Makerbot Thing-o-Matic #3382

This year I got one of the best Christmas presents ever. It's called a Thing-o-Matic and it's made by a company called Makerbot Industries and what the Thing-o-Matic does is it creates three dimensional objects out of plastic. You give it a file, hit print, and you end up with a thing.

As you can imagine these types of machines are complicated and very expensive. The cheapest one I know of other then the Thing-o-Matic starts at $25,000 which is a bit out of my price range but Makerbot Industries is all about open source and low budget so what you get when you order a Thing-o-Matic is a box of parts that you get the pleasure building yourself.

I spent about 15 hours putting my Makerbot together over a two week time frame and here's a time lapse video that I made of the whole process.

 Below are some images of my first few prints and my final Makerbot Thing-o-Matic.

 click to embiggen.

Oregon Time Lapse

Here's a time lapse video I shot on my way out to Oregon.  Enjoy.

Time-Lapse Motion Lego Rig

I spent some time this weekend playing with my Legos.  To be specific it's my Lego Mindstorm Robotics Kit!  As proof of concept I created this time-lapse motion rig.  I was taking a shot every five seconds and I found the best way to sync my camera to the rig was to use the mic and sense when the shutter released.  I've got some ideas on how to make the whole thing a lot better and it's a hell of a lot cheaper then some professional rig.

Here's the video.

Here's the rig.

click to embiggen

NYC Time Lapse

I spent the past week in Manhattan. I had some time set aside to explore and play with some more landscapes. I've got a few in the works but they can take days to process one out and see if I even like it. Please bear with me while I work through them.

I would like to share with you this time lapse I shot on the first day of our trip when the wind was kicking through the city. I shot this right from the hotel room. Since it was only a test I didn't shoot for very long and now I'm kicking my self for not looking for additional angles through out the day.

I am also teaching myself Adobe After Effects. That's how I got the zoom to happen over time. It's almost impossible to do it in camera unless you've got a super crazy rig and I don't.

"For my second trick..."

I did this time-lapse video of one of the Minnesota RollerGirls bouts this past season and I just wanted to share it with the world again.  It's just so damn pretty.  I want to give some props to my friend Luke Harper at Audio Altimeter for all the help with the music.  We've got a couple more in mind that we would like to do in the future.