Monday, May 05, 2008

Bicycle nerds

Wooden bike
I wrote over the weekend that there were 40,000 people at Maker Faire. It turns out that was last year's attendance -- this year, an estimated 70,000 people showed up just on Saturday. Cell phone reception was the pits, probably because the cell network was overwhelmed with so many technology nerds all using their phones for everything.

My other camera broke (grrr) but fortunately several bike nerds that I know were also at Maker Faire taking photos of bike nerd stuff. They include Ms Art Teacher Lady, Jym Dyer, and Allen Tom, though I'm sure there are others. Feel free to post a comment here with a link to your own Maker Faire photos and articles. I hope to have some video up this evening.

WIRED reported a lot on bike stuff at Maker Faire:

Elsewhere in the bike-o-sphere

  • Tim Jackson updates: he's got some rehab in store. I feel for him. Tim's pretty well know in the world of cycling blogs, but he also has connections in the marketing realm where online connections have spilled over into real life friendships. Tim is as nice a guy in real life as he is online.
  • Interbike 2008 selling out of expo space. Wow! Interbike has also appointed a new show director, Andy Tompkins. Tompkins replaces Lance Camisasca, who know manages Interbike's bicycle advocacy effort and strategic development as a consultant.
  • Dorel is the Canadian company that owns Pacific Cycles and Cannondale, reported a very strong first quarter with sales up an outstanding 55 percent over last year.
  • When I posted that video the other day of those guys bicycling down the Santa Monica freeway, I forgot to credit Treadly and Me.
  • Ezra has been making bikes for friends. Now he's doing it commercially as Fast Boy Cycles. He's best known these days for his wooden fenders and handlebars.
That's enough reading and certainly enough typing for me for now. Have a good week, all!

8 comments:

Wallet B. Grundle said...

Dude, I hope your young'uns know how cool you are taking them to Maker Faire. Maybe not now, but when they're older for sure.

Oh, and what's up with you and breaking cameras?

Yokota Fritz said...

My broken cameras is totally upsetting to me. The one that stopped working over the weekend is my old Canon EOS film body that I bought 12 years ago. The flash sync quit working a couple of weeks ago, and on Saturday it just died.

I'm down to a Nikon Coolpix with a broken display. I'm chopping a lot of heads off with it.

My wife suggested that maybe it's time for a new camera. Hurray!

The kids thoroughly enjoyed Maker Faire and they're both thinking up cool projects for next year so they can get in free as a maker.

Illinoisfrank said...

What's happening with your Canon A570?

bikesgonewild said...

...first off...glad to see tim/masiguy is doing better & progressing well on the road back to health...

...kamera karma...what's up w/ that, all in a short time span...whoa, huh ???...

...i've know 'of' the maker faire for a while but i had no idea of it's depth & scope...i've perused several flickr sites & i'm even more intrigued now...
...friend of mine was down there & picked up one of those "monkey lights" for the bikes he builds...

James T said...

Like bgw, I checked out some of the Flickr sets from Maker Faire. It loooks like a lot of fun.

You have to like that little traingular plywood bike in the picture. It looks like the front end came from a Strida. Interesting stuff; thanks for sharing.

bikesgonewild said...

...james, considering that wedge & look, gotta be a scooter thingy front end & ya the look is cool...

...fritz's earlier 'maker faire' post had a direct link to that guys site...pretty crazy stuff, no doubt...

James T said...

bikesgonewild, you are right, it has to be a scooter. Not sure what I was thinking.

Yokota Fritz said...

Tom Kabat (the woodenbikes guy who created the bike in the photo) wanted everybody to know that that bike has no internal frame -- the wooden box is an exoskeleton. I took video of him talking about his bike but I have't had a chance to upload them yet.

Several Palo Alto bike hackers were at Maker Faire. There was Tom Kabat, Martin Krieg (the Bus Cycle guy who has a crazy collection of bike stuff at this house), and the guys who created a "di cycle" with 9 foot diameter wheels. I run into all of these guys in Menlo Park and Palo Alto on an irregular basis.