I recently spoke at TTI Vanguard’s NEXTGEN conference in Miami. Totally great experience to talk to some very high level folks about the work we are doing as Fabricatorz on the Qi Hardware and Milkymist Video Synthesizer project. Here are my slides. The first set I did on my laptop, and the second set I *performed* using the Milkymist! In 2012, I will try to use the Milkymist for any performances (no more presentations!).

I should note that the presentation title reflects popular interest in some of my topics, and not the specific words I would choose to represent what we are working on. In particular, we are staying away from using the words FREE, OPEN, COPYLEFT now in favor of Sharing, hence Sharism. Also, the word Hardware is a bit problematic because of what it conjures up for computer nerds as this an already manufactured piece of hardware, like the 400K iphones foxconn is churning out a day. We take it to mean more like the glass or metal that is part of a final product. To consider the Milkymist or our projects FROM CHINA is not completely accurate. While I spend a lot of time in China, the Milkymist in particular is manufactured mostly in Taiwan.

Oh well, words are words are words! Check out the slides below and please share. They are ✳ (shared by) me, aka: ✳ Fabricatorz.

(Click here for the SVG presentation or the SVG with outlines)

(Click here for the SVG presentation or the SVG with outlines)

Ask me about the event the next time you see me; I have some great stories to tell since this event was supposed to be mostly private during the conference.

In a more public showing, Yi from Qi Hardware is presenting about the Milkymist tonite (中文 at Xinchejian, the Shanghai-based hackerspace we held the first Sharism Presents Shanghai.

Don’t forget to Buy a Milkymist One for yourself or your friendz

Mole-Girl and the Anamoos from Hsiao-Lan Wang on Vimeo.

Story by Mia Zajicek
December 2011

Video production assisted by Daniel Zajicek and Hsiao-Lan Wang

Our own Dan (aka tri-jack, aka zajicek, akak quadrajack) put together a great video with his daughter and wife. Please enjoy! (I think there is a happy holla-daze in there somewhere too btw)

Dan and his wife are both great contemporary composers living in Houston. We hope to do more great projects together soon. They remind me that to make a real company, especially long term, you have to have solid family and healthy growth.

Anyway, they have a great lil family and a cute kid! Here’s to the FabriZajicek family!

In early September, Fabricatorz were contracted by Creative Commons to redesign and launch an updated website design in time for the Creative Commons Summit and its fall fundraising campaign. Later we were to roll-out the same theme across their other major websites. That means we had to crank out in a short time a theme that could be simplified, controlled from one set of master files, and change quickly based upon regular direction from CC staff, while making sure everything works well across five web engines: the main wordpress site, civicrm, the cc licensing engine, CC’s Wiki and search.creativecommons.org.

Christopher from Fabricatorz designed the site from some various suggestions from Creative Commons CEO Cathy Casserly and board member Esther Wojcicki. Christopher wisely pushed to build the design on top of HTML5Boilerplate, so that the site would be stable across modern browsers and all the way back to IE 7 and above on Windows, since many Creative Commons website viewers use Internet Explorer on Windows.

Like Open Font Library, the site is also built using CSS media queries so the design is responsive to different devices from desktop to iPad to mobile phone. And, since the site is HTML5, its using the latest in stable open web technologies.

The above CC Search is now fully themed to fit in as well, with the entire Creative Commons website. This small portal actually gets a lot of traffic from the main Creative Commons website, so its important that it works decent and can be a lightpost illuminating the path to Creative Commons-licensed content.

Fabricatorz are available now for hire to build websites, web apps, convert your website to the future, translate your site into many different languages like Chinese and/or start from the bottom or top, and complete your project! We are lining up projects for 2012 fast. Let’s talk about how we can work together on your project.