Maker Project Lab
October 7, 2019 AUTHOR: Donald Bell CATEGORIES: Interviews, News, Tips Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Restoring Oakland’s 1956 Wonder-Go-Round

On this blog, I get the chance to explore my love of how people create and invent using new technology. In many ways, Children’s Fairyland in Oakland, California runs completely against the theme of this blog. It is one of the earliest theme parks in the United States, seemingly frozen in time for generations, and what little technology it has is about as analog as it gets.

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August 30, 2019 AUTHOR: Donald Bell CATEGORIES: News, Project Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Jon-A-Tron’s 3D Printed Animatronic Puppet

Occasionally there are projects that hang at the top of my “someday” list and refuse to budge, nagging me until I tackle them. Jonathan (Jon-A-Tron) Odom’s 3D Printed Animatronic Puppet project on Instructables is one of these projects.

When I started Maker Project Lab, the whole idea was that I was going to be rebuilding, evaluating, and elevating awesome projects that makers have shared online. It’s a process that was part of my job as a Projects Editor at Make: magazine, and it seemed like a cool thing I could continue doing. I mean, isn’t that part of what the Maker Movement is all about — sharing what you’ve done and inspiring people to build their own version and take it someplace new?

Needless to say, if you’ve been following this blog, you know that I got wonderfully sidetracked by making my own weekly show and reviewing tools. What little spare time I have left for actually making my own projects is typically sucked in to paid original project content, or personal projects for which a lot of the appeal is selfishly chipping away at something that’s just for me.

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