Recently Ben, Cliff and Claudio have built Diametric’s Mini Quadcopter. We met a fellow RepRap user- Diametric- at this years Midwest RepRap Festival in Elkhart Indiana. He brought along a 3D printed quadcopter that he designed and built.

The quadcopters are remarkably inexpensive, the design, models and bill of materials can be found on Thingiverse. They are easy to build and easy to get off the ground. We’re still learning how to fly them however. While all three have taken flight, we have had some accidents and damaged the frames on 2 of them, twice. We’re not too worried when that happens, for we can always reprint the frame within about an hour and a half on one of our 3D printers.

It would seem to be that those involved with the Zombie Walk this weekend had an excellent time. We’re terribly sorry to those of you who couldn’t make it, and equally sorry to those who do not enjoy this sort of thing. It was all a great time with a bunch of people just being goofy for the sake of being goofy. Everyone needs a little entertainment every now and then.

The walk started at G.E. Patterson and S. Main out front of Ernestine & Hazels where it progressed north down S. Main to Beale St. From there every zombie traveled down to the New Daisy where the walk ended. There were really tons of types of zombies. It was estimated that 500 people where there participating. We did not get the opportunity to make use of this public event to advertise ourselves like we had hoped, but we still had a blast and that was the great thing. There was tons to see and plenty of material for pictures. Take a look at our Flickr account if you’d like to see more. Let’s try and make it where we have even more people and something even more elaborate next year. It seems to be that stranger you are at this the more you stood out. John was even mentioned in the Flyer’s YouTube video post for this year.

Just to try and get as much of the word out there as possible. THERE WILL BE NO MEETING ON May 28th 2010!

A handful of the members will be at the Zombie Walk (see the wiki) during the normal time of this meeting. Everyone who wants to is welcome to come, whether it be dress up and parade as a zombie through downtown Memphis, or as a potential victim, or simply as a supporter of the event. We hope all members that are capable, will come down and help promote Midsouth Makers in whatever way they can. The event starts at 6:30 PM (I highly doubt you will be able to miss the zombies) at Earnestine & Hazel’s on South Main St. We’ve heard that the crowd is rather impressive and makes it hard to find each other if you don’t all get there at the same time. Well obviously that isn’t going to happen without everyone standing on one foot while whistling the Pac Man theme and the planets aligning in the heavens. So as an alternative, there is an invention we all love, the cell phone. If you would like to have my number to call and meet up feel free to send me an e-mail at dhess@midsouthmakers.org and I’ll gladly send it to you so you can find us. Hopefully everyone is excited about going, and we look forward to seeing you there!

You got it, we have our very own Zombie Walk here in Memphis.  Who woulda thought that we would actually have something cool.  For those of you who aren’t into the geeky aspect of zombies, I do seriously apologize for the fun that you will miss out on.  Any who, this event has gone on since spring of 2007 and is back again for its fourth run.  Maybe this will be a good chance for us to get out there, have some fun, and put ourselves in a visible light while doing so.

The general idea is this.  You dress up like a zombie.  You meet a Beale St. dressed like said zombie.  When the walk begins, you “travel” (not exactly walk) down a predetermined path “attacking” the people that are clearly marked as “innocent bystanders.”  Rinse, eat brains, repeat.  Sounds like fun right?  Well then let’s make sure that some of us are there.  Hope there are plenty available to attend, and I hope everyone has a blast being slightly straaaaaaaaaaange.