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Ellis D. Tripp's response already said some of what I was going to say.

But yes, Kodachome was discontinued several years *before* Ektachrome because the (admittedly clever) process was far more complex and demanding than the more recent- and by then, far more popular E6 process.

Kodachrome, for all that everyone went on about it- particularly when its discontinuation was announced in 2009- had been in decline in the face of E6 emulsions for a long time- since at least the late 1980s as far as I'm aware. Apparently Kodak had developed an ISO 400 version but didn't release it due to dislike and a lack of interest.

Given that it used a unique process that was not only more costly (AFAIK) than E6 but wouldn't have had the same benefits of scale- particularly with its declining popularity- and that as time went on fewer and fewer places could process it until latterly there was only one lab worldwide- in the US- able to process it (and complaints about the quality of processing latterly), you can see why it was burden on Kodak to support and why it was discontinued in the face of film sales that were falling rapidly overall anyway.

(I've no idea about whether its manufacture was more complex than other films too).

I'm absolutely certain Kodachrome's not coming back even with the slight revival of film in recent years- even that's slightly misleading in its prominence. In the past, film was a *very* mass market item- and the majority of users were people like my Mum who was never into photography per se, but only as a means to take snapshots of people and events. She had a point-and-click 126 camera; now she has a digital one. The vast majority of film sales were to people like that; as a means to an end. My Dad was a bit more into it and used to have rangefinders, SLRs and high-end compacts, but even he hasn't used film since he got a DSLR in 2008. I haven't used film in almost ten years.

For all that hipsters (if I wanted to be stereotypically disparaging!) use film and some people will always want it and support a niche market, it's not ever- in the remotely forseeable future- going to return to anything more than a small percentage of the sales it enjoyed.

There's probably an economically viable place for the E6-based Ektachrome in there. Kodachrome though? I can't see it ever being remotely viable again given the cost, uniqueness and support issues surrounding it- along with the fact that all the labs have now closed. Sales of the occasional roll to novelty-seeking hobbyists simply wouldn't come close to justifying the cost.

> ... Comcast really, really sucks when it comes to screwing-over the customer ...

Comcast is really, really good when it comes to screwing-over the customer ...

There, fixed it for you.

Maybe you're the one that wrote this backwards marketing copy

It is possible to smooth rough skies and such in Photoshop, I can't speak from personal experience with the GIMP but I'd expect something similar would work. I'd take the image, duplicate a regular (non-adjustment) layer on top of the main image, call that second one "smoothed"), blur it (Gaussian blur, fiddle with the radius to keep the effect gentle), add a layer mask to "smoothed" and paint it so that it only targets the sky in a shot. You may end up finding that you want to leave a little noise in the resulting image to avoid posterization, if your results are too smooth you can always adjust the opacity of the smoothed layer downward.

Your idea of using surplus is only good is you have whatever said surplus already laying around. I don't happen to have any of the old parts you mention (gameboys, zip drives, scanner, etc.) lying around, or you have a large enough surplus supply (electronic goldmine, ocean state electronics, ebay but prices get whacked quickly) on the market.

Experimenting with cheap 8-bit microcontrollers such as Microchip's PIC or Atmel's AVRs is quite cheap, and typically all you need is a chip and one (really cheap if want) device - a programmer to transfer the (binary/hex) programs from your PC to the microcontroller's flash memory.

You will quickly outgrow Radio Shack unless you need a part right now and you don't have the right one in your own stock pile, often referred to as a "junk box" regardless of actual physical size. You should be getting the free catalogs (or CDs) from Digikey, Mouser, Newark, and Jameco. These all have usable online ordering systems and reasonable minimum order & shipping fees. UK geeks check G3SEK's UK Component and Tool Suppliers web page.

Many useful projects can be made for less than $100 even if you need to buy all the parts. After you build a collection of common parts (common resistors, capacitor values, PIC 16F628, AVR AT90S2313, red & green LEDs, 2N2222A, 2N3904, 2N3906, 2N4401, 2N4403, 2N4416, 4N25, 1N4148, 1N4001, 1N4007, etc.) and tools this cost will go down.

The real question is do they assume a general audience or do they assume a "knowledgeable user" is their target market? If the stuff is purely "cookbook" & kit building (AmQRP kits as an example) with little or no encouragement (and knowledge transfer) for the average Make reader to explore and expand it won't survive IMHO. BTW AmQRP kits on their own are pretty limited at expanding your knowledge, but combined with the AMQRP Homebrewer magazine and Conference Proceedings they do teach a lot. There is also the QRP-L mailing list which is very useful for technical questions (and has a rich archive)

I think it should be what Nuts and Volts magazine tries to be, but without the "legacy" dead weight and filler articles. A gentler introduction to most of the Circuit Cellar type stuff.

If people think this will recreate the Homebrew Computer Club, I expect they will be mistaken, but if you expect it to awaken the curiousity and encourage youth to learn about electronics, then I hope it is a brillent success.

In the end, I am curious and not quite sure what to expect of Make. It could be really lame if all it ends up being is computer geeks pretending to be electronic engineers (or electronic hobbyists). I hope that at least 10% of it expands what I know, which is more than I can say of books like Hardware Hacking Projects for Geeks (O'Reilly) and Hardware Hacking: Have Fun While Voiding Your Warranty. I am more interested in reading stuff like Hacking the Xbox (An Introduction to Reverse Engineering) by Andrew "bunnie" Huang which starts simple but gets into FPGAs and reverse engineering.

First, choose which chip you want to use for most of your projects. The most popular for hobbyists (my personal choice too) is the pic16f84a. It can perform up to 5 million instructions per second, has 68 bytes of RAM and 64 bytes of static EEPROM. It costs around $4 per chip, but is fully reprogrammable, so you can reuse it as much as you want.

Then search the web for a programmer circuit for your PIC. Here is the one I built. It works very well and costs $20, total.

Happy hacking!

Christ, the article makes it sound like it's difficult to come by a PIC programmer or something. It's not. I built Michael Covington's No-Parts PIC Programmer (NOPPP) from Rat Shack parts in less than an evening (which, as you may know, is some sort of standard unit of time for electronics kit building). It has worked flawlessly for me ever since. It only programs the 16C84/16F84, but if all you want to do is get into PIC programming or build this funky clock, that's all you need!

For those of you who actually have the spare time to consider building this, a cheap easy-to-build programmer that can program the 16C84 chip can be found at Covington Innovations NOPPP

I origionally saw this programmer in "Electronics Now" magazine (Now "Poptronics") a couple years ago.

This is at least two years old. It's been around for a long while.

PICs are great little microcontrollers. Get one from DigiKey for around $6. A good programmer for them you can build is called the NOPPP. It's easy and cheap to build.

This guy built a better version of the propeller clock.

Hope this helps.