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O'Reilly's New Magazine for DIY Tech Projects
sargon writes "O'Reilly will begin publishing a new magazine, 'Make,' in early 2005 which is aimed at the do-it-yourself crowd. To quote the home page: 'Make brings the do-it-yourself mindset to all the technology in your life. Make is loaded with exciting projects that help you make the most of your technology at home and away from home. This is a magazine that celebrates your right to tweak, hack, and bend any technology to your own will.' The first issue will focus on kite aerial photography." Any suggestions for what they should cover?
How to create your own DIY Tech Magazine.
user@localhost>make o'reilly
No rule to make target 'o'reilly'. Stop.
Fuck. Not for me, I guess.
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
So the archived copies of Make Magazine will be called Makefiles?
....maybe Barbra Streisand?
I've been searchin for the chord I can't hear Ive been searchin for years Its somewhere inside But its well disguised
Hustler has been providing a magazine which is aimed at the do-it-yourself crowd for decades.
SCNR
The First Magazine for Technology Projects Make brings the do-it-yourself mindset to all the technology in your life. Make is loaded with exciting projects that help you make the most of your technology at home and away from home. This is a magazine that celebrates your right to tweak, hack, and bend any technology to your own will. Cover of the first issue of Make. Coming early in 2005, Make is a hybrid magazine/book (known as a mook in Japan). Make comes from O'Reilly, the Publisher of Record for geeks and tech enthusiasts everywhere. It follows in line with the Hacks books and Hardware Hacking Projects, but it takes a highly visual and personal approach. Our premier issue will show you how to get involved in Kite Aerial Photography -- taking pictures with a camera suspended from a kite. We'll show you how to build an inexpensive rig to hold your camera. We'll also show you how to make a video camera stabilizer, a do-it-yourself alternative to an expensive Steadicam. And we'll show you how to create a five-in-one cable adapter for connecting to networks. Some projects are strictly for fun, others are very practical, and still others are absolutely astounding. Make's promise is: If it can be done, we will help you do it. We'll help you make sense of all the technology that's in your life. Make will have a Mobile section providing tips and advice on cell phones, PDAs, and GPS technology; a Home Entertainment section, including managing your digital music and installing home theater equipment; a Cars section looking at the intersection of computers and automobiles; an Online section looking at how power users are using Amazon, eBay, and Google, plus other services; an Imaging section, featuring digital cameras, Photoshop, and managing your photo; and a Computers section that looks at custom hardware as well as wireless and home networking. Make vs. Buy Get inside your iPaq. Make is not another one of those "gadget" magazines that feature products on every page. While we like gadgets as much as the next person, we chose to focus on cool things you can do with technology, not just what to buy. Each of us has plenty of new technology at home and in our briefcase, and we'll write about our experience using this technology. What we are most interested in is the knack for making that technology work the way we want it. Become a Maker There are all kinds of Makers, making all kinds of things. Through Make, you will meet extraordinary makers who create one-of-a-kind things for all kinds of reasons. A maker can serve as an intelligent coach, a dependable (and approachable) alpha geek who knows what to do and wants to help you learn how. Our goal is that all of us can learn to become makers, just as we might learn to cook or use woodworking tools. There are makers at all levels of experience and we can learn from each other. Make will provide a web site for a community of makers who are willing to connect with others to share their experiences and collaborate on new projects. Learn soldering techniques. Join Make If you'd like to learn more about Make, then join the Make mailing list. We'll send you information about subscribing to Make and the announcement of our premier issue.
Noone writes jokes in base 13!
...How to build your own personal reusable spacecraft using only an old washing up liquid bottle, some sellotape, a couple of lemons and a box of bicarbonate of soda.
If that proves too difficult, I'll settle for a flying car.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
"Don't Get Burned By Fire"
"Roll Your Own Wheel"
"Print This With Your Own Printing Press"
"The Shocking Truth About Electricity"
The problem here is its such a broad topic. People's interest diverge so far that it's really a much more suitable topic for a generalized search engine Google rather than a magazine format. While some people will tend to think that stuff in the kitchen is cool, others will think it should include coding. Others will want automotive and others will prefer architecture or explosives or metalwork or hide tanning or alternative energy. The Foxfire series tried to do something similar, but they also had a theme beyond just doing it yourself which was doing it the old fashioned way. That only appealed to a certain set. Coming at it from the opposite, doing it yourself and doing in the new way doesn't really seem to work as a theme.
I think the real question is, do we still need magazines?
Most magazines here (in germany) claiming to be about hacking cover subject like "How to copy ANY CD!" or how to 'hack' your neighbour's WLAN, these magazines seem to aim at 13 year old wannabe-crackers who just discovered this secret hackertool "tracert" with which they can "track and locate" other computers on "T43 n37". I hope that this new magazine will present the term "hacking" in the right light. Well, it'll be hard to receive in germany I guess.
Life is just nature's way of keeping meat fresh.
Oh, this is print?
In other news, internet ad agencies that are fed up with popup blockers in the newest generation of web browsers are adopting technology originating from children's popout books in their new campaign for traditional magazine advertising.
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
Using Pic and BasicX microcontrollers and various sensors (RF, Chem, Rad, etc.). Add a nice graphics LCD, and a SD memory slot. (All of this is available now)
My "Mark I" should be operational soon. Maybe I will do a write up for "Make"...
I'm very interested in such a magazine, but disappointed that they almost inevitably are or become those "gadget" magazines spoken of in the description.
I think the advertisers in such a magazine often end up fighting the reader base and pulling the focus of "cheap and homemade".
Maybe there's a better chance this one will stay focused if O'Reilly is the publisher?
mefus
In Open Society, GPL Software frees YOU!
This is a realy very good idea. If you are prepaired to spend a little time - think of it as a hobby - you can gain a lot of nice custom gadgetry. You can build a PIC programmer for a dollar or two.
You could have your place wired to suit your needs. It does not require a genius. Just patience and comitment.
Mechanic: "Well, how the hell am I supposed to change the oil if you don't have a car?.....Oh, I get it. You guys are do-it-yourselfers."
Butt-head: "Uhh...Beavis is a do-it-yourselfer."
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
Probably, they now that all the "Learn Programming in N Days" books are no longer such a big profit center, they are turning to the recreational side of technology, like so many former IT professionals who have been laid off....
eat shiat and bark at the moon
# make Make
maybe they should run:
# apt-get install Make
and it will be here now instead of 2005!
Because half the fun in trying out cool stuff is thinking up the idea yourself, then trying to put your idea into a physical (or binary) representation. This magazine would take out all the fun.
thisnukes4u.net
you can see a bit at the o'reilly site in the subject but you can also read quite a bit about Make on the various blog reports of FOO Camp.
At that time, I thought that Make == Popular Mechanics/Electronic + Wired (when Wired wasn't tired). Think of Make as a Mook or a Bagazine.
Here's my blog entry of the presentation at FOO:
The Real Paul Jones - Make = Mook/Bagazine
Certified Black Helicopter Pilot *** Unwitting Dupe of One World Gov'ment
Ok MacGuyver, you've already proven that you can make a death ray out of chewing gum, a ford pinto radio antenna and a double A battery, so please stop bragging, it's getting old. We all bow before your higher geek prowess....
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
Ready Made for geeks?
Wake me up when O'Reilly publishes Apt-Get, Emerge, or Pkg-Add. ;)
Perhaps a moderator better look up the word in a dictionary.
Any other magazines (online or otherwise) like that out there?
mefus
In Open Society, GPL Software frees YOU!
One of those digital photoframes to display the pictures from your kitecam. The panoramas... the approaching ground... the horrified expression on the face of a soon to be ex-digicam owner...
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
Funny, that's not what the good people over at the RIAA/MPAA have been telling me...
I didn't know you posted on /.
... I presume cool hacks like building wireless mesh networks hoisted on kites would be covered.. Even if the AP equipment is on the ground for power, you could run conductive wire along kitestring as an antenna or as a connection to an antenna on the kite. If it's good enough for the French during WWI it should be good enough for us ;)
;)
Also, how about building Wifi access points into sculptures, picture frames, etc?
Additionally, any hacking into proprietary car systems (CD changer emulation, VAG-COM, etc) to build extensibility into them would be useful. If anyone can point me to the specs on the Traffic Pro CD changer interface I'd be grateful
And of course,
ROBOTS! ROBOTS! ROBOTS!
I have a suggestion for you: make sense more often.
why run from Vincenzo?
Only my soldering iron? What about my cutting torch and my drill press?
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
..also, I'd love to get into
(1) J2ME/MIDP development on Mac OS X
(2) hardware modifications to mobile phones (simple mods! Like hooking up a digital voice recorder to a small microcontroller and a phone to make it automatically call me. or hooking up an RS-2332 GPS to a phone to make a portable location transponder. The trouble is (and the reason we'd need a magazine) the companies that supply this stuff won't just give it out to mere persons like me. Hopefully the magazine can get through that first tough layer of salesworms so we can actually get interesting chips and prototyping boards like in the olden days before DirectTV starting suing anybody who owned a souldering iron.
How about the bottom of my birdcage?
Damn, it was a challenge to be a messy slob before. Now we have to compete with budgies that post to Slashdot!
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
Since the gov't seems bound and determined to make any form of hardware hacks illegal, they may as well have a monthly column on the state of affairs on the DMCA and all that other crap they're trying to pass.
Reminds me of that movie where ppl buy 'consumer goods', then take them home and put them down a chute. You can buy it, they want you to buy it, but you can't DO anything with it.
Idiots.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
when they learn I've been developing a DIY magazine called 'Emerge'?
My buddy and I build a HT subwoofer on our own and it turned out pretty amazing. It was very powerful and very tight. We paid about $200 for the materials and it turned out about as good as a $1000 subwoofer.
There are lots of ways to build speakers, but they are more complicated because the sound quality depends a lot about the box that they're in. Perhaps this magazine can have a few DIY templates for speakers boxes, crossover wiring, and things like that.
--- We need more Ron Paul!
O'Reilly-- you must cover the Gingery Lathe!
Gingery lathes are professional quality machine tools you make yourself. Not from parts. You build a furnace out of concrete and sand, you melt the aluminum, you sand-cast the basic parts. Then you use the skeleton of the lathe to machine the rest of the parts out of steel.
There are also people out there who have turned-- no pun intended-- turned gingery lathes into CAM gingery lathes.
BTW if gingery lathes have not been on slashdot before, they certainly deserve to be. More than, say, the Japanese guy who made his own Battle Angel Alita realdoll out of sushi-rice. IMO.
Intolerance for ambiguity is the mark of the authoritarian personality.
they should run a project with the future in mind. an envelope that reduces the backscatter of rfid transmitters from one's person to the street. this would (hopefully) allow a person to walk down a busy street of vending machines and storefronts with out becoming a target for overwhelming advertising directed at you and your tastes, as displayed by commercial tracking of spending habits collected via rfid. a handy addition at a later date would be to become your favourite celebrities rfid "ghost" and feel like for a day as you wander by automated greetings and advertising.
This is something that I'd be all over.
I've just finished building a projector out of a LCD some lenses and a very bright lightbulb. Got the plans from www.lumenlab.com and I have to say it works amazingly well.
Next project is getting mythTV or Freevo working with my hauppage under linux to give me TV on the new projector(It was plug and play under windows but I can't stand 2000 anymore)
After that I'll be using the serial port on my motorola cable box to let the PVR change channels on the cable box. At that point I don't know where to go with my media center. Maybe remote PC's to let me access the backend from all the rooms in the house?
Now as for the magazine I'd love to see a nice big how two on creating my own speakers, even if it is just a build a box and plug the parts in I'm curious if this can be done cheaper then buying the nice ones at a store. Home made amplifiers would be cool as well.
Getting away from my media viewing, I'd love to see articles on wiring up houses. Temp sensors in every room/area, on the water pipes. A way to monitor electric usage on every circuit. Door/Window open/closed monitoring... All linked back to a PC with some nice logging software to keep track of whats going on in the house.
There are tons of other things I'd love to have but can't afford so I'm forced to build them. The difficult part for the magazine is going to be how difficult some of them are. Using one project to develop the skills needed for the next is a great way to learn but if you jump in to the magazine part way though you could end up stuck. If they don't gradually get harded the long term readers will be bored.
The first issue will focus on kite aerial photography." Any suggestions for what they should cover?
Good techniques to photograph HOT BABES, of course!
I want to see hacks for things like dashboard-console mp3 servers running out of the trunk on the existing alternator,
how to make my computer trick my thermostat into thinking it's a full-fledged climate control system,
how to make an uber-scary AI haunted house at halloween,
how to make a creepy surveillance systems that automatically close the storm shutters and say nasty things to intruders...
I'm envisioning Martha Stuart meets Kevin Mitnick
Art Schools Dietzilla
I think this mag is an excellent idea. Getting more people excited about engineering is always a good thing.
From the site, it looks like they are covering pre-existing projects out there on the web. As for suggested topics, how about:
Intros to PIC programming
Interfacing a PIC with an LCD display pannel
Stuff like http://www.lirc.org/
-My $0.02
Of course these articles appeared in the day when it made much more sense to build your own IC board, solder your own components, and build your own cable. Today one 'builds' a computer by plugging off the shelf components together and downloaded software and drivers. If the current complaints from the DIY crowd are any indications, few people even think to write their own drivers. I wonder if the articles in Make will teach the readers interesting concepts and techniques, or merely provide a step by step on making cool toys.
So my questions for this magazine are two. First, given that Steve Ciarcia showing us how to build cool technology 20 years ago, how is Make the First. For instance, the current issue og Circuit Cellar talks about building a rover. Second, O'Reilly has wonderful editors that keep errors to below industry average, but the quality of the authors vary widely. For books that is fine. One can pick a choose. But a magazine requires a much tighter control. Can O'Reilly find enough authors and good ideas?
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Both of them are confusing sometimes...
Both of them are popular...
Just for reference, we are talking about this O'Reilly, not this O'Reilly.
(grin)
Really though, get your boss to get you a subscription to Safari O'Reilly. You get access to any 10 O'Reilly books you want each month for less than $20. We've quit buying dead trees... and we just all use this now as our library.
"The first issue will focus on kite aerial photography." Any suggestions for what they should cover?" Sure, my hot neighbour when she's tanning nude in her garden.
Circuit Cellar does range into more advaced electronic design, but the've done lots of fun and approachable stuff over the years. Back in the early days they did a whole series on making rockets with 2 liter bottles.
Until you find out it's Bill O'Reilly.
Sure, have them hook me up with a job there, and I'll suggest lots of things they could/should cover in their little magazine.
Anyway, it's amazing what a difference in sound quality a headphone amp can make. As a magazine wanting to help you get the most out of your tech at home and elsewhere, I think headphone amps qualify.
I'd actually be interested in something like that, and I know others would be too.
:P ), and that many people would appreciate something that walks them through the simple first steps of new concepts.
:|
Sometimes people forget that not everyone is endowed at birth with immense knowledge (like the parent poster apparently was
What really tees me off about a lot of tutorials and manuals, is how they'll go into great detail on the basic principles (great), and they go into great detail on solutions to intermediate and advanced level concepts (again, great), but they spend a tiny ammount of time quickly glossing over the first few steps to actually get something done (arrrghh!).
It's sort of like getting some piece of furniture home from Ikea, and discovering that the pictographic instruction sheet had been replaced by a journeyman carpenter's course book.
Yeah yeah, it's great to be able to see how to shingle a roof and build drywall... but I just want to know how to put friggin Tab A into Tab B so my Ikea bookcase doesn't collapse when I set it up.
So, please don't disparage anyone who's going to actually step up to the plate and provide good solid basic knowledge to people who may not have been exposed to it in a way that they could actually USE it before.
Basic knowledge is a good thing... except for those of you who were born knowing everything
But it's still too much money for me to be the one to go make all the first-timer mistakes and discover all the hidden costs. I guess that's precisely the reason most DIYers would buy a magazine like this.
I have seen a lot of nifty hacks done on lots of different things, but most of them were not really of much interest beyond a very small audience enough to do. Who's gonna advertise in this thing?
--I'd rather they brought back OMNI in its old '80's format.....
I really hope they get MacGyver to write some articles, I already got a Swiss Army Knife and a roll of duct tape standing by.
Life is Reality
and this guy did this with a real cheapo camera
http://www.ai.mit.edu/people/wtf/kite.html
Remember the 1970's (and earlier)? People were into all sorts of geek DIY activities. Building your own electronic devices, photography with home darkrooms, mechanical stuff, theater/stage tech ... there were a lot of hobbies that are now a shadow of their former selves because the advent of personal computing sucked up all the mindshare.
That trend almost reversed itself in the 1990's, when computers became boring. A vast wasteland of Intel and Microsoft. Nothing fun there. But then Linux and Open Source came along and re-kindled geeks' love for computing again. There's undeniable geek fun in the DIY aspect of open source hacking. (And it's great that we also have non-DIY products available now for the non-geeks.)
My prediction (which I hope never comes true) is that if Microsoft's DRM dystopia becomes reality and we can't do open source anymore, geeks will scramble away from computing in large numbers, and we'll see a resurgence of interest in DIY hobbies.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
* connect my thermostate to my server so I can turn the heating on when I leave work
* feed my rabbits through a remote system (so I can go on holiday and feed them by browsing to their own server)
* create a grey-water system which tracks and records waterusage, rainfall, humidity of the gardensoil etc
* remote-control the lights in house
* remote-control my vcr/tivo
* put solar-energy panels on my roof and track and record energy-usage and delivered energy
* program my coffee-machine so there is coffee when I wake up or arrive home
mainly, connect everything in my house to a server with a web-interface and voicerecognition, come to think about it
who would like to make a death ray for Global Domination?
From Family Guy:
Stewie: This isn't the first time my small stature has hindered my plans.
[flashback]
Auctioneer: Item 157... Global Domination. Enslave the human race. Do I have any bids?
Stewie: OOH. OOH. ME. ME.
Auctioneer: I'll take any bids. $1. Enslave the human race for $1?
Stewie: BEHIND THE FAT CHICK. OOH. OOH.
J
Oh well, no point in steering now.
Dont give me projects that require the latest and the greatest. If I have to spend $300 to save $299 it isn't worth my time - though it may be really fun. If it costs $1200 - even if it involves sex it isn't going to be that fun. For example I have two old b/w gameboys lying about - tell me how to port the screens to my computer. I have tons of old hardware - tell me how to solder in flash ram from a thumbdrive into an old digital camera. Provide How-To's to the how to's, not everyone was born witha soldering iron in one hand and a Bridgeport in the other. Gimme anything that an old stick of RAM is good for. Or an old scanner, or zip drive. Have a case mod corner - I don't case mod at all - but I find them neet to look at. Starting in #3 start a basic course, a mid and advance course in electronics. Have something that involves gun powder, and another that involves a catapult.
Sera
Slashdot, where armchair scientists get shouted down and armchair theologians get modded up.
This is a magazine that celebrates your right to tweak, hack, and bend any technology to your own will.... [snip] ...Any suggestions for what they should cover?
How about where to hire a good lawyer that knows how to defend against DMCA lawusuits?
PVR for sure.
Here's what you're looking for
http://www.lindsaybks.com/prod/index.html
How to send video back from a kite over 802.11 is a good start. I'd like to see similar projects for remote controlled planes. Sending the control signals up on the same wireless link is a logical extension.
I'd like to see other wireless related projects, like some of the things that have been covered by http://tv.seattlewireless.net/ - making antennas, community access points with cheap hardware and free software etc.
Details of simple hacks (hardware and software) would be great to fill in between the big articles. Show me how to add an external antenna to my Airport Express. Show me how power it from 12 Volts in the car without adding an inverter.
It's probably of too limited appeal, but I'd like to see a simple add-on I could use with old surplus 20" fixed-frequency workstation monitors to give them a shut-down sleep mode. It'd be something that looks at the video signal and kills power with a triac.
I'd like to see a project showing how to convert a power supply from an old PC into a general-purpose bench supply. (Perhaps some kind of diode/capacitor voltage multiplier on the coil for the 5 Volt circuit to make a higher current 12 Volt output. It might be easier to add a new winding though hmmmm...)
I'd enjoy seeing various PVR (personal video recorder) projects... how about one with an analog/HDTV tuner that works with Linux, and has a slick version for OS X too? (I expect both to be able to send audio out to an Airport Express)
Projects based on software that'll let us take analog audio and other sources and stream it out to an Airport Express would be fun in general.
How about something that'll let me send multiple streams from analog and HDTV off-air and broadcast them from a hilltop with 802.11b/g for multiple people to receive?
How about a homemade subwoofer with motion-sensing feedback from the cone to the amplifier driving it. That'd flatten frequency response while reducing distortion and box-effects.
How about modifications to consumer appliances to reduce their energy consumption when they're "off"?
How about a collection of Voice over IP telephony projects?
How about a framework for a P2P open-source owned-by-nobody global community-access TV network?
How about noise-cancelling electronics to add to old headphones so I can use my woodworking tools in comfort?
How about a collection of software tools and hardware hacks that can be adapted for mechanical control of all sorts of things? If someone makes a radio-controlled flying chainsaw, please make the link secure. Thank you!
So I've been working on "improving" the toilet with various weights and countermeasures so that the water will submerge the low flush system but not overfill the tank.
If you look at how a toilet is designed, you'll see it's actually quite brilliant. Most designs use the water itself as a counterweight to keep the valve open -- quite ingenious actually. But this only works if the tank is exerting the right pressure, otherwise as soon as you lift the handle, the valve closes.
And for those of us with four or five death logs sticking six inches past the rim it's either hack the toilet or use the plunger as a club -- "Die! Die! Die! Why! Won't! You! Go! Down!"
Anyway, that's what I'D like to see. Umm... because of my girlfriend. (*cough*)
The baby's fine -- please stop sending business cards.
A how-to guide for hacking the TCPA's "Fritz" chip would make for a great DIY article.
"I might have made a tactical error in not going to a physician for 20 years." -- Warren Zevon
Very important: they should put a huge disclaimer on the first page about voiding warranties, stuff blowing up, no guarantees, etc.
Sign me up!
Engineering is the art of compromise.
This sounds somewhat like Transactor Magazine from the early 80s for C= based computers. All kinds of programming and hardware hacks to help you get the most out of technology. I miss that style of hacking, and hope this will provide something along those lines. I still keep my copy of the Innerspace Anthology around, just for the translations, formulas and equasions in the back.
pi = 3.141592653589793helpimtrappedinauniversefactory7
I already know about the books, and I have all of the ones associated with home machining. I want this awesomeness to be shared with fellow geeks.
Intolerance for ambiguity is the mark of the authoritarian personality.
--
Power to the Peaceful
Speaking of hobbies, I want to lean more about electronics and circuit theory. Does anyone recommend specific learning kits? I've seen some at Radio Shack and other places. I don't have any place to solder and I don't want to electrocute myself, so I'd like to start out with some kind of kit.
How to create do it yourself open source multimedia projects without getting sued by anyone.
Do you have any documentation to back up yr claim that FDA cfr 21 boosts costs ?, or that consumers would prefer cheaper, less reliable parts ?
.mov file,it is bad; when a family member dies because of a software but, it is worse.
In my experinence, many fda rules are the sort of things you would be doing anyway, if you wre producing a quality product . Like, if you are changing the inside of a blood bag, you have to show that the change does not harm the blood. real basic, simple stuff, kinda rare in computer world.
(fade to hospital corridor, surgeion in green coming down the hall to crying family)
SIG: Sorry guys, but that 59 cent electrode we used shored out, and we could not start your kid's heart. Guess we shd have gone with the name brand, but those discount electrodes looked good..
CF member: thats ok doc. we understand how important it is to have compitition in the device field.
OR: when windows fails to load a
As I am sure you know, just to get some circuit boards and a plastic housing and reliable software can add up, and since most med devices are produced in small lots, you cant spread your rnd costs out.
I have a fear that this magazine will unfortunately be a half-assed regurgitation of other peoples' free how-to's. Like many magazines, they'll probably run a companion website that will provide as much or more value as the print version.
In that light, I am going to go ahead and assume that the Kite Photography article will be about 4 pages of cheap ineffective hacks (somewhat akin to the recent engadget articles). Anyone wanting a serious collection of articles on KAP might consider buying the complete archive of The Aerial Eye, a semiannual publication about KAP that ran for 9 years. It is a fantastic reference for $30.
- Cold fusion - room temperature superconductor - time travel
How about that? Cheap, hackable, ugly and fun...
See http://www.solarbotics.net/library.html
Perfect!
My current project involves successive refinements on a networked music player (in my living room) that grabs OGG and MP3 files from a server machine (in my office) and plays them on the stereo. The successive refinements involve cutting down the minimum hardware requirements (pricewise more than MIPS-wise).
--
Mad science! Robots! Underwear! Cute girls! Full comic online! http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/
I will be eager to see this magazine! I was very bummed about the demise of the "Amateur Scientist" column from Scientific American. You can get that wonderful column on a CD (yes, that has my ref id in it) or read recent articles online. The old articles are the best--how to construct electron/proton accelerators & the like.
Anyway, it seems nobody remembers steve, because I expected to see someone here mention how this magazine looks pretty much like a "mainstream" version of Circuit Cellar. The whole "aerial photography with a kite" thing was done AGES ago in that magazine - as well as helium balloons, hot air balloons, rockets and R/C airplanes, helicopters, and cars (and, I believe I recall, even model trains). And "home control" was the project that got steve started on all this way back when. The magazine often cooperates with manufacturers of chips to sponsor design contests, and some really nice projects have evolved from this.
I'll be interested in checking out the first issue. I have always loved their series of books, so, hopefully, thier magazine will be just as good.
-Cnik
Yup, it's a dream but some of us are working on making it real: Semiconductor devices made on an individual or small community scale. We're aiming for full-on complex circuits but we'll be very happy when the first transistor works.
One of the stages is indeed a home-made lathe and milling machine, to make some of the vacuum chambers and chemical vessels. Fun stuff :) By the way, thanks Slashdot for pointing me at these books. (This isn't the first article whose comments recommend them).
Is anyone else working on home made silicon? Anyone like the project enough to fund it? :) Go on, you know you want to see Free / Open Source Hardware succeed :-)
-- Jamie
Circuit Cellar is still alive and well.
If Make is broader based technology than Circuit Cellar, they may have a chance. Back in the 60's, rags like PopSci, PopMech, MexIllustrated had a very hands on approach (Pop Sci even had some electronics construction projects).
A Shadeless room is a brighter room.
When I first joined Slashdot in 97, a lot of the people here used to be DIYers who actually had a clue about computers and technology. Very few fanboys and the trolls at that time were far more intelligent and creative (GNAA losers can go eat a dick). Unfortunately, since that time Slashdot has slowly degraded into a den of losers who want to identify with so called "geekdom". I'll give you folks a little hint. A true geek is a DIYer. If you can't or haven't achieved that level of grokking computers or technology, then you are not really a classic geek. The only possibly exception is gamer geeks. DIY isn't a necessity in that arena. So... the question about this new O'Reilly mag is: will there be an online version? If so, it might be nice to have forums and journals there so that the last of the geeks can finally jump ship from Slashdot and head over to somewhere better.
Un-news
Confirm this is true for Arizona State University as well! Very nice find!
I'm sure my colleagues and fellow students will appreciate this knowledge.
Thanks for the heads up.
Do you have any documentation to back up yr claim that FDA cfr 21 boosts costs ?, or that consumers would prefer cheaper, less reliable parts ?
In my experinence, many fda rules are the sort of things you would be doing anyway, if you wre producing a quality product . Like, if you are changing the inside of a blood bag, you have to show that the change does not harm the blood. real basic, simple stuff, kinda rare in computer world.
(fade to hospital corridor, surgeion in green coming down the hall to crying family)
SIG: Sorry guys, but that 59 cent electrode we used shored out, and we could not start your kid's heart. Guess we shd have gone with the name brand, but those discount electrodes looked good..
CF member: thats ok doc. we understand how important it is to have compitition in the device field.
OR: when windows fails to load a
Right, Thank god for FDA approval. Thank God only FDA approved equipment like the Therac-25 is used in the medical field.
A pot shot? Yes. But there is a point. There are certain things that are hard to certify, and just throwing feel good bureaucracy does more to harm than good.
Granted, A lot of the basic FDA stuff is good and protects public health, but in addition to that you've got a lot of crap, like CDRH regulations on lasers, that boosts costs for manufacturers (from the equipment, inspections, tracking) and has a neglible impact on protecting public health. I mean, for examples, currently lasers are given a lot of red tape special treatment because they're (queue Dr. Evil) "LASERS". Its kind of like the attention given to nuclear meltdowns when coal fires and non-nuclear blasts at chemical plants have killed more people in the US.
I'm just venting, because if 600 years of Western civilization has taught us anything it's that humanity is never going to get any smarter.
Something to do with a phone, maybe with a GTE phone van sitting in what looks like someone's back yard.
Not just answers, the correct questions.
(2) A simple spectrometer for the near infra-red with a PC interface & open-source software to detect things like benzene in tap water and PAHs in milk.
(3) A (shielded) solid-state x-ray machine with flouroscopy & CCD detection for examining small parts for structural flaws.
(4) A tunable solid-state laser.
(5) A small inductive or external shunt current measuring system that can be housed in an electrical outlet, and that reports current draw via WiFi or Bluetooth or something, so you can plot the currnt draw versus time for every appliance in your home.
Yeah, right.
I'd like to se a guide of how I could turn the electronic start-blocker (or whatever it's called in english) from a car into a keyless access to my house. Preferably in a way that would let me unlock the door while the key is still in my pocket. Would be mighty handy when I'm loaded with croceries or furniture. :-)
This message has been ROT-13 encrypted twice for higher security.
You make a good point: Lost in the FUD of esoterica in our modern "professionals & megacorporations only" medical system, is the fact that a lot of medical conditions are darn simple to treat.
And I am not just talking about the fact that vegetarian nonsmokers who exercise happen to live surprisingly long. Here are a couple recent cures I have discovered for myself, that no professional is ever going to advocate, since they don't profit anyone:
Foot warts. After ten years of them, I finally had medical insurance, and started seeing a doctor --only to lose my job the next month. Over the counter meds had never helped, and his recommendations didn't help either over the following year. But based on what he said, I then tried a soldering iron. Painful, yes. But your own pain tolerance happens to help you get *exactly* the right amount of cauterization, so as to not permanently injure deep skin tissue--something no surgeon working on an anesthetized foot can accurately judge!
Score one for the amateurs.
Case two, a sinus infection for about three weeks. Afraid it might need an operation I can't afford, I tried snorting Everclear. For those who don't know, that is potable [?] 95% pure ethanol, sold in American liquor stores. Everclear has always served me well with cuts & scrapes, and isn't as carcinogenic as my other external mainstay, listerine. Everclear also penetrates much better than my older favorite, salt. It was an experience, yeah. For about five minutes. Then the infection receded over the next couple days, just like an infected cut does under the same treatment.
Everclear costs less than a doctor visit [let alone a successful one] by several orders of magnitude.
PS, If anyone wants to patent these ideas, this posting now constitutes prior art. Smile!
"This is a magazine that celebrates your right to tweak, hack, and bend any technology to your own will"
Anyone taking any bets then on how long long until either the DMCA or the INDUCE act shuts it down...?
oh come on. I was billing out at an obscene rate to validate 21cfr part 11 requirements. No documentation except perhaps invoices.
i am so very tired....
German state universities don't have such luxery. Please give me a proxy to access to Safari :-)
This is something I've been wondering about for a long time Haven't gone past wondering because I don't have the electronic hardware setup required to build the first one. p Price a 100CD audio jukebox vs a 100 DVD-R data jukebox if you're wondering why I'd be thinking about this.
Tech Public Policy stuff