Maker Faire is a huge DIY/Arts/Crafts/Robotics/Environmental/Kinetic/Electronic fest. Full size R2D2’s, mobile kinetic sculptures, a fire truck that actually emits fire, machines to make other machines, 100MPG plug in hybrid cars built while you watch or help out with. The list goes on and on, if you’re anywhere near the SF bay area, you need to go to the San Mateo Fairgrounds this weekend (May 30-31st).

I’ll be there volunteering at the LUNAR booth Saturday morning, selling rocket kits with a complimentary motor at (below-retail-bulk) cost and helping kids build their first rocket, which they can then launch at our launch facility in the parking lot. Last year we did 500 kits, we’ve got 400 this time, we’ll see how long they last.

http://www.makerfaire.com/

If you can’t open it, you don’t own it.

This just in from the NAR and TRA (National Association of Rocketry, Tripoli Rocket Association):

We Won.

Instead of having to surrender our constitutional rights to the BATFE (unreasonable search among other things) to pursue an entirely safe hobby (which, if anything, promotes the safety of this country through the development of our youth into science fields) we are once again self-regulating!

We were to begin with, with remarkably few issues, and we have every expectation of keeping that good record. To the disappointment of many of you, I’m sure, nobody is going crazy with this. I’m not putting a rocket launcher on my car.

Anyway, here’s the formal notice, enjoy!-

http://www.nar.org/2009/05/legal_case_against_batfe_ends.php

As much as I love my tech and gadgets, I do appreciate the most elegant approach possible.

My latest techno-foolishness was with regards to my Thunder-Power 610 battery charger for my flying wing. It’s a wonder of micro-processing power and intelligence… with regards to it’s designed job. It charges and balances my Lipo batteries without burning down the house (heck they don’t even get warm!) every time, and I really do appreciate that.

It also allows you to do things like a 50% charge, which is best for storing the rather expensive batteries when you’re not going to use them for a while. Which I did. All was well.

But due to a misreading of the manual, I thought I had gone back to 100% charging later, when I started flying this spring. And I was thinking, gee, I thought these batteries lasted longer last fall, wonder if that was just because they were new…

So last night I was planning on again doing a 50% charge, since things are sorta busy I didn’t know when I’d fly again… and discovered that’s what it was already set to. Doh. Mystery solved, and I feel better about my $125 batteries.

So now I’m going to try them out again at 100%, after getting some work done, just to sanity check that they really are the incredibly kick-ass batteries I remember from 6 months ago. I suspect I’ll have the same experience I did before, which is my neck getting tired before the batteries do, even at high throttle.

All that to say, dang guys, really, spend another $5 on good UI for your products…

Update: Today is the first of five spacewalks to give Hubble a oil change and rotate the instruments, so to speak.

I’m going to leave off updating further unless something unexpected occurs, y’all can find the news about it easy enough.

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/

Shuttle Atlantis, flying STS-125, is going to the Hubble Space Telescope for the last servicing mission of the orbiting observatory. Two instruments will be replaced to do new science, and lots of elderly parts will be replaced to extend the life of the telescope for as long as possible.

This is a success story of extensible architecture taking advantage of ongoing advancements where possible. Other than the picky detail of the freight costs, the hubble could be upgraded for some time to come.

The current plan is to do this last maintenance run, and by the time a system failure kills it, we’ll have an even bigger observatory (James Webb Space Telescope/JWST) operating. Saw a model of it when I was in germany outside the Munich science museum, and yeah, it’s huge. http://www.jwst.nasa.gov/ The telescope part alone (the part with the hexagonal mirrors and such, above the shield, by itself is about the size of a bus. It folds up for launch of course.