Maker Faire fun, now with Annular Eclipse Action Figure!

I can not say enough good things about the Maker Faire.  This year I was able to see both sides of the event.  First, I got to walk around being a guest and seeing all the fair has to offer.  Second, I was an exhibitor and got to interact with all the other guests.  And the whole weekend ended on a high note by watching the Annular Eclipse with 100+ people.

As a guest I got to see ArcAttack, get my picture taken with a real live talking and walking (floating? rolling?) Dalek, get tested to see if I was a zombie and many other things.  Fortunately, I passed my test and I am still human.  The gentleman before me must have been bit somewhere, because he tested zombie! :O    There were exhibits of all kinds of techs, crafts and just plain old fun stuff.  Maker Faire is really hard to describe to someone who's never been.  It's crafts.   It's tech.  It's art.  It's a mix of all three. There's even a little steampunk thrown in for fun.  The main thing about Maker Faire is that everything is made by normal and not so normal people.  It can be as simple as a cardboard robot, or as complicated as hand made working replicas of  R2D2.  There are giant fire breathing dragons made from bits and pieces of garbage.  Real live blacksmiths show off their skills.  There was a fire truck that blew fire up into the air.  A viking ship made out of cardboard and bicycles that someone rode around on.  Everything is very hands on.  There are many booths set up so you can make your own blinking LED necklace, Freak Flag, learn to solder, grow your own food, all sorts of things. I could go on forever!  But I wont.

As an exhibitor I got to meet hundreds and hundreds of people that were excited to see the sun from my stepfather's telescopes and talk about sun spots and the eclipse.  Before the fair I thought it'd be a "job", boring, a pain in my arse, etc.  Turns out it was really fun.  I loved the whole thing!  I never thought to take pictures of the huge crowd we had around the outside exhibit where I spent all of my time.  You can see the giant sundial my step-dad made.  He also made the white telescope on the bottom right, as well as the planetarium in the two upper corners!  No, he's not an astronomer by trade.  It's just a hobby of his.  I also added in a projection of the sun.  We had three very clear sunspots showing all weekend.  I only had one person be a bummer.  She couldn't figure out why we'd even want to look at the sun.  *rolls eyes*   Everyone else was very excited and I couldn't believe the amount of children that knew more than me!  Not that I am an expert on the sun, but I studied all week!

As for the eclipse, it was pretty amazing.  I spent a lot of the eclipse urging people to share the telescopes and the eclipse viewers we had.  I tried to make sure everyone got a chance to see what was going on.  I did manage to take a few peaks myself.  I was standing next to the Sun Spotter, so I took a lot of pictures of the sun on that.  I was amazed at how everyone was so good at passing the viewers around and how everyone was excited to see the eclipse even though we only got to about 84% coverage here where I live.

Time to start planning for the next solar eclipse in North America! We have a few years...2017.