Vox Import

Capsule SF Street Fair

Cap_home

Today is one of the semi-anual Capsule SF street fairs in Hayes Valley.  It may look gray today, but actually it provides the best light to look at all the great clothes, baby clothes, hand made jewelry, hats, bags, wallets and all kinds of other handmade stuff made by people in the bay area!

I'll be there manning the Piximix booth, which if you didn't know, is a company I run with two other partners (who will be at Fanime today for you San Jose folks!).  We sell t-shirts, bags, buttons, key chains and books.  You might recongnize some of our designs from some of your favorite vox themes (Appley Rotten and Pixipets in the "Branded" section of the theme picker).

So come down and see us in Hayes Valley this afternoon, 11am to 6pm!  Grab some Blue Bottle Coffee to start your day, then when you're tired out, have some coffee at Momi Toby's cafe, or lunch/dinner at Frjtz, Flippers Burgers, Patxi Pizza or the many other restaurants in the area.  Piximix will be on Linden St. on the same side as Blue Bottle coffee.  Stop by and see us!

Flight of the Bumblebee

I came home this weekend after being away all day and found my cat Io with blood on his face:

Afflicted Io

I could see his spotted muzzle from outside through the window.  I was alarmed but Io didn't seem very distressed so I thought it might just be superficial.  I immediately blamed Jackson (the other cat) and decided it was time to cut their nails.  I picked Io up to examine his nose and face for cuts.  I could seem to find anything, and there didn't seem to be a clear source of bleeding.
I then examined the spots more closely and finally realized what it was.  Io's face was covered with pollen from the lilies on the kitched table!  He had taken it upon himself to visit and pollenate all the flowers. So, now I call him bumblebee.

Kitchen Lilies

Bay to Breakers

Sunday was the yearly always wacky always drunken Bay to Breakers race.  It turns out that this guy:

Gilbert Okari

won the race in just over 34 minutes (Gilbert Okari), but hours later, only halfway through the race, people like this guy didn't seem to care that their time was not even close:

Ajax

What is going on here?  You guessed it, drunken revalry.  I recently learned that this race has been going on since 1906 when it was started as a way to lift the spirits of earthquake weary San Franciscans with a public event that spanned the entire city.  I have no idea how it got to be the spectical its become today, but it couldn't be better.

I always run into somebody I know at this, despite there being throngs upon throngs of people, and this year I managed to find Nick a.k.a Colonel Sanders along with his favorite fast food Rebecca a.k.a. Wendy:

Every year that I've watched this race its always been from the side lines but this year Col. Sanders and Wendy invited us to join their fast food nation and walk with them to the park.  Its certainly a different perspective and I began to understand why people are willing to create enormous tiki bars built on top of shopping carts loaded with beer kegs;  Its a blast and with enough people and enough beer its easy to push your mobile bar and be part of an always, albeit very slowly, moving party.  Plus you get to see all of San Francisco, dance to different music every block and do all kinds of crazy things during a time of  day you'd normally be sleeping in.

For more photos, check out this album:

Bay to Breakers 2007

Maker Faire

Robot Giraffe

This Saturday we went to the Maker Faire in San Mateo.  I missed last year's inaugural event so I was determined to see this one.  The first thing on my list was the power tool drag races.  This is an event that has taken place a few times before in San Francisco, but I was never able to catch it.  However on our way in we were distracted by a big crowd watching the Coke and Mentos guys.  I didn't take any pictures since the original video of this is so much better than what I could have snapped above several heads from the back of the crowd.

These guys spend a lot of time working the crowd, but everyone just wanted to see the coke bottles explode.  They finally did and well, it was pretty cool, but again, the video really shows it off better.  Next was the power tool drag races.  Take a bunch of old power tools, add more wheels or cutting blades to enable it to propel itself in one general direction, add power and bam!  We got to see one race plus a TV jump/crash before technical difficulties caused us to move on.  Here's the  blow by blow (in reverse chronological order, sorry) of the jump:

Life Sized "Mouse Trap"

Next, we got to watch a full, life sized version of "The Mouse Trap" a great board game I had as a kid.  In this game you drew cards, rolled dice and moved peices around somehow until someone ended up underneath this cage on the board.  At this point another person could trip the opposite end of this Rube Goldberg machine which would eventually drop the cage on the doomed player.  I never actually played the game, I just set up the machine and tripped it over and over.  The makers of this life sized version also realized that this was the real point of the game and built this machine to glorify it.

After watching the better mouse trap we wandered about some of the exhibit halls seeing giant lego train cities, small electronic projects, many instruments that played themselves, fabricating machines, catapults and trebuchets, a amusement park  where all the rides are self powered via canabalized bicycles, cupcake cars, robots and fire.  I wish I could list everything, but so much of it would take much longer to explain than to just look at or touch or play with, which is exactly why this fair exists.  Here's a gallery with just a few of the amazing things we saw:

Maker Faire 2007

@ the Utah

I'm trying to catch up on a lot of photos that have been piling up.  Here's a few shots of some great looking 6Aers at the Hotel Utah celebrating some hard work over the previous week.  Its been a long time since we've taken off early to relax a little bit in our office away from the office, and it felt pretty good.
 

Mixed Signals

Parking Sign