MakerBot
So I'm tooling around online and I see a link to MakerBot** - which is so cool...'cause it combines a bunch of my nerdiness all in one - you can get the MakerBot as a kit to assemble yourself (and save a LOT of money, which appeals to my cheap self), and you use it to make 3D plastic miniatures, which I'm all about, of course, and you use 3D computer modeling to create the 3D plastic models...woohoo!! The video in the link shows them using a kinect as a 3D scanner to create a model of the webshow's host. Is that cool or what?****
Yeah, the final products are still kind of crude. But...you get to make something that has never existed. That's the pull that I just can't resist, you know? That's where the nerd and the buried artist in me collide.
So it's about creativity, in part. But also, I think, about being in a group... a "tribe" Seth Godin calls it. There are only so many people who would ever care about something like this. You who know me, if you're even still reading this, most of you don't care about the MakerBot...but you know that I'm part of that small group of people for whom this is in some way just "the coolest thing." And that's a tribe that, in some ways, I want to be a part of.
I think...
Well, anyway, MakerBot...tre cool...
** Which was apparently created by a group of guys sitting around going, "Wouldn't it be cool if we could do this 3D printing stuff? Kinda cheaply? Why couldn't we?" And so they get together and do it. Seven layers of awesome! This is the kind of stuff my friend Dan does all the time. I don't have THAT kind of creativity - he wants to make a robot trellis that will follow the sun around your yard, for crying out loud. It's all I can I do to mow the grass on a normal lawn mower...
****Of course, it's like $1500 bucks for the kit alone...and then there's the plastic...and the accessories... and... and...
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