Slashdot Mirror
'Make' Premier Issue
But enough with the links. On the front page the magazine features 181 pages for DIY technology, promising stories on aerial photography, backyard monorails, XM radio hacks, iPod tricks, DIY magnetic card reader and blogging made simple. Make is roughly half the size of a normal full-page magazine (like PC Mag or InfoWorld) and generally feels like a paperback book more than a magazine. The paper is also not the glossy print you'd see in normal magazines, it says on page 8 that they used New Leaf Paper, made 100% from post-consumer waste. Make generally uses normal-type font, which should be readable by anyone, except for some pages where they switch to really large fonts.
The magazine is broken down into several logical categories. It starts with editors' welcome letters and short features of some DIY projects people have done on their own (this guy's backyard monorail stands out). The Maker pages in this premiere issue contain an interview with Neil Gershenfeld from MIT, an article on heirloom technology, possibility of building an open-source car and an expose of Bay Area Dorkbot group.
The Projects category (starting at p. 49) is where the real fun starts. The projects take up majority of the pages, and it makes sense - looks like the authors put their best into providing excruciating details, pieces of advice and general information, so that anyone can follow their work. The projects are well-illustrated, some contain necessary diagrams and cartoon-like explanations of what needs to be done to assemble the proper devices, the step-by-step pages contain both pictures and text. Each project is sub-divided into several parts - Set up (list of everything needed before you start), Make it (the actual step-by-step instructions and discussion of the projects), Use it (reasons for tinkering with the project in the first place). The setup list is also provided on Make Web site, like here's the list of components for magnetic stripe reader.
The projects for the issue include adding a disposable camera to the kite for aerial photography, a $14 video camera stabilizer, 5-in-1 network cable (the combination of RJ45 and DB9 inputs) and the magnetic stripe reader.
The major projects are followed by the projects consuming less time and efforts. This is mainly for people who would rather spend more money at the spot, buy some cool accessory to complement their electronic device, and do minimal engineering on their own, as far as I understand. The categories include Home Entertainment, Mobile, Cars, Online, Computers and some additional projects that did not fit anywhere above. The table of contents contains the complete list of projects.
It looks like the magazine that is needed in the market. At some point playing with technology became synonymous with running to the nearest mall and getting the latest electronic gadget, and even RadioShack nowadays mostly looks like a flashy storefront for selling cell service plans and new PDAs. Make is the magazine for people who like to look under the hood, who like to work on do-it-yourself projects and who feel great accomplishment when a project is over, even though its practical usability might be questioned. Of course, the amount of projects in the magazine is a bit overwhelming, but my guess is they figure you'll find some extremely interesting and some are just not interesting at all.
Since I grew up in the Soviet Union, Make magazine reminds me of Young Technician (when technician meant someone involved with technology), a Russian must-subscribe boy magazine that would pull the latest science and technology news together, and also dedicate large portion of its pages to readers' projects. Of course, nowadays, in the age of Hack A Day, Lifehacker and numerous HOW-TOs such magazine might not exactly have the exclusive coverage of the DIY projects. Google might turn out more results, but for some of the projects it also looks like the authors were either pioneers or authorities in their field since googling for DIY aerial photography provides just Make article and a bunch of links to it.
Make is a quarterly publication, so $35 subscription fee covers only 4 issues per year. A bit expensive, but if you plan to enrich yourself and spend free time more productively, I think Make has lots of content to entice the reader and keep him busy for 3 months. First impression might not mean a whole lot, but Make was one of few magazines that I enjoyed reading from page 1 to page 192.
I think I'll wait for its successor, CMake magazine. I've heard that it's a lot easier to understand.
"Well, then fire it up and show me what this..." (sigh)
Yeah but, will it ever replace Slashdot?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
192: My First Computer
Remembering how my dad built an Apple II from scratch.
170: MakeShift
Imagine this: Your car battery is dead, and you're stuck in the woods. Your mission: Get home before you freeze to death.
84: $14 Video Camera Stabilizer
You don't have $10,000 to spend on a Steadicam? Make this ultra-low-cost video camera stabilizer and see how much better your video shots turn out.
I think I'll pass on this one. Maybe when they get to 12 issues for $12.95 I'll think about it.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
We have to go...outside to do these projects?
I heard about this on the previous /. article, It sounded like a cool mag, but you can never be too sure. now that a real human has read it and told me about it, i am much more comfortable about shelling out my hard earned bux.
of course, now i'll have to suffer with h4x0r inferiority complex, but thats the price i'll pay....
Wow.
In the day of paper thin magizines (anyone read 'Time' lately?), that's pretty hefty. Even if it is 1/2 size.
What I didn't see was any mention of how much advertising there was (or will be).
You got yours before I got mine. I think our mailman's on a bender, again.
(Still waiting)
What'dya mean there's no BLINK tag!?
Here I thought this was a HOWTO on configure, make && make install.
I figured even RPM installs are better. For easiest use, deal with apt, urpmi, or synaptic.
Wonder if the magazine was proposed by a gentoo user. Wait, even THEY use emerge!!!
It's about time there is a magazine out there that's more than just pages of video game ads and reviews. If only tomshardware had a featured spot in this magazine....Hopefully the magazine won't end up too technical and not have enough subscribers
The first issue arrived yesterday, and I really enjoyed reading it. It is different in scope than the likes of Nuts and Volts or Servo; but the magazine (or Mook as they are calling it: magazine + book) was well put together. They have a discussion group off their main website also, where it appears people are already discussing the building of the projects (read: tech support ;) Not that you'd need it, the articles are pretty clear....
LosT
"We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams."
No link to Popular Mechanics? They've had a web presence since '96 or so. Give them some love, editors.
One man's -1 Flamebait is another man's +5 Funny.
I must buy this... even if I don't have so much time to do projects, at least I can see how folks are doing it nowadays...
Yes, you can Google stuff, but nothing compares to the portability of dead trees.
I can wallow in the memories of the projects (some now illegal, alas, if done today) I did as a young nerd (1964-1984).
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
The lead time for publishing a paper magazine is atrocious when compared to webtime. Many web sites for regular print magazines will only run the articles after the print has gone out. What's the deal going to be with Make, do we know? By the time it shows up in my mailbox will I already have read the articles?
www.HearMySoulSpeak.com
Future editions are expected to feature many such real life pictures of geeks in action, potentially attracting thousands of subscribers.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
These guys were at linuxworld Boston yesterday. Pretty cool stuff, I was holding this in my hand yesterday. Kinda looked like an Ikea catalogue.
One more link from their company was http://www.makingthings.com/
yeah!
i've been waiting for this badboy for a while now. not that i'm actually adept at tinkering, but that's the whole idea, i guess, right?
for the meantime, i've been reading nuts and volts magazine while running the elliptical thing at the gym. its so funny, because everyone else is reading fitness magazines, and i'm lookin at inductor related schematics. wtf?
yeah i went to RPI.
"when the sun sets on the ghetto, all the broken stuff gets cold"
So the subscribe page has a section for promotional codes. Which makes me wonder if people have seen them. For $35, it's probably worth it, but if there are promotional codes... why not use them.
is a 1968 Popular Mechanics DIY encyclopedia. Me mum bought it for me when I were a wee lad. I got lucky on mums. When I started taking everything in the house apart to see how it worked; and if I could put it together again, better, she not only encouraged me, but went so far as convert the living room of our home into a workshop (American urban colonial neighborhood. No garage. I can, literally, shake hands with my neighbor without either one of us leaving our bedrooms).
.only coming out quarterly.
She didn't even blink when she came home one day to find I had built a formula car in the dining room because there wasn't room for it in the living room workshop. We all just lived in the kitchen for awhile, which is where we spent most of our family time anyway.
More recently she's actually the one who clued me in to the whole dorkbot thingy (I'm a fairly solitary tinkerer, although testing new vehicles does seem to draw something of a crowd at times).
So what the hell happened to PM anyway?
Sounds like I'll have to at least check out Make, but I fear I'll be disappointed in it. .
KFG
Does anyone know what brick and mortar retailers will be carrying Make? The local Barnes and Noble hasn't even heard of it.
tar xzvf make-magazine-1.1.tar.gz
./configure --pages=192
cd make-magazine-1.1
make articles
make magazine
ROMANES EUNT DOMUS
I'll wait for the follow-up, Make Install.
What if I do the same thing, and I do get different results?
...I still prefer pressing the triangle arrow or pressing F5, thank you. Doing configure then make is a lot cheaper, though.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
Does anyone know if you get this first issue if you go ahead and get a subscription today? I've never heard about it until today and I'm interested in some of the stuff in this issue. I can call the number when I'm off work, but if anyone knows the answer before then that'd be great...
God I miss the days when being into technology meant actually building and designing your own gear. I still do it to an extent, but some of it has moved into the "virtual" arena. I wonder how many Slashdot readers actually ever made their own crystal radios as kids? Or how many of us "modded" our cheapo TVs and stereos back in the late 70s and early 80s to give us pseudo stereo and then eventually real stereo TV? Or... how many of us handwired and built our own SIMM memory expanders for our Amigas and Atari STs? Those are all things I did, but a lot of times I feel like I'm one of the only ones here who ever did this kind of thing. Kind of like my old theory that musicians make the best computer tech folks.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
Are these the same as http://www.howtoons.org/?
I haven't RTFMagazine but my rule of thumb is when it says "Save teh $50!!1!" and we don't see the price, the product costs 10 times more. Why not? you ask? Because, from what I've seen, promotional codes==magazine versions of spam and adware (with a bit more legality).
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
i got mine last week, and no envelope.
damn!
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
Nothing really too complicated in there, and it looks like you can build most of the stuff they present with just a few hours of work. The DIY stuff is pretty darn simple, actually.
When I was lookin' through my issue last night I kind of skimmed by the stuff they showed OS X doing - but when I went back and read it this morning, it actually looked like some cool stuff.
I do hope that in the future they have some actual electronics projects in there of some sort. I am sure they will. This time around it looked to be mainly taking what is already out there and showing different ways of putting said gizmo to use, or fixing it.
Overall though, I have to give Make a big thumbs up. It looks nice, is fun to read, and is gonna be really useful.
BTW, as I was typing this, I kept trying to come up with what Make reminds me of. I think I got it.... a paper version of The Screen Savers when the show did not suck.
With providing such a large premier issue, does anyone think they will be able to provide as much content in future editions? If they could, it would be a great magazine, but I kind of doubt that they will be able to keep it up. Time will tell ...
For the pictures. Not like Playboy, for the articals
that's what I do! :)
It's about time there is a magazine out there that's more than just pages of video game ads and reviews...Hopefully the magazine won't end up too technical...
I can remember two types of computer magazines from days of yore: British ones, which were 99% advertisements and 1% game reviews (though often quite funny); and American magazines, such as Byte, which were very technical and a pleasure to read.
What is you actually want?
This magazine sounds really cool, but I'd like to actually read an issue before deciding whether or not I want to subscribe.
Does anyone know if you can get it in any stories, or is it subscription only? From reading the site, it sounds like it is subscription only, but I'm hoping that's not the case.
PS: Is it just me, or do most of the projects they covered sound awfully lot like slashdot stories we've had in the last 6 months?
But seriously, those things were huge. It was a giddy era. Negroponte was waxing philosophical about digital this and digital that. Articles about crazy new technology abounded. Everyone walked around wearing shades because the future was so damned bright.
The future just ain't what it used to be, eh?
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Did anyone else find the credit card process/flow a little unusual for subscribing?
It asks for your CC info, then gives you a "you've been invoiced" page where you can click on another link to "pay" with your credit card (again?!) but this time you really seem to submit it. Bizarre.
e.
Build Your Own PVR/HTPC news, reviews, &
i just want to run up to those guys with some clippers and give them nice, sharp haircuts.
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
As I hope everyone knows, the zine 2600 has been around for a long time, and focuses on all things hackish. It's a great magazine, and deserves the support of the community.
Honestly, did you read how to take pictures from a kite before, or AFTER you read about Make reporting on the same thing?
Sure you could probably get similar info on most of the projects anywhere. But will you? The answer is probably no. Doallars to donuts that by the time the next Make rolls around you will have read nothing of any of the projects they feature, even though you could look them up. I know because I am the same way!
The purpose of the magazine is partly an aggregator of interesting projects, but also partly a motivator to try and be more than just a consumer again and start exploring the possibility of creation that so many of us enjoyed when we were kids. I mean, one of the projects is a home-built mag-stripe reader, how cool is that? Well I think it's cool.
Also I would say that the general level of presentaiton is very good and possibly more clear than a lot of articles you are going to find online. They really did go to a lot of work to make sure than even someone with trepidations can do a lot of the projects, they are so clear.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
So now RTFM stands for ...
Read The F'ing Make !!
You lost me after the "built own crystal radio" but I managed to catch up at "built own SIMM memory expanders".
Actually my favorite mod that I did when I was younger was to remove the keyboard from an Atari ST (built into the main computer), slap a pizza-box around it for a backing, then use a joystick cord to connect the keyboard back to the PC. It held up for years like that and was a lot more convienient. It was not very complex but it had a lot of value.
I subscribed to Make because I've been yearing to get back into trying out small hardware projects, and it has not dissapointed.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Actually #2 is an assignment - they don't give you the answer, just ask for people to submit solutions.
What's arong with a cheap stabilizer? Let's you run along with video cameras just about as well as pro stabilizers, and is dead-simmple to build.
But they have lots, and lots of other stuff as well. Other more interesting projetcs like a home-made mag-stripe reader to see what is on your cards. Or tips on proper soldiering/desoldiering (to prepare you for future projects no doubt). Or even the kite thing which was interesting.
They also do a very good job with project descriptions, to the point where probably almost anyone could do any of the projects.
It is 195 pages after all, and has a wide range of material. At only $8.75 and issue I think it's a pretty good deal.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Another project tucked away somewhere in there is a super-simple railgun involving just a handful of steel balls, a few magnets, and a wodden ruler.
A cheap way to arm your home-built patrol Death-Bot.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
. . . on how to walk on dirt.
I know this sounds kind of scary, but it is pretty easy, and fairly safe once you have the right equipment.
Stefan
* Grass-trimming Hybrid from Hell: Hacking together your Roomba and a riding mower.
* SpaceShip Two plans.
* Wood: Where does it come from?
* Trap Doors 101
* The wacky world of George Foreman Grill hacking.
* The first article of a five part series on DIY genetic engineering, describing how to modify your colonic bacteria so that your farts smell like orange potpourri. (The issue with part five, "Catgirls," is predicted to be best-seller.)
I like that this mag spends more time telling you how to make these things instead of pimping pre-made products. Although Ready Made's layout design and diagrams are real pretty, they read more like a fashion mag when compared to this.
-Chris
I had purchased a subscription to the new Tux Magazine (first issue was supposed to come out this month) and got a letter in the mail last week saying they had not gotten enough subscriptions to make it viable, so it would be pdf only. Anyway, they refunded my money. But really, I don't care about reading pdf versions of magazines... there is a reason I like the dead-tree kind, you can lie back in bed while you read them.
Meh.
Well, props for actually seeing that before as I figured you had just googled for it! I apologize for that.
However I think the added value you see is the clarity and editing of the instructions. There are alot of cool things on the web but many of them are sort of half complete, or lacking in detail you would wish for. The value Make supplies is editing and filling out an project to make sure it's complete and you can really do what they put forth without a ??? step somewhere in the middle that you have no idea how to do.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I tried it, up to the point where I would actually have to subscribe, and the $34. was still there as the cost.
I guess too many people used it and they stopped it.
Too bad, too bad, too bad.
This is the Constitution.This is the Constitution under the Bush administration. Any questions?
APT magazine will teach the home technology geek how to quickly and easily order pre-assembled electronics via the internet with only a few clicks.
Thus saving, of course, the endless time one would waste building it oneself: gone are the days of endless hours wasted and headaches endured trying to debug your rickety homemade photography kite or videocam image stabilizer.
I stole this sig from someone cleverer than me.
Yeah, I built a crystal radio as a kid. Handbuilt amateur radio equipment. Wirewrapped my first CP/M computer on an S-100 board blank. I may have learned a lot, but by contrast to today, those days sucked the big one. I'd much rather be solving problems at the higher levels than spending a week's evenings wirewrapping a computer. Right now I'm combining a laser range finder with a computer and a GPS receiver to calculate the coordinates of what's being lased. Thank God I can just buy a microcontroller, a GPS receiver module (Trimble's Lassen SQ - postage stamp size. Very cool) and the laser range finder, and not have to build each of those items, even assuming I was capable of it. Integration of higher level components is where it's at, IMO. And Field Programmable Gate Arrays! Don't get me started on the blessings conferred by programmable hardware!
i've been a huge fan of BoingBoing since the late 80's and of John since he was an edtior at Wired and gave me my first break writing a cover story...
Anyway, I wish them best of luck!
http://www.hawknest.com/
Today, a variety of lawsuits were filed against 'Make' magazine under the guise of the DMCA etc..
:PP
Give it time people.....
Seriously though, looks like a good read.
At one point the mag was so thick that police officers in major cities were subscribing, just so they could use 'em as hillbilly personal armor. I used to use my back issues to reinforce deterioriating sections of the basement walls in my house.
Wired was for pansies. Real men used the Computer Shopper. That was personal armor, and you coud have built your basement with back issues. Kids today...
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
Reminds me a bit of the Whole Earth Catalog with a strong do-it-yourself slant. Interestingly they both come out of the same [Marin] county and the WEC was a and early promoter of bboards and PCs.
BEWARE! These magnets are exceedingly strong and fragile. They WILL jump out of your hand and smack together, often cracking one. Due to this fragility, there is an upper limit on number of magnets and speed. Too many, and the ball bearings will go too fast and crack the magnets.
To placate the handwringers, we called it a 'Linear Accelerator' instead of a railgun or Gauss Rifle. Can't have those dangerous 'weapons' in school.
Make did warn about the magnets being fragile, and there being a limit on how powerful a device you could build because of it.
It sounds really cool though, I'll have to try building one.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley