Makers of MAKE

BoredStiff writes "An NPR show called The Connection inteviewed The Makers of MAKE. They discussed who's behind MAKE magazine, and why they think there are a lot of people out there with an interest in re-inventing with the gadgets that run our daily lives. MAKE magazine is a deliberate throw-back to the how-to science manuals of an earlier era -- back when technology wasn't so cheap people did more 'do it yourself.'"

Comments

Good magazine so far...

[dafragsta]

I've got my first two issues and at the very least, they are interesting. They straddle the line between pure MacGyver-ness and the kinds of things you'd find in 2600 magazine.

Get a subscription to MAKE...

[eggoeater]

It's an awesome mag. The amount of detail on how to build a project is fantastic, and there's lots of small projects in addition to the two or three large projects. The editors don't mince words about telling you how to hack stuff either. The latest copy had instructions to remove macrovision on certain DVD players.

But

[Timesprout]

Do the makers of MAKE really make MAKE or is it the content that will make MAKE? Enquiring minds want to make, I mean know.

url to the mag

[Racer X]

http://www.oreillynet.com/oreilly/make/

It may be a throwback

[LetterJ]

It may be a throwback, but the issues so far have still had a heavy bias toward the whole casemod/ipod/gaming end of the "making stuff" spectrum despite the fact that there are TONS of other topics that still embody the DIY attitude, many of which are actually the same ones that were part of the earlier era of DIY. A lot of those have never gone away. Heck, the whole hippie/commune/energy conservation crowd has been doing-it-themselves for a long time, building practically everything they need.

As I've been digging to find resources for my new site (listed in my sig), I've been thrilled to discover just how many projects are out there fully-documented in arenas I've never messed in myself.

Last night, I made a batch of plastic in my kitchen to put a USB memory key back together. I found the recipe for casein plastic online, didn't have to leave the house because all of the ingredients were already there and I had never even heard of casein plastic until I stumbled across it for site research.

Projects like that, the little laser tripwire kit I found that can be combined with mirrors to give you the security grid shown in every bad heist movie, etc. are all over the place.

Fortunately, it looks like, via their blog and more recent web content (like their contest to start a dead car in the middle of nowhere) that their topics may become more diverse.

Re:Pick your Poison

[paranode]

$ cd girl
$ ./configure

checking for car... yes
checking for scheduling availability... yes
checking if living with mother... no
checking for cash... no

**ERROR cash >2.01 not found. REQUIRED.

$ make
make: *** No targets specified and no makefile found. Stop.

Hrmm...

Scientific American's Amateur Scientist

[G4from128k]

Scientific American's Amateur Scientist has always had interesting things to make. The older columns (from before the age of lawsuits) featured more exciting things such a a 6-foot homemade rocket, atom smasher, and 20 W CO2 laser.

my inlaws

[udderly]

The inherent DIY-ness of the 'Makers of MAKE' reminds me of my in-laws. With them (in-laws), they have a genetic predisposition which makes them have to do every task themselves, no matter how ridiculously hard and non-cost-efficient.

When he sliced open his leg, my brother-in-law was totally incensed because Walgreen's didn't sell a home suture kit (you think that I'm kidding, but I'm not). I was really scared when my wife decided that she need Lasik eye surgery and began looking at lasers on ebay and googling 'home eye surgery how to.'

Re:my inlaws

[OglinTatas]

You may be joking about the home suture, but In my younger days, I had successfully sealed a few slices and gashes with superglue or regular sports tape. No major vessels were compromised, so it wasn't all that spectacular. But in fact, surgeons use a version of superglue for their non-suture sutures. It is available to the home user under the brands dermabond or liquid bandage.

I used to be a DIY type, making homebrew beer, DIY beer coolers, DIY fish "pond" (in my dorm room) with DIY biological filter, etc. Several years after college if finally occured to me that what I made was invariably more expensive, less effective/efficient, bigger and just plain uglier than the commercially produced equivalents. And so I quit. (I still subscribed to MAKE when it was first published)

I think the point of DIY is being creative in solving problems, to be inventive, to have a sense of accomplishment when something is made. "I did that" instead of "I bought that." It is something that any DIYer can appreciate himself, even if no one around him does.

On a distantly related note, I fear there may be a decline in ingenuity in general, as mass produced fare is so cheap and so readily available that few people feel the urge to fiddle, to improve anything, since they can just go out and buy something else.

I'm currently mulling over a project to convert an optical mouse into a DIY (right) foot operated computer pointer with (left) foot operated pedals instead of buttons. I know there are commercial products that do this ($130-$200+) but they aren't _exactly_ what I envision.

Some other DIY/tinkering stuff

[Mille Mots]

I can't listen to the interview (at work), but I think I get the idea behind MAKE (a DIY project magazine that makes use of broken, obsolete, or unused gadgets around the house, eh?). It sounds like a great addition to my collection of Nuts & Volts magazine, QST, and Circuit Cellar.

Other great DIY 'tinkering' sites I like are AX84.com, 18watt.com, and Byonics.

I'd post a link to my site with pictures/notes on my own hand-built tube amp project or my mini-GPS/APRS project (not yet out of planning), but I'm afraid of the /.-ing I'd take. :)

I prefer...

[Fallingcow]

./configure magazine.

Techie, but lots of areas

[airship]

I've written two articles for MAKE so far, one on hacking the C64 DTV game joystick, and one on setting up a dual-boot XP/Linux system using an installable single-CD Linux distro. So both of my articles have been 'standard' techie stuff. But there have been articles on a guy who set up a monorail in his backyard, a guy who modded his SUV to look like an 'official' vehicle so he could park anywhere, and other fun and semi-dangerous stuff. So it's covering a lot of ground.

As a former computer magazine editor myself, I kind of wondered about the viability of a dead-tree magazine for hackers in the age of the URL myself, especially one that costs fifteen bucks an issue. But MAKE has been very well-received, and they're supporting it with an active daily blog. I've enjoyed both issues so far, and am eagerly anticipating the next. It probably helps that it's from the O'Reilly book people, who really grok hackers, since they come from the same gene pool. Plus their production values are incredible. Full color on every page, high-quality paper, etc. Copies of MAKE will be around at least as long as those old National Geographics in your grandfather's attic.

Seems another case of retro-mania

[suitepotato]

Sort of. And probably a good one.

I grew up reading do-it-yourself books, encyclopedias, magazines (especially Popular Science and Popular Mechanics of the 50s, 60s, and 70s saved by family). Casting aluminum myself was childs play given I went to school with kids who built calculators out of discrete components in elementary school. Do-it-yourself was just what we did. It wasn't different than catching carp yourself instead of pestering mom and dad to buy them for the tank, or sometimes pond you made with a shovel and hose.

Looking this over, I'll probably eventually get around to subscribing. If only American schools of today put more emphasis on the basics that allow us to build more complicated technology. Wood shop, metal shop, auto, electronics, so many are now cut to nothing no matter the administration being right (the basics are reading, writing, math, history) or left (the basics are sociopolitics, emotions, and safety which precludes hands-on anything). People should know how to build the machines they use in case they ever do need to make them.

Maybe I'll buy a couple subscriptions for my local schools.

When I was a little boy...

[TomorrowPlusX]

When I was about 8 or 10, my father ( a machinist, and DIY type, though of a mechanical nature, not techy ) bought me four volumes of _The Boy Mechanic_ -- a *beautiful* set of books by Popular Mechanics, from the 1920's.

These books had *everything* from simple things like making your own arc-lamp to radios, to steam engines, to stirling-cycle engines, to lightweight gasoline airplane engines ( for free flight ) to chassis for a go-kart, to simple transmissions, to making your own lathe, and so on. Plus, a *lot* of pyrotechnics. A LOT of pyrotechnics.

All gorgeously illustrated in the clean slightly-post-art-nouveau style of the 20's, with little boys and teenagers doing things that would get you arrested today.

What broke my heart were paragraphs that would say "Just go to your local chemist's and buy 12 pounds of insert-highly-toxic-explosive-compound". I'd ask my dad and say, "where can I get insert-highly-toxic-explosive-compound". He'd say, "Son, we live in a pussy age where you'd get arrested for just asking about that stuff."

I guess this is how we grow up today. Sterile, hairless wimps.

Re:When I was a little boy...

[Dogtanian]

I'd ask my dad and say, "where can I get insert-highly-toxic-explosive-compound". He'd say, "Son, we live in a pussy age where you'd get arrested for just asking about that stuff." I guess this is how we grow up today. Sterile, hairless wimps.

No, the reason you grew up as a sterile, hairless wimp is because all those highly-toxic-explosive-compounds your father and grandfather played around with had horrible effects on their genes and reproductive systems.

Re:When I was a little boy...

[Anonymous Coward]

volume 1 is available for download, from ibiblio.
http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/12655

Philip Torrone Rocks

[brickballs]

I pay attention to what Philip Torrone is up to.

He started the engadget Podcast, hackaday, and now MAKE.

it seems like he's really good at getting cool stuff off the ground and then he leaves it to other people once its up and running

http://flashenabled.com/ is his site

Re:Pick your Poison

[Dogtanian]

The solution is to make cash.so.2.0.1 a softlink to cash.so.0.0.1; this fools the installation into thinking you have greater 'cash' than you actually do.

You'll run into compatibility problems when you start invoking the more advanced 'relationship' or 'marriage' functionality; the program will complain vociferously, but let's face it; most of us just want to play around with 'girl' for an evening or two, and then try something else. "cash.so.0.0.1" does fine, so long as you can pretend it's "cash.so.2.0.1".

Re:Use formaldehyde?

[LetterJ]

Here's a quote:

9.4.5 Make plastic from milk casein
Casein is a phosphoprotein thermoplastic polymer that may be used to make insulators, buttons, handles, adhesives and artist's priming paint. We can make casein from the reaction of skimmed milk with ethanoic acid (acetic acid).
Calcium caseinate + 2H+ ---> casein + Ca2+
(i) To prepare an approximately 10% ethanoic acid (acetic acid) solution, add 1 mL of glacial acetic acid to 10 mL of water. Separate cream from milk or directly use skimmed milk.
Pour 200 mL of skimmed milk into a 500 mL beaker.
Heat the milk to 50oC and then maintain the temperature at 40 to 50oC.
Add drops of the prepared acetic acid solution to the warmed milk with constant stirring.
After all the acetic acid solution is added, continue stirring for five minutes and then leave the mixture standing until the liquid becomes clear and the separation of the casein curd from the whey is complete.
Filter the lump of casein by suction, squeeze it with a teaspoon, wash it with water, wipe it dry with a piece of filter paper, mould it into shapes and then expose it to the air for 1-2 days.
Harden the plastic by immersing the dried casein in formalin (formaldehyde solution, methanal solution.) for one day.
Finally, polish the hard casein plastic with sandpaper.
Addition of aqueous ammonia solution to the casein can make glue.