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A TV Show Based On MAKE Magazine
ptorrone writes "Make: television debuted online and on public television (broadcast / cable tv). The series encourages everyone to invent, reinvent, recycle, upcycle, and act up. Based on the popular Make magazine, each half-hour episode hopes to inspire viewers to think, create, and, well, make. Each episode can be viewed or downloaded DRM-free, in HD on makezine.tv — the show is also available on Vimeo, YouTube, blip.tv and iTunes."
I cancelled my subscription when I read the article about adding a PID controller chip to an espresso machine. The author of the article used an off-the-shelf IC designed for the task. He was quite glib about saying how much he didn't understand PID control, but was assured that the chip handled it, so there was no reason to get bogged down in the details. Sorry, but the mechanics of PID control are not just 'details'. Make is decidedly un-intellectual.
Trust me when I say that MAKE probably does a better job communicating with the layman than the average Engineer does. This is why you find only a small portion of the population is stout enough to handle the "devil in the details" with EE/ME work. If the project works in the end without blinding detail minutiae, then so be it.
I look towards MAKE for fun with my kids, not to find an intellectual endgame, which I can find at work.
The irony in this is that old cars, electronics equipment, and so forth, are typically far less efficient and/or environmentally friendly. As such, the unfortunate consequence is that the move to greater energy efficiency will likely be greatly hampered by the precise trend you've identified.
Or: while old may not necessarily mean "bad", it sure doesn't necessarily mean "good", either.
There was a time, before surface mount components, when US manufacturers made products to last. Products that were repairable. Products of quality. About the time that surface mount components came along, everything turned to 'throw away' production values. If the electronics is not repairable, no need to make the rest of it last 27 years. This was before trade with China. Zenith televisions? Remember them? Motorola started making throw away radios about 1988. Before that you could use the mic cord to repel from a burning building. Walmart made stuff cheaper, and to keep up, manufacturers started making things of lower quality to be cheaper. Later on, there was a kind of backlash on the cheaper craze, and we have Lexus et al to show for it.
Chances are that your phone was designed to be replaced before or at the end of life of the battery in it. It's not designed to be upgraded or refurbished per se'... just replaced. Your microwave oven is the same, and on and on. Many things manufactured in the last 15 years can't be maintained. Look inside a blender or other such appliance. If a piece of the plastic breaks, it's fucked. Nothing short of a super glue miracle will fix it. Does your car come with a gizmo for reading information from the computer? The typical handyman toolkit from Sears doesn't have a spark plug wrench any more.
It will take quite a bit to turn the throw away consumer into a maintenance consumer. There are some brand names that still represent value and quality. Hopefully they will see a benefit from all this and other will have learned their lesson about quality.
Interestingly, computers have not quite run the same gauntlet. Hardware quality has remained about the same. Custom hardware like Compaq still sucks for upgrading etc. but all in, pretty much the same or better quality for systems as in the last 15 years. Software has only improved, no matter how bad it seems some days :)
Furniture restoration should revive. Home DIY will/is. Computers remain throw away in as much as they always were. New OS available, buy new hardware. This is why I like Linux. It breaks that cycle.
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Make is not a hardcore magazine that delves deeply into a few areas like "Glass Audio" or "Speaker Builder" tried to do (and sort-of failed at). But rather a liberal arts type of approach where you get a basic understanding of a wide range of topics.
The above mentioned (and beat to death) PID example is a good illustration of this. Another 12 pages could have been consumed with a cursory introduction to PID control, but they used that space for another project.
They have a target audience and I suspect are doing quite well hitting that target. But my projects tend to be a bit deeper and more involved than I see on the pages of Make. Shameless plugging: Electrostatic Loudspeakers with active crossover built from scratch. Allegro based stepper driver built from scratch. Etc (http://quadesl.com).
I let my subscription lapse because it was too fluffy. No I don't want to litter LED thowies everywhere. No I already made 2 liter bottle water rockets in jr high school. They have too many of these sort of projects and not enough hard hitting "worthy" projects like these:
http://www.softservice.com.pl/corolla/avc/
http://www.cs.indiana.edu/~willie/lvr.html
http://www.thebackshed.com/cnc/OtherMachines1.asp
http://www.bgsoflex.com/megasquirt.html
But that's just my preference, and I'm already a "Maker" I suppose. They just aren't quite my demographic.
Sheldon
@Cornwallis - that's your choice, what i've found is that talking to other makers and folks online is usually more helpful than not participating. i'd love if everyone editor at every magazine participated more online. we get great feedback, lots of makers contact us this way and i think it's important for folks to know we're out there. slashdot has been my home page for 10+ years, i've submitted projects that celebrate making things, cool engineering, science - without slashdot i doubt i would have ended up working with MAKE, it's all connected.
perhaps i'm used to what we do a MAKE now, the makers submit their own projects and we post them up in the their own words, i think slashdot is doing that more as more people make things and share their projects here directly.
i always disclose who i am, if you don't want to buy MAKE that's ok, but please give us a try and feel free to contact me directly if you have any questions or want a preview version of the digital edition.
Exactly. Most of it feels like a bunch of guys still high from the last burningman, trying to make a knit hat and gourd into a eco friendly USB Automaton.
They have some great gems, and I subscribe, but there is a pile of plain old, "what are you smoking" articles and ideas in it.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Wow, Wish I still had mine. Moving overseas necessitated selling it. Your thoughts on knowing how to repair your tools should go for cars, appliances, homes, etc. I was shopping for a couple of hand tools lately, and was surprised at the number of people who work in tool stores that were confused. I was looking for an 'awl', a leatherworking knife, and and ice pick. Don't ask why, ask why they didn't know what I meant. Things are changing. I'm thinking my wire-twist pliers should be framed? I bought mine for $65 some years ago, and now you can get them for $25. Does anyone know where they might be used in today's world?
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It's *hard* to try and carve out a niche where they are. On the one side you have Nuts&Volts, on the other Popular Mechanics.
What they're aiming at is a group of people who *want* to experiment with interesting science/technology, but own a screwdriver and a closet full of obsolete servers.
I look at it as a transitional magazine, trying to wean the Popular Mechanics crowd and turn them into the Home Shop Machinist crowd: people who actually can make things.
But there is a big wide swath of creation that isn't addressed by many other magazines, particularly not mainstream magazines, and that's the hardware/software overlap area where MAKE is working: robotics, automation, and to some extent, art/technology (like Leah Buechley's sweaters knitted with conductive wiring and LED's soldered in so they can become wearable displays, or hardcore art cars).
The question is: does it make sense, in light of the Internet, to have a magazine that covers this? The material's available on the Internet.
I think the answer to that is similar to the answer of why do record companies still exist: because it's a way of connecting consumers to producers. You can't Google for things you don't know about, and most people, with TV mentality, just sit in front of the Internet and read about the same things they always have. MAKE brings up brand new things, shows (in some cases) how to build them, and introduces people to stuff they never would have tried. I would never have actually considered making pulsejets, actual thrust-producing, red-hot ones, if I hadn't seen the MAKE jam-jar pulsejet. Likewise I would never have considered actually machining Stirling engines if I hadn't seen the (Dean Kaman-designed?) pop-can Stirling they published. I'd read about both, thought they were cool, but actually seeing a step-by-step on how to build them, was motivational.
It's easy to dismiss MAKE as kitsch. But the thing is: what's kitsch to YOU is something new and exciting to someone else who hasn't ever built anything more unconventional than a custom PC.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
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
About the time that surface mount components came along, everything turned to 'throw away' production values.
You're late, by about forty years, in most respects. I remember being at a party in the late 60s where a Magnavox salesman was gleefully explaining that his company was looking forward to the completely solid-state TVs then being developed. He said it would finally put an end to the home handyman/hobbyist taking the tubes down to the drugstore/hardware store, running them on the tube tester and buying replacements for the bad ones.
On the other hand, in my kitchen, I have a small Zenith color TV and a Quasar microwave oven, both of which are over 20 years ols and still work perfectly. On the other side of the kitchen is the original GE garbage disposal which is just short of forty years old and looks like new inside. It may be getting close to dieing though, as it has been making a brief noise as it spins down that sound like a bearing going bad. This has been happening for the past five years.
And as for the old argument about whether used coffee grounds clogged your plumbing or whether the acid in them kept your plumbing clear, we dumped them down for about the first 20 years and not for the subsequent twenty years. No difference in the plumbing performance either way.