O'Reilly's New Magazine for DIY Tech Projects 207
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?
Also in the first magazine (Score:5, Funny)
10 books for $20 bucks (Score:5, Interesting)
Both of them are popular...
Just for reference, we are talking about this O'Reilly [oreilly.com], not this O'Reilly. [billoreilly.com]
(grin)
Really though, get your boss to get you a subscription to Safari O'Reilly. [oreilly.com] 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.
Re:10 books for $20 bucks (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:10 books for $20 bucks (Score:2)
Re:10 books for $20 bucks (Score:2)
I'm taking a tech writing c
Re:10 books for $20 bucks (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:10 books for $20 bucks (Score:2)
$20 a month gives you a lot of knowledge... and you can write it off as a business expense.
Make (Score:5, Funny)
No rule to make target 'o'reilly'. Stop.
Fuck. Not for me, I guess.
Re:Make (Score:2, Insightful)
$ make "o'reilly" make: don't know how to make o'reilly. Stop
Re:Make (Score:3, Funny)
No rule to make target 'o'reilly'. Stop.
Lucky you: I just got a greater-than sign that wouldn't go away, no matter how many times I hit 'enter. . I had to enter the command again, then I got this:
Archives (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Archives (Score:2)
In related news (Score:5, Funny)
SCNR
Ob. Beavis and Butt-head quote (Score:3, Funny)
Butt-head: "Uhh...Beavis is a do-it-yourselfer."
Re:In related news (Score:5, Funny)
Hustler and Make are complementary (Score:2)
Some suggestions... (Score:5, Funny)
If that proves too difficult, I'll settle for a flying car.
Re:Some suggestions... (Score:4, Funny)
Just stop it (Score:2)
Re:Some suggestions... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Some suggestions... (Score:2)
Stuart
This is a tough format. (Score:5, Interesting)
I think the real question is, do we still need magazines?
Re:This is a tough format. (Score:4, Funny)
Are you the guy I saw on Flight 2451 bringing his laptop into the shitter?
Re:This is a tough format. (Score:4, Interesting)
The weekly newspaper covers a broad range of topics, and these topics are easily diveded into sections. I do not see any reason to prevent the collection of various projects under an arbitrary set of "topics" in order to sequester the attention of those interested in, say, mechanical engineering, to only the brown-tabbed pages. Just because it's all bound up together doesn't mean that you can't divide it up.
But the question is: do you want to divide it up?
It depends on what you're making. I've always wanted to know how to get the iron out of iron ores. I could search it up on wikipedia, but what if I'm on a bus on my way across the country and don't have access to the handy-dandy wikipedia? It would be nice if it were in a magazine that I could fit in my backpack. But what use is knowing about smelting if you can't build your own smelter? Once you know how to refine iron and make steel (in your own smelter!), what use is it unless you're making things with these materials, from scratch? Sandcasting is a great way to make objects from molten metals; you could find yourself making all kinds of things. As an aside, possessing this kind of DIY know-how would make for much more interesting episodes of DIY-theme gameshows.
You need to make the information accessible, is the thing. The internet is great and all, but it's nothing for disseminating information like a magazine. For about 8 to 14 hours a day while the sun is up, you can read any book or magazine you like. The internet is down when my cable modem is out, when there's a hurricane, when I'm not at the computer. I can't pass my computer to the person next to me and say "read this article" without first presuming that they know how to use my computer. But with a magazine or a book, you hand it over, you point your finger on the place that they should begin reading, and whammo! Your information has been shared!
Mentioning hurricanes in my previous paragraph prompted this perfect example: There's nothing but junk all over the southeast right now. Knowing how to turn junk into things like nails and hammerheads and axe blades and so forth is fairly valuable knowledge in the midst of a terrible disaster, no?
just my $0.02.
Re:This is a tough format. (Score:5, Interesting)
No, because it's still easier to go to the next county/state and find a hardware store
I just surfed over here from Nuts & Volts (interested parties can figure out the URL and hopefully avoid the
Same reason Heathkit went out of business: the things they offered as kits became cheaper to buy complete and with warranty at the local Circuit City.
I like the concept of experimentation and building my own stuff -- that's why I have a basement full of electronics parts and tools, but I don't think this new magazine is going to last more than a year or so.
Re:This is a tough format. (Score:3, Informative)
So are the parts -- I pretty much gave up on DIY electronics when everything went to surface mount. I mean, when your PCB has rosin drops on it bigger than the components...
More seriously, it's like moving up a level of abstraction. Back in the real old days folks wound their own coils, made their own carbon mikes, and potted their own crystals. These days instead of inserting ICs into D
Perhaps not (Score:3, Interesting)
Sign me up!
A White-Hat-Hack-zine on paper, nice (Score:4, Insightful)
Um..not to sound stupid, but.... (Score:4, Insightful)
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
DIY Tricorder (Score:4, Interesting)
My "Mark I" should be operational soon. Maybe I will do a write up for "Make"...
Re:DIY Tricorder (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not uncommon to have 100-to-1 ratios between the price of the electonic parts and sensors and the retail price of specialized medical equipment. It comes from an environment of predatory lawsuits and cost-is-no-object medical insurance coverage. Health care costs are rising insanely in the USA. The only way employers are dealing with it is by not offering medical insurance benefits to their employees, which is not dealing with the issue at all. The Republican/Democrat lawmakers are bought off by the HMOs and the drug companies, and will continue to only vote for legisation that directly benefit the HMOs and drug companies.
When people like you will need medical care in America in the future, the options will be to take a trip to another country and buy treatment at a much less cost than America, or use black-market treatments, medicines, and medical equipment that has not passed US FDA certification. DIY stuff.
Black market medical equipment will be one hot fast-growing market for electronic developers and technicians in the next twenty years, simply due to the tens of millions of people thrown off the health insurance rolls. It will be necessary to develop an illegal, but parallel, FDA to ensure that this black-market equipment is reasonablely safe and reliable.
Networks in medical electronic schematics, software, sensors, and parts will spring up in P2P formats. Like the P2P music file-sharers, they will be completely illegal. And, like the music sharers, they will be completely necessary and fill the vital social function of providing a market for industries that have painted themselves into a corner through their own greed and stupidity.
Re:DIY Tricorder (Score:3, Interesting)
Unfortunately I suspect you might be right. I have considered medical tourism a couple of times, and actually know a couple who fly from Seattle to South Africa for any serious medical/dental work. Even with the cost of the flights, they still save money, have excellent medical care and get to have a vacation at the same time.
I guess this should also serve as a wakeup call for all the gu
Re:DIY Tricorder (Score:2)
Actually, these already exist: other countries. Pretty much every country has its own equivalent of the FDA. While I probably wouldn't trust equipment that had only been certified by Tibet or Iran, I would trust equipment that had been certified by Canada, Europe, or Australia, say.
Plus, because it's now all completely legal, it's a hell of a lot easier to get hold
Re:DIY Tricorder (Score:2)
Re:DIY Tricorder (Score:2)
Re:DIY Tricorder (Score:2)
Interest High (Score:4, Insightful)
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?
Forgot to ask my question! (Score:2)
RTA - those "gadget" magazines (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Interest High (Score:4, Interesting)
My guess is that Make will come out twice a year and be much thicker than a typical print magazine. It will probably be a thinnish book, and may cost as much as $12 or $15.
As for advertisers, figure the people who sell the raw materials for tinkering: Radio Shack, mail order electronics parts houses, tech book publishers like Lindsay Books, and so on. The revenue from advertisers will bring the retail cover price down below what you'd expect for a tech book.
These are guesses on my part; I have no inside information. But if I were to go back into magazine publishing again, this is how I would do it.
I wish Tim the best of luck, and perhaps I'll be able to contribute articles.
--73--
--Jeff Duntemann K7JPD
Colorado Springs, Colorado
Tech Books for IT pros no longer profitable? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Tech Books for IT pros no longer profitable? (Score:3, Insightful)
O'Reilly publishes the programming books that don't suck.
Re:Tech Books for IT pros no longer profitable? (Score:2)
And who publishes programming magazines that don't suck? The only thing on the newstand that I look at today is Dr. Dobbs and I no longer buy it - it is largely irrelevant to what I do.
I find the professional journals largely unreadable today except for an occasional article in CACM with a practical basis. Sorry, the last time I went to a local ACM meeting, I concluded that ACM stood for "Academic Computer Masturbation".
As for DIY magazines, there
Please. (Score:2, Funny)
# make Make
maybe they should run:
# apt-get install Make
and it will be here now instead of 2005!
Re:Please. (Score:3, Funny)
I think of apt-get being for prepackaged and (nearly) complete builds.
If you're in the DIY mode, you're more likely to be using Make. Once you have a (semi) complete product then you'd be making it available to the apt-get crowd.
I wouldn't buy it... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I wouldn't buy it... (Score:5, Insightful)
Not at all.. The magazine lets you see what other people are doing. This gives you some interesting ideas for:
1: Things you might want to do that are (slightly or completely) different
2: Ways of getting unusual things done on a budget not signed by the NSA.
The guys that were the technical advisors to one of the second world war escape movies ("The Great Escape", I think) considered the possibility that it might give future jailers ideas about preventing those same tactics from being used again, then decided that what was most importat was teaching the committment to thinking up ingenious methods and diversions that was most important, while the specific tactics were all but irrelevent.
Re:I wouldn't buy it... (Score:2)
Re:I wouldn't buy it... (Score:3, Insightful)
Kind of like software programming, you shouldn't need to write your own kernel now, but it is easy to modify someone else's Linux or BSD kernel work rather than redoing the entire job.
Re:I wouldn't buy it... (Score:3, Interesting)
make.oreilly.com - previewed (Score:3, Informative)
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 [ibiblio.org]
Will it be like (Score:3, Informative)
Make is so passe! (Score:2, Funny)
Obvious suggestion for issue #2 (Score:4, Funny)
Huh... (Score:4, Funny)
Funny, that's not what the good people over at the RIAA/MPAA have been telling me...
stay-alert-and-keep-your-soldering-iron-handy (Score:2)
don't forget the legal section (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:don't forget the legal section (Score:2)
-
Build-it-yourself speakers? (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
DIY CAM Lathe! (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:DIY CAM Lathe! (Score:2)
Re:DIY CAM Lathe! (Score:2)
Lots of metal working stuff and old books on interesting subjects.
DIY Silicon! (Score:3, Interesting)
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 els
Re:DIY Lathe! and everything else... (Score:2)
Re:DIY Lathe! and everything else... (Score:2)
--
Lots of projects to do (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
long forgotten - a BYTE of Steve (Score:3, Informative)
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 Cel [circuitcellar.com]
Wired House, Wired Car (Score:4, Funny)
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
Re:Wired House, Wired Car (Score:3, Informative)
"how to make my computer trick my thermostat into thinking it's a full-fledged climate control system,"
http://diy-zoning.sourceforge.net/
"how to make an uber-scary AI haunted house at halloween,"
http://markbutler.8m.com/monsterlist.htm
That being said, the magazine still sounds cool.
Re:Wired House, Wired Car (Score:3, Funny)
Why? Are you expecting Kevin to violate parole and get sent back inside?
Steve Ciarcia (Score:3, Interesting)
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?
Re:Steve Ciarcia (Score:4, Interesting)
There used to be a few good magazines like Hobby Electronics, and Electronics Today International, but HE folded and the last issue of ETI I saw was ages ago, when the "construction" articles were pretty much all about plugging *this* ready-made microcontroller development board into *that* ready-made LCD controller, then programming it from your Windows PC. Dull dull dull. All this from the same magazine that published a 4-part article on constructing a very nice little analogue monosynth, in the late 70s. Shame really.
Re:Steve Ciarcia (Score:2)
Re:Steve Ciarcia (Score:2)
Circuit Cellar (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Headphone Amplifiers (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:Headphone Amplifiers (Score:2)
Re:Headphone Amplifiers (Score:2)
Re:Headphone Amplifiers (Score:2)
Suggestion Box (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
MacGyver (Score:2, Funny)
When computers aren't fun anymore (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
connect my house (Score:2, Interesting)
* 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 ene
Focus on old tech (Score:5, Insightful)
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
Re:Focus on old tech (Score:4, Informative)
Experimenting with cheap 8-bit microcontrollers such as Microchip's PIC [microchip.com] or Atmel's AVR [atmel.com]s is quite cheap, and typically all you need is a chip and one (really cheap [covingtoninnovations.com] if want) device - a programmer [netsuite.com] to transfer the (binary/hex) programs from your PC to the microcontroller's flash memory.
You will quickly outgrow Radio Shack unless you need a part right now and you don't have the right one in your own stock pile, often referred to as a "junk box" regardless of actual physical size. You should be getting the free catalogs (or CDs) from Digikey [digikey.com], Mouser [mouser.com], Newark [newark.com], and Jameco [jameco.com]. These all have usable online ordering systems and reasonable minimum order & shipping fees. UK geeks check G3SEK's UK Component and Tool Suppliers [ifwtech.co.uk] web page.
Many useful projects can be made for less than $100 even if you need to buy all the parts. After you build a collection of common parts (common resistors, capacitor values, PIC 16F628, AVR AT90S2313, red & green LEDs, 2N2222A, 2N3904, 2N3906, 2N4401, 2N4403, 2N4416, 4N25, 1N4148, 1N4001, 1N4007, etc.) and tools this cost will go down.
The real question is do they assume a general audience or do they assume a "knowledgeable user" is their target market? If the stuff is purely "cookbook" & kit building (AmQRP kits [amqrp.org] as an example) with little or no encouragement (and knowledge transfer) for the average Make reader to explore and expand it won't survive IMHO. BTW AmQRP kits on their own are pretty limited at expanding your knowledge, but combined with the AMQRP Homebrewer magazine and Conference Proceedings they do teach a lot. There is also the QRP-L mailing list which is very useful for technical questions (and has a rich archive [qsl.net])
I think it should be what Nuts and Volts [nutsvolts.com] magazine tries to be, but without the "legacy" dead weight and filler articles. A gentler introduction to most of the Circuit Cellar [circuitcellar.com] type stuff.
If people think this will recreate the Homebrew Computer Club, I expect they will be mistaken, but if you expect it to awaken the curiousity and encourage youth to learn about electronics, then I hope it is a brillent success.
In the end, I am curious and not quite sure what to expect of Make. It could be really lame if all it ends up being is computer geeks pretending to be electronic engineers (or electronic hobbyists). I hope that at least 10% of it expands what I know, which is more than I can say of books like Hardware Hacking Projects for Geeks [oreilly.com] (O'Reilly) and Hardware Hacking: Have Fun While Voiding Your Warranty [grandideastudio.com]. I am more interested in reading stuff like Hacking the Xbox [hackingthexbox.com] (An Introduction to Reverse Engineering) by Andrew "bunnie" Huang which starts simple but gets into FPGAs and reverse engineering.
I got an idea (Score:4, Insightful)
How about where to hire a good lawyer that knows how to defend against DMCA lawusuits?
Wireless projects are a good start (Score:2, Insightful)
I'd like to see other wireless related projects, like some of the things that have been covered by http://tv.seattlewireless.net/ [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
Please do an article on toilets!! (Score:4, Funny)
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*)
Re:Please do an article on toilets!! (Score:2)
"Any suggestions?" Yeah, how to hack Fritz (Score:2)
Disclaimer (Score:2, Interesting)
Electronic Kits? (Score:2)
KAP article will probably be half assed (Score:2)
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 ar
Networked media player (Score:2)
Scientific American's Amateur Scientist (Score:3, Informative)
Re:X10 ads (Score:3, Funny)
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.
Re:(full text of article incase of /.'ing) (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Kite aerial photography (Score:2)
Re:what they should cover. (Score:2)
Damn, it was a challenge to be a messy slob before. Now we have to compete with budgies that post to Slashdot!
Re:keeping the ghost in your shell (Score:2)
RFID jammers are already being discussed (and maybe produced).