Design

Yesterday we enjoyed an afternoon at the Oakland Museum of California. Just like most things Oakland, most of the Bay Area only vaguely knows about it and has never been there. And, like most things Oakland, it's awesomely great.

First off, they have great shows. The current one is no exception, it's called 'The Birth of the Cool'. It's all about the pivotal role California-based artists and designers played in the late-fifties early-sixties, when the whole concept of 'cool' came into being. It's a wonderfully arranged show with many original pieces from many famous Californians, the Eames included (of course). Had no idea that they designed a line of speakers (which looked awesome). The second half of the show is called 'Cool Remixed' and it's a celebration of current youth culture and art in the Bay Area. They are having a big event on July 11th as well, with bands and artists and all sorts of cool stuff.

Thanks to the case of Veeck v. Southern Building Code Congress International, a group called public.resource.org has been posting various codes online for free, including all of the California 2007 Codes.

We were invited to be on a panel at this year's Maker Faire concerning 'Maker couples' or in other words couples that work together creatively in their own businesses. We were joined by our wonderful friends over at Instructables, Eric and Christy, and the panel was held by Heather Gold of the Heather Gold Show. Luckily for us it was live-streamed and captured to the interwebs!

We get a lot of friends and folks asking us about how we got started. And we know a lot of folks through the Maker Faire that would love to turn Pro. I thought I'd jot down the six big things that I see as being key elements to getting started. I hope they help, and would love to hear more from other folks!

We completed our delivery to SunPower's ( http://www.sunpowercorp.com ) new digs in Richmond, the tables, stools and benches we designed and made for them.
All the furniture has custom colored pieces that match their company colors.
And everything is made with FSC certified maple, and color dyed with water based pigments.

We saw them on desks. We saw them on lawns. We even saw them on a car. But by far the best was still the one where it was taped to a rock in the wilds of remote Australia:

A big thanks goes out to Clinton & Meech, who will be receiving a real Squirrel Table of their very own shortly (well, shortly being how long it takes to get to the outback)!
Thanks everyone for the pictures!

The San Francisco Cannery does a food drive every year, and this year they approached us to make a tree that would be their "Giving - Tree", filled with canned goods that are being donated to the food drive.

We had a bast at Maker Faire in Austin earlier this month, and are just now getting settled down enough to reflect on it.

We, and many other out of towners, were able to sleep on site at a camping area right next to the faire. This was really cool, as we were able to hang out all night with other makers and see the faire at night.

We heave returned at last from that great state of Texas and come back from Maker Faire with 5 - that's right ... count em'... 5 blue ribbons for our Art Golf, mini-golf course!

We have been working steadily on ARTGOLF- designing and building the play fields. We have gotten to the point of play testing the fields.... and it is awesome!

Here we have the castle - complete with draw bridge that goes up and down, being play tested by a BWC employee...

it's awesome.

Check on all the updates and more photos of the ArtGolf project at ArtGolf.org

We made a Pachinko Machine too. Here, you putt up the ramp and your ball is shot through the maze of Pachinko-ness, then lands in one of three holes:

hooray!
We do more testing tomorrow!