Earthquake!

As many of you are aware, the eastern seaboard was rocked by a 5.8 magnitude earthquake this afternoon.  Luckily, 5.8 is big enough to cause just that…a fairly gentle rocking, unless you were very close to the epicenter near Richmond, VA.  Luckily, damage reports are light thus far.

Nevertheless, it’s pretty strange to experience any kind of earthquake here in New York, and a few people freaked out.  Luckily, cooler heads prevailed on Thingiverse.   Take Thaed, who has designed a device that can tell you if there’s actually an earthquake, or if you’re just dizzy.

I hope all the earthquakes our readers experience are in the range that require a device like this.  Seeing the calamities in Japan and Haiti make me very glad that we can laugh this one off.  They’re still rebuilding after both those disasters; donations to UNICEF, the Red Cross, or Doctors Without Borders (among many others) will do good there.

Untitled by Thaed

This thing brought to you by

Turtle Shell Racer by Skimbal

Weeks ago my daughter came to me with a toy catalog to show me a pink kitchen set she wanted. ¹  I suggested that she use her existing pink kitchen set.  She pointed out that this particular kitchen set had a microwave where hers did not.  I offered that she and I could design and print one to go with her existing set.  She responded that she would need it large enough to match the rest of her set.  I explained that one of the only people I knew who was capable of printing something that large was Michael Curry and that we might need to ask him.

Fast forward to yesterday after work.  She wanted to draw plans for things we could print on our Thing-O-Matic.  One of her requests was a blender.  We drew one and then she asked if we could really print it.  I suggested that we could – but that we’d need to do it in big pieces and might need to ask Webca for help.

Then she piped up, “Or Michael Curry.”

Webca, Michael Curry – you guys are heroes in our house. 

1. By way of context, my daughter is a little over four years old. [↩]

Burning Man

Dave Monachello wrote into our help desk with this inquiry:¹

I was wondering if anyone that uses Thingiverse is taking anything to Burning Man? A MakerBot seems like the perfect tool for the kind of giveawys us burners make to gift while on the playa.  Plus there is a large percentage of burners that are from SF and Silicon Valley so I figured there must be some intersection no?

Let’s help Dave out here.  Are you going to Burning Man this year?  Are you a Thingiverse citizen?  Are you taking a MakerBot?  What would you print in the middle of the desert if you had a MakerBot Thing-O-Matic at your disposal?  Please leave a comment letting everyone know!

1. Photo courtesy of lightmatter [↩]