Just back from giving another talk at UVM. This one was for Invent Vermont . a collection of independant inventors. dedicated to promoting innovation in our state. My freinds Jerome and Ben organized the even tonight. The idea was to show the members the UVM Fablab and the UVM Instrumentation and Modeling Facility. Here were about 18 of us this evening. We met in Perkins hall that has this amusing sign.. Engineerin’ .. love it !.
after my talk we wandered over to the fablab. Jeff gave a demo of the printer and laser…
THen one of their members, Tom did a cool demo of silicon modl making. Gotta get some of this glop.
It was another fine evening of geekspeak. I hope these guys will join us in the broader maker community.. It really is an amazing about of activity on this stuff these days. A week doesn’t go by now without some sort of maker activity.. I just love it !
Speaking of love…. Diane and I were standing in the bathroom this mornign. as I brushed my teeth.. this HUGE spider dropped from the cieling between us.. it as over 2 inches across. it was AWESOME !
So I spent a good deal of time today thinking about the past… Not in any morose kind of way…. But in a very concrete way . Last week I subscribed to a service called timehop which tells you what you were doing exactly one year ago today.. At least as far as social networking can tell you what you were actually doing. Everyday it sends you an email every day with all your blog posts, facebook wall posts and tweets from the same day in the previous year. Today I learned that not only did I attend a great live show at higher ground last night, but I saw the same band (dark star) at the same venue, exactly the same day last year.. I even made the same observations about the number of grey (or no) haired hippies in the crowd, the transcendent power of life music.. And the great pleasure of being with good friends, good music and good beer (though I didn’t mention the beer in either post… That was a great aspect of both even endings as far as I can recall 🙂
I wonder how we would live our lives differently if we had a recording of everything we did in the past ?. The fact that I’m so predictable might give me pause to rethink how predictable I’ve become.. Instead I choose to think of it as being consistent .
Here’s to consistency ! ( and good music, friends and beer)
Ackkkk.. ALMOST 2 am and just back from a great Dark Start Orchestra show at Higher Ground. DSO is a… no make that the est Grateful Dead tribute band that has ever exited Honestly They sound more like the Dead than the Dead did, I;ve been attending their shows for nearly as long as I went to Dead shows.. .. and that;s saying something. As I was dancing tonight I realized my first GD show was 36 years ago. Something to think about ! I was there with my buddies Gary Forrest, Paul and Andrew.. and ran into many other friends in the audience.. there were many 20 somethings.. and many about my age….
The band generally plays a complete Dead show from a particular date and place.. so the song list is fixed. I cheated and looked up the songs they played and realized that this was a show from Charlotte NC in June 12th of 1991.. The first set was splendid… some of my favorite songs.. (Peggy-o, Althea, hell in a bucket ).. the second set started with ‘Touch of Gray’ .. a tribute to being older .. That song has special meaning to me as I used to put on that song and swing all three kids around in the air as we danced to it. Sam loved it most.. he called it ‘swing around music’.. I remembered being at Higher Ground listening to DSO not long after Sam died.. and they played that say song. Touch Of Gray;.. as I did then.. I broke down and cried and danced at the same time.. felt very good and sad at the same time..
Live music clears my head and opens my heart.. I hope you all have live music in your lives.,,
Very full day today with work… Many meetings… But the one I really looked forward to was after work we had a steering meeting for the Vermont Makers.. The overarching community group that is tying together all of the fast growing maker community here in northern Vermont, we all met at the Farmhouse…. An ironically named restaurant on the site of the Old McDonald’s in downtown Burlington (get it ?) .. It’s an upscale place now full of Ernest looking burligntonians.. our 10 slightly artistic geeks.. Or slightly geeky artists fit right in . I loved the anarchistic spirit of tonight’s meeting.. Between this large table and the background noise, we could hardly her each other. But that was half the fun. We had several orders of business tonight.. One was to form committees.. We created 2: one was about workshops.. And the to her was about….. Uhhhh… I can’t remember, but I’m in it…. I know that one of the purviews of the group I’m in is to solicit makers to participate in the Champlain Maker Faire slated for sept 21 2012 at shelbourne farms. We’re looking for makers of all types and stripes… Artists, geeks, musicians, food experimenters, farm hackers, craftspeople, welders, glass blowers, citizen scientists, renewable energy folks, back to basics, anyone who experiments as they make,, are you one of those types ? If so.. Let me know, we’d love to have you show your stuff at the makers are. We’ll be sending out a call for makers in the next 2 weeks.. But in the mean time, let me know if you are interested.
Ok.. Hats it for now.. More tomorrow..
Nite all, nite Sam
-me
