General Stuff

I made it home from Michigan alive! My vacation in Harrison was both relaxing and productive (but mostly relaxing). I spent my time consuming warm food rich with carbs while beached on the fold-out bed as I played games online and watched the snow fall outside. I was like a fat over pampered bear in hibernation for the past week, but it was the medicine I needed. Any how, I hope everyone takes this week to slow down and enjoy spending time with the people important to them. =] Cheers!

For the sake of branding, Mark and I decided to switch the name of our podcast from TACO Time, to Geeky Freaky before we were too far along in the game to make such a huge change. After all, how well does “TACO Time” describe two wash ups who create artistic amalgamations of tech and mind warping perversion? Not very. You can now find our podcast at our new youtube channel : SM Geeky Freaky. …And as promised, here is the third episode, “Just the Tip”

Check out SYN Shop’s second podcast…. fresh off the press, featuring our very own Nathan Bryant and his many cool tech projects!  

I found my people. We packed up the truck for the ten-hour long pilgrimage to San Mateo to embark on one of the most amazing experiences I’ve ever had. This weekend I rediscovered what child-like wonder is as I perused the main hall, attention fracturing over the decadent saturation of brainy eye candy. I want to thank Jeff for letting me in on this secret… we had an amazing time walking around as Mr. and Mrs. Cool Goggles. Playing to the big kid side of me (which is more than 3/4) the first cool thing I saw upon entering the first building we came to, were giant RC controllable Wall-E robots. They could look around, change expression, and even occasionally played sound bites from the movie such as the musical clip from Hello Dolly. My pants were immediately charmed off : The very second thing that demanded my attention upon…

The SYN Shop podcast pilot is up for viewing just in time for Maker Faire weekend! Check it out! I want to thank Suz and Pawel again for thinking of Mark and I while coming up with ideas for their first show. They did an awesome job editing our rambling and childish robot play into something cool to watch. ….Oh yeah….. and a special thumbs up for including my bloody nose art. If you didn’t get a good look at it in the middle of the film… here it is in the flesh (teehee!) : Lets just say I know how to make Mark bleed. If you are curious about Amber, as you well should be… check out Mark’s Blog at Circuit Monkey.com

I sit here in my bathrobe, numb from the events of the past few days. Even though it was really cool, I don’t think anyone else aside from the volunteers who participated in it realized that this was “Science and Technology Week” here in Las Vegas. SYN Shop answered the call of duty for this festival. It was coordinated to coincide with First Friday, which made for a brutal gauntlet of setting up, tearing down, and giving attention to endless amounts of people. All of the excitement began on Thursday night downtown in new Fremont with the Science Crawl. The first event was family friendly and held at our hackerspace, attracting a wild herd of parents and children for an hour of building ‘light sabers’ out of pool noodles and electrical tape. (doesn’t that not sound horrifying??) Luckily, Jeff and I escaped this madness by the skin of our teeth and went for some dinner before…

I was at Robo Day two weeks ago where I was approached by independent film maker, Rick Barcode to have a pair of my goggles used as a prop in one of his short movies. Now, normally I am an untrusting wretch who hordes her precious things away from any possible dangers, but lately my mantra has been “yes”, because cool things don’t happen if you keep saying no to people. That being said, I was still hesitant about lending my babies to someone I didn’t know all that well. So, I agreed to let him use them under the condition that I tag along while he filmed. I figured It’d be a good opportunity to learn something new. Besides, it wasn’t like I was going to get drugging and featured in a snuff film or anything…? It turned out that they were extremely cautious and respectful with my goggles….