Author Archives: paulwallich

A Makerspace is a Business

Posted on September 25, 2014 by paulwallich

Last night I went to the Generator member meeting. I talked with some cool people about projects, but the main agenda was listening to the staff and board telling us how things were going and where they might go next. … Continue reading →

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The Shapeoko 2 is not that hard to build

Posted on September 12, 2014 by paulwallich

I’ve been working on this in odd hours for the last month or so. But. Next time Read The ^#@^% Directions All The Way Through Before Starting The Build. No, really. I’ve had to go back a few times and … Continue reading →

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Left hand, meet right hand

Posted on September 3, 2014 by paulwallich

You would think that in a small town everyone would know what everyone else is doing. Well, they do, but not in enough detail to be of any use to one another. This morning I heard about the fourth (maybe … Continue reading →

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A visit with Tyler

Posted on August 22, 2014 by paulwallich

One morning last week I arrived at at Local64 to find a couple of spools of 3D-printer filament on my desk, one bright yellow, the other black with a label that read “carbon fiber”. Stuck on top a note saying … Continue reading →

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The accidental makerspace

Posted on August 20, 2014 by paulwallich

I have a bad Kickstarter habit. If it’s maker-related,  I want it. I missed out on the microcontroller that runs Python out of the box, but I’ve got oodles of tiny wireless boards — bluetooth and wifi oh my. And a low-end CNC … Continue reading →

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This is going to make Arduino workshops much easier

Posted on August 13, 2014 by paulwallich

Cloud-based arduino editor and programmer. Now I won’t have to tell people to download 100 MB of development environment, make sure they have all the right libraries installed, and so on and so forth just so they can get an … Continue reading →

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The internet of things is really seductive.

Posted on August 2, 2014 by paulwallich

So this morning after the spark cannon and the van de graff and the tesla coil I went to the internet of things workshop. It was fun. And dead easy. The guys from Sparkfun were showing off their new data … Continue reading →

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How many librarians are in the witness protection program?

Posted on August 1, 2014 by paulwallich

“They hired a new librarian and she got rid of all the books.” That was the gossip around town shortly after she arrived, said one of my tablemates at lunch. Books about our perennial adversary the Soviet Union, about how … Continue reading →

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This is a great time to be doing stupid things

Posted on July 27, 2014 by paulwallich

Ten years ago, I built an ostensibly cutting-edge mobile robot from a kit. It cost close to a thousand dollars, required an attached laptop computer to operate it, and it never really worked. Sure, it could zip back and forth … Continue reading →

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