Chris and I got in on Wednesday, and after checking in to the hotel

unpacking, and getting our staff schedule sorted we headed to a lovely little Japanese place up the road as suggested by a local friend.

With unbeatable lunch prices – we split a bento box with beef teriyaki. This was SO good, it will likely become a traditional first meal now.

The meat was proper cubes of beef, not the super cheap thin strips most places offer.

There’s nothing much for us to do yet, so we go to the hotel and crash.

THURSDAY

We head over to the Hyatt for our badges (hey, there’s our ad!).

And after getting our badges we head to the convention center

to start setting up registration.

Once reg opens we’re very happy to watch the crowd smoothly picking up/buying their badges

I take a minute to collapse behind the scenes

before heading to grab dinner.

On the way back I see this pretty bird out on the windowsill, watching everyone heading through the habitrail walkway

My friend MJ had her Ghostbusters gear on and I had to grab a shot.

The proton pack lights up and was playing music from the movie!

FRIDAY

I wish I got a better shot of this awesome UP! cosplayer

Some more Ghostbusters

Willy Wonka

Pedobear and his girlfriend? These two had quite the crowd, and all kinds of naughty poses. I have about 20 photos (and some would make an excellent gif) of them.

I admit I don’t know this one, but it’s nicely done!

The stain on the floor juxtaposed with this table’s banner cracked me up. Even better, I stopped later and pointed it out and the owner hadn’t even noticed!

SATURDAY

Sonic!

AMAZING chalk artist – Eric Maruscak

SO CREEPY!

These guys were actually really sweet, and the makeup/teeth were really well done.

An example of the custom stuff I do

On my way to the Soap Bubble, some folks were taking advantage of the ambiance and got this setup. To the Deadpool hanging out here – sorry I didn’t realize you were talking to me at first!!

IRT watching the crowd at the dance

Seen in one of the parking lots while walking to my room

SUNDAY

Staff getting silly

That’s it – I’m trying to focus on getting more photos again as lately it’s been RUN THE TABLE AND GO TO BED every day. I miss actually seeing the convention, and the cosplayers, more than what I get at my artist table. The Soap Bubble pictures were actually me getting up at 2 am just to walk over and snap a few shots.

As always – if you’ve not been to Anime Central (www.acen.org) it’s a great one to hit. Feel free to leave questions in the comments.

The main cafeteria area held the Dealer’s booths, and a side hallway had the Artists. They had a video room, some panels, and a maid cafe. I hope they are able to hold the event again next year, and if you’re in the area, I recommend checking it out.

The maid cafe was very cute – it was set up in the home ec room – and the girls were serving and even cooking stuff on the spot.

This little girl was a ball of energy – batgirl can defeat her enemies by wearing them out!

Her mom tried to get her to do Caramelldansen but like any child she did not perform on command.

9am-9pm Saturday only – Canton HS Canton, MI

http://animeparkcon.webs.com/aboutus.htm

See how I slave for you people? That’s averaging 10-20 new designs a year to keep things fresh.

Make sure you stop by and see what’s new Anime Central in the Artist Alley. Table 001 and 002.

We had excellent foot traffic, and saw an increase of sales again. I still feel that the table price is reasonable for the attendance even with the second price hike this year. Tables are now $25 each.

There was also a good variety of crafts on display. I walked through the Alley and made a few purchases, and was impressed by the quality of everything as well.

As always – thank you to everyone who stopped by!

In a word – yes!

I’ve had mine for over a year now and while it doesn’t suit every situation, it suits nearly everywhere my current tripod doesn’t or cannot.

I opted for the SLR-Zoom with Ballhead.

I liked the positional versatility the ballhead offered, along with the added stability should I get any heavier lenses/bodies down the road. There isn’t an eco-package version of the bundle, but it definitely wasn’t over-packaged either.

The gorillapod came with me on my recent trip to DisneyWorld in 2011 and there were several shots of my husband and myself that I would not have gotten without it. Awkward spaces that were great photographically but 1. bad spots to try and set a tripod and 2. times where I wouldn’t have wanted to bring a tripod with me. To be fair, I didn’t even bring my tripod on the trip, as figuring out space in the luggage (and trying to consider if it would see enough use to justify that lost space) just wasn’t happening. So as we walked around the resort complex, I had the camera around my neck and hubby kindly carried the ‘pod.

This picture – it was wrapped around a garbage can:

While technically I could have put a tripod in nearly the same place, it was nice knowing that the camera was secure – it wasn’t going to be knocked over by a gust of wind, or lifted by a less than scrupulous bystander. Not that I’ve ever seen or heard of someone picking up and running away with a fully set up tripod and camera, but hey, it’s still a tick in the pro’s column.

We also used it curled around the balcony railing with our camcorder to get a nice steady sweep of the view from our room.

The fun however ended when the quick release plate disappeared off the camera somewhere between our room and the car. Little and light, it unscrewed itself and bounced away never to be found again. While the ‘pod itself can be used without it – the ballhead could not, which was a bummer. I would like to see an update to this piece to give it some friction and stay on the camera better. A rubberized piece would be all that is needed.

That would be the only tick in the con’s column however. I am overall very pleased with it and would recommend the line of Gorillapods to anyone interested.

Have questions? Leave a comment!

After lots of research and comparison I came across the Black Rapid line of camera straps. This was different….

The major change over conventional straps is the mounting point – it attaches using the bottom threaded tripod mount like a mini eyebolt. At first, I had concerns about this coming loose – but they thought of that and there is a very good rubber stop between the screw and the camera body and I have not had it work loose once in the months of heavy shooting I’ve had it.

©BlackRapid

©BlackRapid

Regardless it only took a day of shooting for me to really settle in and fall in love. A great new option that Black Rapid introduced based on feedback from female photographers is a comfort curve to the strap where it falls across your upper chest. For the ladies – it now nestles between instead of squishing across. You know what I mean!

I also was a little upset to see the women’s strap is shorter than the men’s. Exceptionally tall or busty women might want to check out the other models if you have trouble with where this lies. At full extension, this hits me in a comfortable spot though so in the end I stuck with the women’s version.

©BlackRapid

You can see the slight curve the strap has to it – this makes a huge difference in comfort. The strap is not popping up over my chest and strangling me halfway through the day.

When you grip the camera and raise it to your face, the attachment simply slides along the strap. In addition there are locking “bumpers” on the strap so you can keep your camera locked at it’s down position (even have it pushed a bit behind you) when you’re not actively needing to shoot. This keeps it from swinging freely as you make your way through crowds for example.

The images above are from BlackRapid (as I don’t have a second body to shoot with to show you my own strap) but rest assured I am in no way being compensated for this review. My strap was purchased through B&H online, but there are a wide variety of places that carry it.

Animarathon
Bowen-Thompson Student Union
Saturday, March 24, 2012 10:00am – Midnight

Their site is in a bit of a transition right now, so if there are any questions on the event, please leave a comment!

Please take a moment to read more about it HERE and HERE and finally HERE

For everyone who has enjoyed my postings – think about all the ways that someone could claim infringement (didn’t like the review I gave of a restaurant that had pictures of the food) and have me completely shut down with no warning, discussion, or recourse. It’s a terrible thought, and my site is one that I don’t expect goes on many radars. Now think of much splashier well-visited sites that might be considered competition – easily taken down by a liberal interpretation of SOPA’s intent.

Contact your representatives – let them know that this law cannot be put in effect.

It is a weekend long celebration of everything fantastic about learning and teaching, science and engineering, arts and crafts, and everything in between. It gives a place for every DIY’er and home-brew hacker to come together and show off what they love – creating.

Throughout the day I saw people of all ages learning how things work, and seeing new ideas taking shape. Everyone was having fun, and everyone wore their geek titles proudly.

We arrived at 9 am and already there was a good bit of commotion on the parking lot grounds as everyone finished setting up for the day.

They had a very organized ticket pickup process, which left us with 30 minutes to kill.

I’ve been coming to the Henry Ford since I was a child – courtesy of my grandparents who kept a family membership (which includes all kids and grandkids under 18 – really a good deal) and made an annual outing of seeing the museum. It’s been a few years since I’ve been here though, and amazingly my husband has never been.

A photo enthusiast like myself could spend hours pointing the camera at everything no one else looks at, let alone the actual museum installations.

Finally we killed enough time and were let in. They had signs up with QR codes to unlock an app that let you enter a drawing for an iPad (which were heavily in use everywhere, as portable video displays or robot controllers). Droids were also in abundance of course.

While not exactly Maker Faire – I had to get a shot of the old style Wienermobile. We saw the current one just this year during one of our trips to Chicago so it was cool that this was the first thing we saw walking into the museum space. Yes, I bought a whistle.

The second thing was a Rancor head (complete with drool)…

A fantastic reproduction R2-D2 (all metal!)

Displaying the power of the BeagleBoard. Each tiny chipboard is controlling a single monitor and keeping the video perfectly synched across them. Essentially everything an average laptop can do all on a board the size of a floppy (3.24 inches square). Very impressive.

Some kind of recycled scrap installation art piece. Not entirely sure…. I was amused however to notice after getting home that the art got a picture of me taking a picture of the art:

There was an excellent balloon artist entertaining the kids:

Souvenir tee shirt:

The Maker Works booth showing off a laser cutter – and promoting the opening of an Ann Arbor tech shop where members can use this machine and many more for projects that would require far more investment capital than most of us have.

The always popular MakerBot

My fangirl moment (in the middle of all the rest of the geeky stuff of course) were these adorable Daleks (with the rocket ships behind them):

Another interesting display was the mold casting booth. It offered a great variety of colors of hard plastic as well as malleable rubber for masks. This guy was as well made as he was creepy:

I was REALLY excited to turn the corner and see Shapeways had a booth. I’ve been following them since they started (and they have really come a long way in a short time in terms of materials they offer) but never gotten around to plunking down cash for an order. Being able to see the results in person, hold them and stress test them was fantastic. I am 100% comfortable in suggesting their services to friends and will seriously look at placing an order soon.

Another extrusion based 3D printer – this one however kept the head in place and moved the table as it printed.

Next up was some mechanical demon pony robot that spat fire (my husband: “Of course it does”).

The next photo doesn’t really work without sound – but we’d left the camcorder at home so…. The museum staff were showing off this lovely gramophone and even letting you record your voice on a wax cylinder and playing it back! I thought it was wonderful (I want one) and still amazing that something so simple works so cleanly. I actually liked the sound of my voice on this.

A cyber robot snowman (duh):

Some of the best things were all the hands on demos. For instance – they had a “learn to solder” booth set up where you made this cute little Maker SHED robot for just a $1. I’ve never soldered before and found it a little too small and fiddly for me (especially in a crowd, in the heat, I get frustrated easier) so Chris had to help. They DID have staff helping out of course, but a husband is a better handler of heat induced meltdowns I think.

By now we were pretty hungry and more than ready for some air conditioning time (temps were in the HIGH 90′s, and we’re in a parking lot with no shade) so we headed in to the Michigan Cafe’.

There was a fairly long line (but it moved fast) so I busied myself taking artsy photos:

They have a nice setup to deal with crowds – the full menu board is in sight of the line, and broken up by salads, hot items, and deli things. With a cafeteria style pickup spot for each. Folks know what they want and can go straight to the counter without having to mill about deciding.

Chris got the pulled pork and a side of potatoes. The pork was good, with a slightly sweet tangy sauce to it:

I got the broccoli quiche (with potatoes) which was fantastic. There was a spice that I can’t quite name but gave it a tart citrus kind of flavor that was different. I’m not sure if they make this in house or if it’s brought in, but I’d buy a whole pan!

Revived and cooled for the moment – we ventured back outside. Right into a couple of Stormtroopers. “We support the Empire – honest!”
The always fantastic 501st Legion – Great Lakes Garrison division.

Demonstrating electricity generation by people power:

Sadly, we didn’t get to see the Imax video – but seeing the Tornado Intercept Vehicle in person was awesome.

We have a LARGE yard. We own a piddly push mower with a wonky back wheel (though we’re grateful for it, as it was a hand me down, else we wouldn’t have one at all) that takes many many passes to tame our lawn. So I was not surprised when this made Chris’ eyes light up like it was his birthday:

Uhm, hmmm… okay….

Tusken Raider!

Nyan Cat! Yes – it was animated too, and he sang the song. This guy never was without a crowd whenever we went by (I also saw him playing videos from The Simpsons).

For the last event of the day we stopped to watch the Life Size Mousetrap game:

It was a very cool thing to watch (and yes I tipped him).

That was our day at Maker Faire. There was a ton I didn’t get photos of (just far too hot for me to deal with – even the camera was almost too warm to touch) but hopefully I’ll have more photos to feature next year. Who knows, maybe we’ll be there SHOWING an invention?