Photography Area Improvements!

We’ve had a dedicated photography area at the Makerspace since moving to our new building in January.  However, the lighting was powerful and direct, which resulted in some pretty exciting shadows.  Today, I set up four 400 watt equivalent, 105 watt (somewhat) compact florescent lights on stands that each have shoot through umbrella diffusers.  Check them out in room just off the craft lab.

Four_Photo_Stands_with_Umbrellas

Now we can take photos that aren’t a nightmere of shadows and hot spots!  Like this teaser photo of FIDO, shown below.  Stay tuned for more info on him!

Mystery_Project_witout_glare_or_shadows

Appleton Makerspace is now OPEN!

Appleton Makerspace

Back in April 2011 when Milwaukee Makerspace had its Grand Opening at the Chase location, a bunch of guys from up north stopped by, and they were calling themselves DHMN, which stood for [D]istributed [H]acker/[M]aker [N]etwork. It was the early formation of a group similar to Milwaukee Makerspace, though they had no physical space to meet in. They made do meeting at member’s houses or coffee shops, etc., which is typical for the formation of a new group.

Well, it’s been about two years, but they’ve been growing, and making, and sharing with others, and now… they’ve got a space!

Signs of the Times

We’re please to welcome the Appleton Makerspace (Powered by DHMN) into the ranks of Wisconsins’s makerspace/hackerspace community. Way to go, guys!

A visit from Marc Teusch

Marc Teusch

A few weeks ago we got an email from Luxembourg. Well, more specifically, from Marc Teusch, one of the founders of syn2cat. He said he’d be visiting Milwaukee and was wondering if he could stop by Milwaukee Makerspace… the answer was YES!

Visiting other spaces is awesome. It’s great to see the differences (and similarities) between different hackerspaces. I visited Baltimore Hackerspace and highly recommend you try to visit other spaces in your travels.

Anyway, Marc stopped by during our weekly meeting, then afterwards I gave him a tour of our space and we talked about making, hacking, Luxembourg, the US, and all sorts of other things.

If you didn’t get a chance to talk to Marc that night, check out his recent TEDx Talk: Makerspaces – The Future of Education

Panoramic Photos

A few years ago I built a panoramic camera head (mostly out of scrap wood) and while I’ve wanted to build a new one, this one (mostly) works, so I just keep using it. It also helps that Hugin keeps getting better and better at stitching panoramas together.

I was lucky enough to be at the space on a Saturday morning before it got too busy and shot a few panos. (You can see larger versions on Flickr by clicking on each photo.) Enjoy!

Craft Area Here’s the craft area… something we didn’t have at the old Chase location.

Office Here’s the Meeting Room & Electronics Lab. (Often called “The Office”)

Wood Shop The Wood Shop is constantly improving… this photo is already out of date!

Metal Shop The Metal/Machine Shop has some heavy duty equipment. And lots of room!

Storage Room Here’s one end of the storage room…

Storage Room And here’s another end of the storage room.

It’ll be great to look back at these photos and see how things have changed over time. It shouldn’t take long though, as things are in a constant state of development. (Oh, there’s more rooms, but I ran out of time! More to come… Stay Tuned!)