This Week in Making: Nation of Makers, RPi Meets Particle, and a Butter-Passing Bot

Learn from experience is something that takes time and patience. It’s very individualized. If your goal is to have standardized approaches to learning, where everybody learns the same thing at the same time in the same way, then learning by doing doesn’t really fit that mold anymore. — Dale Dougherty in an interview with NPR’s Eric Westervelt

[Read the full announcement on Tested]

Nation of Makers is an independent nonprofit that just launched with the support of over 300 maker organizations. It’s geared at makers who make makerspaces and opportunities for makers to make. Their vision is “to build a society where everyone has access to the tools, technologies, experiences and knowledge to make anything; to create a thriving, connected, and inclusive community of practice where collaboration fosters a culture of abundance.” Right now, you can help out by signing up for their newsletter and, of course, getting involved with your local maker movement.

Adam talks about the organization in more detail in the video below.

This week, it was announced that starting November 22nd, Raspberry Pi will be able to use Particle Cloud for data collection.

Fans of the show Rick and Morty may recognize this butter passing bot. While his character doesn’t get a lot of screen time in the show, the existential question and response definitely strikes a cord.

If you’re looking to add a DIY lathe to your arsenal of woodworking tools, Suso Caamanho recently finished up a series of videos on how to build and use one just this week. We’ve written about Suso’s Paosan YouTube channel before and this build, like his others, includes plans as well as the instructions you’ll need to make your own.

Not this week (not even this week in 1957), but here… have this article on the history of the pink flamingo. You might need it. What for, I couldn’t say, but you just might so here you go.

Those photographs of bullets bursting through fruit aren’t just a matter of lucky timing. Ted Kinsman sends us another awesome look at science photography in this article that covers not just how these are done, but how this kind of photography gets taught in a classroom.