On the Sunday before Hurricane Sandy came to town, I got a visit from David and Lori Sochol, the parents of my childhood friend Ryan. They brought along their daughter and six kids from A Better Chance of Westport, where Lori serves on the Board of Directors. These are kids who are in the top of their classes in disadvantaged areas, and who have a strong desire to achieve their dreams.

Over brunch I told them about 3D Printing and showed them the MakerBot Watch, designed by my collague Matt. They were very excited and wanted to go see the MakerBot Store, and just so happened that our brunch spot was right around the corner. We got there about 10 minutes before it opened, but luckily there is a MakerBot Replicator 2 in the window, so I used that to explain how the 3D printing process works. The doors opened at noon, and the awesome staff there let us in. Everyone liked the marble run a lot, and the MakerBot Mixtape. They had their own headphones, so they were able to pop them in and listen to some music.

My visitors were very interested in all of the designs and were thinking of things they would make if they had a MakerBot at home. Rhyse, one of the students, spent the summer at a game design program at Carnegie Melon and was excited to learn that a lot of 3D game characters could be printed. I shared my own experience with them, saying that I actually got my start in 3D modeling by creating 3D levels for the video game Jedi Knight in 1997. Ever since then, I wanted to get into a field where I could use my spatial awareness and visual skills, so I studied engineering and stayed close to CAD whenever I could. In fact, I’ve maintained work in CAD modeling since 2002. I talked to the kids about the software I use primarily, AutoCAD and MeshMixer, and about the 3D scanning you can do with 123D Catch.  I explained all of the machines I learned to use at the MIT FabLab, and about the Arduino and machine shop knowledge I got from being a member of the Baltimore Node hackerspace.

I could tell these guys were encouraged to learn more programming and attend open meetings at hackerspaces near them. Some of the boys said they had attended the Mini Maker Faire in Westport and the World Maker Faire in NY. One of them, Ruben, talked about the website design he does now, and that he wants to learn more about designing engines or working on cars.  He was intrigued by the Arduino and the idea of taking his code off the screen and out in to the real world.

It is great to be able to tell someone about 3D printing and then take them directly to the MakerBot Store. Showing them that the technology is real and explaining how it works is very enlightening.  Encouraging kids to learn 3D modeling, 3D printing and Arduino programming gets them ready for the future of making and creating.

It’s been about 30 days since scientists at the Large Hadron Collider announced they had discovered very strong evidence of the existence of a sub-atomic particle they’ve been looking for.  It’s known as the Higgs boson particle, and it is believed that other particles get the property of mass from interacting with a field of these Higgs bosons.  If you don’t understand it yet, check out this pretty awesome cartoon video which may give you a little more insight, but be sure to read after the jump!

So the CERN scientists say they are about 99.9999998% (5.9 sigma) sure that they’ve found the Higgs boson particle, but I’d like to make them 100% sure that it exists.  I’ve created this cute model and want to send it over to the Large Hadron Collider so they have definitive proof of its existence, but I need your help!

I’ve hidden four of these little guys in a few geocaches around; two in New York near MakerBot, and two down in the Baltimore area.  They’re geocaching.com track-able travel bugs.  If you find one, move it to a cache closer to CERN and hopefully it’ll get there eventually!  That way we can prove to them it exists.

Be sure to log your visit on the site, and take some photos to share!  The destination is the geocache located a mere 200 meters from the LHC in Switzerland.  If you want, you can make one of them for yourself by grabbing the files here on Thingiverse.

Sid Meier of Civilization (and many other games) visited Baltimore this past weekend.  He was a judge for the Art Bytes Hackathon at the Walter’s Art Museum in Baltimore, MD.  This is the second hackathon I’ve attended at an art museum, and after the successes at both of those, I can only imagine other museums will want to host them too.

One of the problems that many of the museum curators wanted teams to focus on was helping visitors find their way around.  The Walter’s Museum is made up of four separate buildings that are connected with complex staircases and passageways.  One of the teams who won the way finding award was The Waltours team and you can check out their progress here.    The winner of the ‘Wiz Bang’ award was team Time Machine who developed an truly amazing augmented reality app to turn back time on the sculptures in the museum to see what they looked like before natural weathering took its toll.  One team developed Frame which provides historical context alongside the gallery pieces.  Another developed Tanzaku, which allows you to interact with and leave messages for other people at the museum about galleries, collections, and specific works of art.

Sid presented the ‘Fun Award’ to me and Thomas for our work with the MakerBot.  We were able to use 123D Catch and Meshmixer to capture dozens of pieces at the museum.  Thomas and I were able to clean up and share most of them here on Thingiverse and more will be uploaded soon.  Check out our restoration work by looking at the digital rhinoplasty we performed!  Thomas Troy is only 14 and had never used any 3d modeling tools before this weekend, nor had he ever used a MakerBot.  Here is Thomas with his new Serapis swag.

We gave Sid Meier a model of the front cover of the first Civilization game, which I made with The Replicator and boy was he happy.  You can make your own by downloading Cover of Sid Meier’s Civilization.