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I'd also argue that DIY Tech should have a stronger electronics background

Why an electronics background? Being able to grow your own food may be more useful if you want Do It Yourself projects. That or building a shelter. Of course being able to repair if not design and build your own electronics could pay more than being able to clothe, feed, and shelter yourself with your own hands. Then again why limit yourself, why not learn unrelated subjects? For instance "Makezine" has had projects on mycology or growing mushrooms as well as on using a Gardino microprocessor to water an indoor garden, give them more light, or warn when it gets too cold.

I read "Makezine" and want to try to do half of the projects it has. Unfortunately while I have plenty of tyme I don't have much money, I'm on disability and don't work. Perhaps I can make things and sell them.

Falcon

If you have ~$300 to drop on the project, Make has plans for a nice book scanner: http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2009/04/how-to_book_scanner_on_the_cheap.html It seems to hold the pages at an angle so there's little-to-no distortion on the page.

Video link with the Apple II cameo: http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2009/01/qrs_halts_production_of_player_pian.html?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890

-molo

storage. If you honestly -fill- that 1.5TB that you purchased in such a short amount of time that you do not have the budget to purchase another 1TB, 1.5TB, 2TB drive (etc.) at the end of that time, then you need to reconsider either..
- what you store (do you -really- need to save all the pictures you're saving now?) - how you store it (do you -really- need them in RAW/TIFF format?)

I save all my film and all I have scanned so far is low res images, when I've turned in my film for development I ordered a CD of the photos as well. However I plan on rescanning my film with the scanner I got, which scans at higher resolutions than most film developers offer.

The 5D Mark II 21.1MP is NOT 21,100,000 pixels. It's only 21,026,304. Did you know that?

Complain to Canon then, the specs say "Total pixels: Approx. 22.0 megapixels" and "Effective pixels: Approx. 21.1 megapixels". However medium format cameras, I'd like to get a 645 with a film back to use until I can afford a digital back for it, use larger film for larger digitized images. Doing quick calculations a 6mm X 4.5mm film, which my scanner can scan, is 2.4" X 1.6". My scanner optically scans 6400 dpi so a frame of 645 film would generate a file bigger than 150MB. And that's not counting colour depth, my scanner can scan 48 bit colour depths.

Of course by the tyme I'd need space to store those digitized images I should be able to afford multi-terabyte raid storage. However going back to my original reply, just because some people can't imagine needing terabytes of storage doesn't mean it won't be used by anyone.

There's 8 bits in a byte, so... 1,009,262,592 bits / 8 bits = bytes. That's the RAW data in bytes. That's nowhere near 500MB.

That depends on how "near" is defined. 126,157,824 divided by 1024, 1 Megabyte = 1 Kilobyte X 1024, equals 123,201 MBs. That tymes 4 equals 492.804 MBs. That raw file is more than 100 MBs and 4 of them use almost 500 MBs.

That's not even counting compression

And if you don't want to lose details you don't compress. Especially if you're opening, editing, and resaving the photos. Every time a jpeg is opened, edited, and resaved the photo degrades.

Honestly, that article brings up a heck of a lot more issues about Alamy than just the MB vs MiB thing;

The only reason I provided the link to the article was to highlight the issue, because it is an issue, of whether a megabyte is 1 Kilobyte X 1024, 1 Kilobyte X 1000, or 1 byte X 1,000,000 and the same with terabytes. There was no other purpose of posting the link, whether you agree or disagree with those in the thread.

P.S. Love that you do film;

I grew up on film, I don't even have a cheap point-and-shoot digicam. I thought of getting one that's easy to modify to shoot infrared though. "Make" zine had a good article on converting cameras to shoot IR.

I like the dynamic range of film much better than digital

Although not the best, the Epson V500 scanner I have has a DMax of 3.4.

if you already have the film rolls it doesn't burn money so much anyway (developing still costs, of course).

Yeap, I have film. I have some C41 negatives but I shoot mostly E6 slides now. As for costs of developing, there's a local organization, IFP, I plan to join that has darkrooms members can use. I've got that Epson scanner so I can digitize my film so when I join IFP I'll have access to a darkroom as well. I'll need to learn to develop slides though, all I've developed so far is B&W and C41 film. That is if IFP has the chemicals for E6. If not I'll have to pay someone else to develop my film or use C41 negatives again.

Falcon

Correct me if I'm wrong, but EMP does not just wipe out 'digital' circuits. I believe it will just as effectively destroy any circuitry, including the kind in ham radios.

Vacuum tubes are semi-tolerant of EMPs. I can hear the gasp, vacuum tubes? Yes, they are still being sold and used. Here's a "Make" video on making your own vacuum tubes.

Falcon

Get creative with parts. Use cardboard or sheet plastic for the circuit board material (careful not to melt the plastic with soldering irons). Use a cereal box, or some other small box, or PVC for the project box. Get the kids to bring creative parts from home.
 
  Build a metal detector.
 
  The Electronic Goldmine and others offer assorted parts in an unsorted box for cheap. You could buy bulk parts like this and have the kids sort them (make them learn how to measure components in the process). As a warning, sometimes you get a lot of what you don't need and very little of what you do. Resistors and capacitors can be combined to get what you need most of the time, but not always the case with the ICs. Get those from Mouser or Digikey. Read Make Blog for ideas, they're good. Recently they linked to a guy using a sponge and ferric chloride to etch circuit boards cheap, easy and fast.

I've found the best way to meet people is expand on your own interests. Join groups that do things you like to do. It's not all tech-gadgetry, but you can find a lot of geeky stuff through Make: - including local groups, events, etc.

Actually, I think we're seeing a bit of a comeback. Hackerspaces are mushrooming around the world. (I like to believe the talk at the 24th Chaos Computer Congress in December 2007, Building a Hacker Space, helped provide impetus to this movement.) I also believe DIY culture is on the rise again, as spearheaded by Make.

So I'd say it's not so much that hacking is dying off rather than being handed over to the new generation, which has its own interests.

Make magazine had this covered back a while ago:

http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2005/10/diy_gps_tracking.html
http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2005/10/diy_gps_tracking_with_mologogo.html

Mologogo with a cheap $60 cell phone.

Before your kid leaves for the day, check her bag and make sure it's on and working properly.
When she gets home, put the cell phone on the charger.

In the event that you loose your kid, you check the website and Mologogo will tell you where the kid is at.
My phone can tell me where any of my friends are, yours should to.

Easy peasy.

Make magazine had this covered back a while ago:

http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2005/10/diy_gps_tracking.html
http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2005/10/diy_gps_tracking_with_mologogo.html

Mologogo with a cheap $60 cell phone.

Before your kid leaves for the day, check her bag and make sure it's on and working properly.
When she gets home, put the cell phone on the charger.

In the event that you loose your kid, you check the website and Mologogo will tell you where the kid is at.
My phone can tell me where any of my friends are, yours should to.

Easy peasy.

Toilet Breaks? Tell him he's doing it wrong.

The dude doesn't even have a pod.

• Meaningful and specific parts lists shall be included.
• Cases shall be easy to open.
• Batteries should be replaceable.
• Special tools are allowed only for darn good reasons.
• Profiting by selling expensive special tools is wrong and not making special tools available is even worse.
• Torx is OK; tamperproof is rarely OK.
• Components, not entire sub-assemblies, shall be replaceable.
• Consumables, like fuses and filters, shall be easy to access.
• Circuit boards shall be commented.
• Power from USB is good; power from proprietary power adapters is bad.
• Standard connecters shall have pinouts defined.
• If it snaps shut, it shall snap open.
• Screws better than glues.
• Docs and drivers shall have permalinks and shall reside for all perpetuity at archive.org.
• Ease of repair shall be a design ideal, not an afterthought.
• Metric or standard, not both.
• Schematics shall be included.

http://makezine.com/04/ownyourown/

Of course it isn't news.
Here is some of dem linkies!

Link 1
Link 2
Link 3!

Yea, building a VU or SPL meter is soooo easy that even an MIT student can build one. Timothy, did your mother know that you posted this story? GO TO YOUR ROOM.

the big difference is, that the wiimote needs to have an IR camera. In the presented method the receptors are cheap infrared sensors. The position is calculated by decoding the patterns the projectors send.
A similar technique has been used to calibrate the image of a projector to a surface. Here is a video: http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2008/04/automatic_projector_calib.html

All he would need to pick up with the EEG is "up" or "down" signals, and it could be used to type very quickly with Dasher

http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2009/04/single-finger_text_input_1.html

http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/dasher/Demonstrations.html

Shiny and Quality are not mutually exclusive.

It depends on what sort of object and how one defines "shiny".

Quality tools usually have an understated aesthetic, a wabi sort of thing that is attractive, but that I wouldn't call "shiny" -- indeed it's sort of deliberately "anti-shiny". I'd never buy a hammer whose designers tried to make it shiny.

Quality toys can of course be shiny, the shininess being part of their toy nature. And some things partake of both the tool and the toy nature -- such as a sports car or an electric guitar.

However, proprietary and quality are mutually exclusive: if you can't open it, you don't own it. And Apple is the king -- or at least an archduke -- of proprietary.

"Yes, you can't even open the case to replace the battery, but how shiny the buttons are!"

Check out Make: Magazine at your local library or newsstand. We didn't actually create Make: as a classroom text (and it definitely isn't), but we've received hundreds of letters from teachers who suddenly discovered that kids love its hands-on project-based approach to science and tech. Kids like that we're not afraid to have a some raucous fun with tech and that we don't talk down to them. And you don't have to spend a dime to check it out. Just camp out on http://makezine.com/ for a few days. If you happen to be in the Bay Area May 30th, 31st, bring your students to Maker Faire at the San Mateo Expo Center. Students (13 - 20) can spend an entire day at Maker Faire for $10 if tickets are purchased in advance. Compare that to Six Flags. And MakerShed.com has some awesome DIY tech kits for middle schoolers and teens as well. Good Luck!

Makezine ran an article last week on an interesting robot that looks appropriate for that age group.

http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2009/02/100_linux_wallwart_launches.html?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890

http://dailydiy.com/2009/02/24/100-linux-wall-wart-launches/

Last month, Make Television on PBS showed how to make one of those Hoverman antennas using coat hangers, a pipe and some pieces of wood. Here's the video.

http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2009/01/maker_workshop_dtv_antenna_steadyca.html

Here are some GPL'd antenna designs I also found on a different site.

http://www.digitalhome.ca/ota/superantenna/design.htm

MAKE:blog has some descriptions of some DIY sun-trackers to move the panel with the sun during the day.

You laugh. Ever stand under high-tension power lines holding a fluorescent tube above your head? Try it some time. You'll find the results surprising.

1000+ Fluorescent lights powered by overhead cables

http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2007/05/1000_fluorescent_lights_p.html

If you do decide to go nuclear on your old drive, take it apart and salvage some parts first. The magnets used in the voice coil (which positions the read arm over the platters) are pretty strong and handy to have. The motor for the platters is compact and powerful and very smooth.

If you are satisfied to just wipe the drive, but not destroy it, and you have no further use for it, may I suggest making wind chimes from the platters.

here's a torrent of the show for those interested, it wasn't in the article/post but there is one:

http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2009/01/bittorrent_of_make_television_episo.html

Find a job where the people there are into technology. Some places, the developers consider software to be a job, and when they go home they watch TV and go to sporting events. Other places they go home and collaborate on projects, build Battlebots, and read Make magazine.

Talk to the developers. You might think that the company where they build robots with lasers would be staffed with industrious geeks, but it might turn-out that the corporate environment stifles such people.

You might want to talk to people in user's groups. Find your local LUG, IGDA chapter, ACM meeting, or IEEE charter. See where those people work (or don't work, if they aren't your type)

oops... http://www.makezine.com/controller.

Except a fair percentage of those arrested are not doing anything wrong. Remember in the U.S.A. guilt is established by a jury of your peers not by a rent-a-cop with a junior high education.

Unfortunately, it's subscription only, but this month's Make magazine has an article by a MIT student caught up in TSA's grasp:

http://makezine.com/16/simpson/

When I was younger, I think I did a lot more pleasure reading than my peers. I'd give any budding geek a subscription to Make Magazine. It's a quarterly, but there's a lot of neat info packed into each issue that run through a spectrum if interests. http://makezine.com/

BTM

Science in Make is ambient - it doesn't hit you over the head.

My attempt to encourage science is the Open Source Hardware <Shameless-plug> High-Speed Photography Kit Version 4</Shameless-plug>

It's nothing you can't build yourself.

How about a subscription to Make or Craft, backed by your commitment of time and money towards a project per issue?

How about a subscription to Make or Craft, backed by your commitment of time and money towards a project per issue?

As someone called in to a local radio station, "Haven't those guys passed their sell-by date?". Will there be an Elvis expansion pack?

Some other genres are worse. Rock Band could probably emulate all existing house music with about half an hour of samples and a state machine to mix them. Oh, wait.

old clocks are chock full of brass gearing and bearings. steer clear of antique shops though, since you will definitely pay way to much for something you are planning on destroying anyway.

Also, kinex and lego mindstorms have nice stuff, but I think you are talking about much larger structures?

Bicycle repair shops come to mind for stuff larger than clockwork.

hobbyist organisations no doubt have resources to check. Check out Make magazine's forums for people who do what you are planning
http://makezine.com/community/

That's the beauty of it - with a robotic exoskeleton you won't need to retire! They can put you to use as power cargo loaders!

Some one beat you to it.

On a more serious note, I wonder if IR camera jammers work on these cameras, and if use of them doesn't trip 'concealment' alerts since it doesn't prevent any person from seeing the plate. An LED array around the plate is certainly easier to remotely control and not as suspicious looking. Might be time to actually build one of those like I've been planning...

And the next thing you know, you'll be growing your own lawn chairs or sprouting trees in your parking space.

Actually, both of those projects can be done in a shorter time frame, but are probably better for the beginning of spring, rather than the end of summer. (Although the latter will be done again 9/19/08 in San Francsico).

*with apologies to websites in case of slashdotting.

My girlfriend made something like this from better homes and gardens.

Find a really attractive box that matches your decor. Drill or cut a hole in one side, and feed a power strip into it. Plug in all of your electronics. Drill bunches of other holes. Pull just as much of the power cables as you need out the holes. If desired, cover the box in something pretty, like a doily or red napkin. Pray it doesn't overheat.

what if we let athletes do whatever they wanted in excel?

Aargh! Everything is being done in excel these days. Starting with meeting minutes and ending with drawing pictures or mechanical parts. But for christ's sake don't let them put hands on PowerPoint!

I don't own a GM but based on their RSS feeds someone at Make Magazine forum might know. They discuss a lot of that kind of thing.

Um... You really ought to check the sources a bit closer than that, eh?

The editorial you complain about appeared in this article. KDawson took from that source, not from the original Worcester Telegram article.

In fact the article actually states:

"Mr. Deebâ(TM)s home lab likely violated the regulations of many state and local departments, although officials have not yet announced any penalties. "

I would like to point out that this was a view expressed by the reporter, not a quote from Ms Wilderman or Mr Ferson (both quoted elsewhere). A more relevant quote would be...

Pamela A. Wilderman, Marlboro's code enforcement officer, said Mr. Deeb was doing scientific research and development in a residential area, which is a violation of zoning laws.

... a finding I feel would be hard to enforce, with respect to the materials. His actions may have been against zoning laws, but unless the materials THEMSELVES are prohibited by regulation/law, I feel that confiscating them would require a more firm foundation.

Good job, moderators. On http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2008/08/home_science_under_attack.html it says:

The Worcester Telegram & Gazette reports that Victor Deeb, a retired chemist who lives in Marlboro, has finally been allowed to return to his Fremont Street home, after Massachusetts authorities spent three days ransacking his basement lab and making off with its contents.

Deeb is not accused of making methamphetamine or other illegal drugs. He's not accused of aiding terrorists, synthesizing explosives, nor even of making illegal fireworks. Deeb fell afoul of the Massachusetts authorities for ... doing experiments.

Authorities concede that the chemicals found in Deeb's basement lab were no more hazardous than typical household cleaning products. Despite that, authorities confiscated âoeall potentially hazardous chemicalsâ (which is to say the chemicals in Deeb's lab) from his home, and called in a hazardous waste cleanup company to test the chemicals and clean up the lab.

Pamela Wilderman, the code enforcement officer for Marlboro, stated, âoeI think Mr. Deeb has crossed a line somewhere. This is not what we would consider to be a customary home occupation.â

Allow me to translate Ms. Wilderman's words into plain English: "Mr. Deeb hasn't actually violated any law or regulation that I can find, but I don't like what he's doing because I'm ignorant and irrationally afraid of chemicals, so I'll abuse my power to steal his property and shut him down."

Really? Gosh, I could have sworn I read it here, which, (amazing coincidence!) is linked to in the summary (and sadly, now appears slashdotted.

Obre los ojos man.

Actually, the sensationalizing was done on the blog, (the second link of three in the summary). Can't blame kdawson (directly) for this one.

actually, that quote is from the MAKE article/guest post thing by Robert Bruce Thompson: http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2008/08/home_science_under_attack.html

[...]Pamela Wilderman, the code enforcement officer for Marlboro, stated, "I think Mr. Deeb has crossed a line somewhere. This is not what we would consider to be a customary home occupation."
Allow me to translate Ms. Wilderman's words into plain English: "Mr. Deeb hasn't actually violated any law or regulation that I can find, but I don't like what he's doing because I'm ignorant and irrationally afraid of chemicals, so I'll abuse my power to steal his property and shut him down."
In effect, the Massachusetts authorities have invaded Deeb's lab, apparently without a warrant, and stolen his property[...]

seriously, what is so special about this ?

Wow... Someone has a serious lack of Imagination. Here is what is special about this:

These guys manage the most actively hostile network on the planet. Just bringing your laptop/cell phone/PDA within wireless range of this event is asking for trouble. These are the people that put your username/password up on a giant wall of sheep if you choose to use an unencrypted connection for e-mail/web browsing.

Have you considered the challenges of maintaining a server in this environment? You are one giant target for the world's largest collection of black/grey/red-hats in the world. Let's just say that there would be a substantial amount of "iStreet-cred" if you were to 0wn the firewall.

Now, if you read the article, they describe how they setup their wireless network. They keep things very simple and maintain centralized configurations. If you are setting up a network in a potentially hostile environment, their model is a good one to follow. Why? Here are a few reasons:

• Users: 2,226 and 3,801 DHCP leases issued
• 22 Access Points deployed
• Man-in-the-Middle Attacks detected: 215
• DoS Attacks: ~80
• Rouge AP's Detected and Destroyed: 130
• Wireless Bridges Detected: 300
• ARP MAC Spoofing Attempts: 836
• Traffic for the last 30 hours: IN 12gb / OUT 1.2gb

Think your network can handle that? Let's take a look at one of the interesting ones - the Rogue AP's.

The people that run defcon (and many of the attendees) eat these attacks for lunch. These people triangulate wireless signals within a high-em noise environment with enough multipath to give K-9 a headache. They manage to actively seek and destroy rogue AP's (not to mention the ARP spoofing!) while maintaining a healthy network. You don't think that's special!?

Now, what about hardware reliability? Heck, if I had a choice between two pieces of gear and one of them had a "Survived DefCon 2008" sticker on it, I could tell you what I would be picking up. They had a nice Cisco fiber switch (no real surprise) but I have never heard of the Aruba AP's before. I know I'll at least check them out now. Do you not think that exposing battle-proven hardware to electronics-consuming people is special?

Look at the software too. BSD & pf. No real surprise there either. When you want ungodly-stable network filtering - that is the way to go. Don't take my word for it. Heck, don't take BSD's word for it. The setup survived the hacker Olympics with no downtime. THAT is what is special about it.

There is a guy who did exactly this and had a booth at Maker Faire two years ago... had some really nice images of microbes swimming around in pond water and all sorts of stuff, just by dropping it right onto the CCD. Here is the article: http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2007/04/maker_faire_tom_zimmerman.html

Open source art that has been curated onto MoMA.org and was chosen as the graphical identity for the whole siggraph conference this year:

Dreams in High Fidelity

as recently featured on makezine.

Make your own for a grand. Was in last month's Make Magazine from O'Rielly. All you have to do is write the software and add another camera to make it a trinocular. Same setup from the magazine would get you more than half way there.

• Sorting it all Out - a Microsoftie who specializes in i18n/l10n. This is always a joy to read, even for those who don't run Windows.
• Sutter's Mill - Anyone doing heavy C++ will know of Herb Sutter. His blog is updated regularly with standards work and other interesting C++-related things.
• MAKE Magazine - Making weird stuff just for the hell of it.
• TEDTalks videos - TED never fails to fascinate me.