So yesterday I had an unexpectedly awesome day. My dad is helping out with a group called Minddrive. Its a really cool program that takes a group of underprivileged city kids and with the help of a group of professionals they build an electric car. This is the second year of the program and one of the cool things they do is go to a bunch of trade shows to show off their work. Here’s what they’ve been working on for the last couple of months. It’s pretty awesome. (please excuse the bad picture of the awesome car)

So yesterday they were down at Union Station for the KC Maker Faire. I love Make Magazine, its in my RSS feed, and I read it everyday but somehow I missed that this weekend was the Maker Faire in KC.

It was a lot of fun. Tons of different kinds of projects and groups were showing their creations. My favorites were all of the 3D printers. I really wish I had the need for a 3D printer for prototypes but alas I’m not a mad scientist yet. Soooooon, but not yet. And yesterday I took another step toward scientific villany, or heroism.

I learned how to solder! Soo awesome, and really easy! Now I’ve just got to spend some quality time with my electronics kit so I know what I’m doing.

The comic you see in the corner of the picture was an incredibly helpful and informative how-to for beginner solderers. I found it online at MightyOhm. One thing I adore about the maker culture is the general desire of makers to help everyone around them hack their world.

It’s a good thing. Check it out!