to the UK as part of the Newcastle Science Festival on 14th/15th March 2009 in Times Square outside the Centre for Life and various other nearby spaces, so we’re looking for Makers to take part.

As you might have noticed, I spent the weekend being continually shocked at Maker Faire: Austin; not to mention 3-d scanned, felted and laser etched.

Out of all of this, though, there are a few projects and people who really stood out as being extra-super-special-spice awesome.

(note: do to my camera being ganked from my clutches, I lost my photos from the event. Which sucks.)

The 3d Ink Scanner, by Friedrich Kirschner  is the bigger, badder, blacker version of his earlier milk scanner. To do this for you, I was dunked into a bath of ink-laden water, practically affixed to a board while onlookers gasped at my ability to inhale (and violently exhale) large amounts of said water through my nose. For Science! A video of my 3-d scan can be found here.

Dominique Vyborny, on top of being a snappy dresser, is also an incredible artist-  she brought along two of her kinetic bicycle musicmajigs, Plucky and Cranky. Plucky was a coil-shaped steel instrument with steel strings, while cranky was a megaphone-like sculpture with a multitude of hand-cranked music box innards attached, so that when cranked (get it?) they  produced a tune to rival the creepiness factor of any doppler-affected ice cream truck.

Arc attack made the Doctor Who theme even more awesome (it is possible!)  playing it through their twin singing tesla coils.

Aaron Ristau made my day with his kinetic and interactive sculptures made from medical device detritus. 

These are the things that for me, made me want to take over some shop, lock myself in with a palate of Top Ramen, and do nothing but Make. Which I'm pretty sure was the point all along.

Lucky lucky Meredith Scheff is at Maker Faire Austin right now and she's twittering everything she sees! You can follow her here or add satiredun on Twitter.

It's only two days until Maker Faire: Austin, and my mad scientist bones are a-tingling with excitement. I'm downright giddy.

I know from previous experience that there is no straight forward way to cover the Mass Awesome that is Maker Faire- all I can ever do is run around like the proverbial beheaded chicken (or sugar filled human larvae child) to each exhibit squealing and poking and making and hoping to the dear and fuzzy lord that I remember to take photos. It is for this purpose then, that I have recruited a second chicken blogger  to do the same. I'm operating under the fudgy logic of  "two overstimulated nerds are better than one".

So let me introduce to you, dear readers, dear friend Richard DaLuz of www.stupidfingers.com. Rich has made some amazing mods, most recently the Nintoaster which garnered many a sinister chuckle; and the Super Genintari, and all-in-one Super Nintendo, NES, Atari, and Genesis. It is good.

I'm still wandering around the country, but on October 18th and 19th I will be wandering somewhere in particular- somewhere awesome.

That place is, of course, Austin, for Maker Faire! 

Maker Faire in San Francisco was full of awesome- stuffed to the mechanical gills with projects, geeks, geeky projects, and of course, a healthy dose of delicious beer. I'm sure Maker Faire: Austin will be the same.

I'm particurally excited about the King Of Fling contest- seriously, there is nothing more awesome, more soul satisfying, and hell, more American- than heaving into the air objects not known to fly just to hear them go crunch as they meet their terrestrial doom. You should come. We'll have fun.