I visited my second Mini Maker Faire on Saturday. This time it was at the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester. I didn’t get to see the Faire in its entirity because we were knackered after a day walking around the city but here a few of the highlights.

This used to be a G5 Mac. It’s now an internet enabled fish tank.

Just as well the goldfish inside is a fan of Mac OS…

The tank can be controlled either over the web or by an iOS app. The bubbles can be increased or stopped, the lights turned up or down. You can write messages and have them displayed on the board. The board is behind the tank in case you wondered!

I love sunflowers and there were several raised beds filled with them just outside the MOSI buildings.

Some of Turing’s Sunflowers

They’re Turing’s Sunflowers named after the codebreaker Alan Turing. He was studying the occurrence of the Fibonacci Sequence in sunflowers trying to find out more about the plants grow but died before he could finish his research.

I do love robots and this little plywood walking robot was very cute.

Bots walking

There was quite a lot of knitting at the Faire but I didn’t make it over to that section to it as I was too tired. I was shattered!

While we were in the city we looked at some of the Pre-Raphaelites in the Manchester Art Gallery. But before we got to see them we saw these pins on the gallery staircase.

Pins at the Manchester Art Gallery

While in Cardiff the weather was blisteringly hot, it was a different case in the North of England. But after the rain came this double rainbow.

In my last blog I wrote about digital mags. I hadn’t realised that there was a new kid on the block – Knit Edge.

Knit Edge issue 0 on my lovely new Nexus 7 tablet

It’s from Co-Operative Press and if you’re interested in taking out a subscription the first issue is published in September. My Nexus shows the special Issue 0 which is available to buy now for $3.99.