Northeast, but I travel southeast usually at least once a year! How's Lowe Mill in Huntsville sound for a fun date? 😉
MxRemy
I'm not like a huge fan of myself either, so there, we have a thing in common already lol
To all of the people whose reasons are something self-deprecating about their confidence/appearance/personality/etc:
I'll go on a date with you, if you want! ☺
I have voted twice a year, ever year, for the entire time I've been old enough. That said, I really can't remember the last time I actually expected any meaningful change from it... Electoralism is a bandaid at best, and a distraction at worst. At least in the U.S., maybe it's different elsewhere.
Aside from all the very valid criticisms everyone else has pointed out, there's one thing that always made it totally unusable for me... When you open the app, the very first thing it does is show your front-facing camera?? What kind of unhinged behavior is that, are they trying to ruin my day?!
This kinda conflates hate for the unethical practices of the company with hate for the quality of their products, which seems unfair. As a company they're definitely bastards. There was a long, long period of time where their products were pretty unquestionably top-notch compared to everything else out there. However, for a while now everything has been going really downhill. Then recently it's really accelerated, especially with them leaning into AI. These days I hardly even miss them anymore.
I think my biggest suggestion might be to try to avoid the huge industry of companies selling "makerspace" stuff to libraries, i.e. GlowForge, etc. All of it is wildly overpriced and underpowered, at the supposed tradeoff of having a lot of support. It's a bad trade, the support isn't worth it.
Try to build your own open source equipment, like Voron for 3d printing, OpenFlexure for microscopes, all the Precious Plastics designs for plastic scrap processing, etc. Building these from scratch is ultimately cheaper. Also, it means you'll know how to fix anything that could possibly go wrong, since you know it inside and out
Don't worry about not having the necessary skills/experience. It's all very learnable by anyone, and also there are definitely members of your community with those skills willing to help out. On that note, you really want the community running this thing more than the library admin. They know what they want/need.
Pay attention to the environmental and health consequences of this stuff EARLY ON, before you invest in something terrible. Use easily compostable materials like PHA and hempwood, or post-consumer recycled stuff like PETg from used soda bottles. Get into making/recycling your own materials if/when you can.
That's what i can think of for now, hopefully that's at all helpful.
I work in a makerspace, that's in a public library.
I'm like a 3-ish, and I do. I equally enjoy adult books though, if that helps or complicates whatever you're trying to suss out.
I use Reflow Filaments's PA-CF from recycled fishing nets all the time, it's WONDERFUL stuff. Might be using the same source?
I got the game as soon as I saw this post, and have been playing it off and on for the last few days. The UI isn't just bad, it's like kinda pretty broken! At least on my GrapheneOS/Pixel 7 Pro, anyway. The game is also really really confusing?
...All that said, I actually really like this idea, and I'll keep playing in hopes the rest improves over time. Also in hopes that anyone else in my area joins in lol, it's pretty quiet here.
Sounds like it's a date!
=°-°=