Makeshop Monday: Destroying and Creating

Whenever Mike Foster, Jake Jallait and Cameron Kirsch are in the maker space I can count on a noisy period. At the beginning of the year, I mostly heard a lot of crashes, smashing and breaking as they (literally) tore through the small pile of discarded electronics in order to take apart whatever they could find. They realized that from destruction that they could put together a "frankenstein" computer from the parts they had dissembled. They set to work and focused on overclocking a CPU using a processor cooler they made from fans, heat sinks and duct tape. When they pushed that part to failure, they started working with a Raspberry Pi that the maker space had recently acquired. They are now working on figuring out Linux, playing games on their Pi, and are eventually planning tp mod and build their own machines (all while also making ping pong sets out of found material and playing guitar). They were inspired by talking with the IT staff here (they are conveniently located in the library as well) as well as just taking things apart and seeing how they work. What's especially awesome is that these guys are pretty much self-taught - although Cameron has built computers in the past, the rest of the guys are figuring it out as they go along.