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."

Comments

It'll never work

[morgan_greywolf]

I just can't see how you can have very many episodes on Make. Maybe if they threw in autoconf, gcc, and a few other tools, then they could have good show...

The Do-It-Yourself Spirit

[that this is not und]

The whole Make: phenomenon had greater promise than I have seen yielded. Being someone brought up in the era of Popular Electronics, I thought that it would herald a continuation of the hobbyist tradition. However, I have been somewhat disappointed in what I found. Fad gadgets and flashy toys are fine, but remain just an extension of the consumer culture. Where are the schematics? Where is the technical background? Too many Make: articles detail trivial novelty projects.

The spirit of Popular Electronics lives on in Bob Pease, Jim Williams, and yes in wonderful offbeat Don Lancaster.

O'Reilly, I had far greater hopes of thee. Still the best row on my bookcase, of course.

Re:The Do-It-Yourself Spirit

[ptorrone]

@that this is not und - every single volume of MAKE has source code, schematics and our site has tens of thousands of electronics articles.

while you might say some projects are "novelty" they're not - taking apart a child's toy to understand how it works, how it can be modded and documenting all of it is very important. some articles are to spark the minds of future makers, others are "hardcore" and include hundreds of pages of data sheers on on our site, firmware, schematics and more.

if you'd like i can provide hundreds of examples of extremely complex and well documented projects that include schematics - on a similar note, MAKE has the largest open source hardware online store on the web. every single kit that's OSH is documented on MAKE and has the source / schematics.

i think you didn't take a good look around or looks at all of MAKE.

Re:A good idea for a show...

[that this is not und]

My main criticism of Make: is it's heavy reliance on kitch. There's some robotics in there, sometimes, but mostly it's kitch.

Re:A good idea for a show...

[zappepcs]

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.