I just received the fourth issue of Make Magazine and I’m in love. It’s a quarterly magazine, but each one is packed with enough projects and cool stuff to try that it’s more than enough for 3 months. I haven’t really even made anything that was part of one of their feature articles though. I’ve never been much of a hardware tinkerer, but I’m excited to start… Once I have the TIME!
I’m really starting to wish I had a garage. The little workshop I have is okay for storing tools, but it’s hard to do real work in there. One of the first things I want to try is modifying so of those cheap reusable digital cameras you can get at drug stores so that you can download the pictures yourself and reuse them, instead of give them back to the store. It would be slick for sticking cheap cameras in places you wouldn’t put a decent camera too.
Besides all these cool projects, the magazine is awesome for just pointing me to really cool links and tools that just aren’t advertised enough to be in my face for me to find. I recently purchased a Mr Beer kit (the first batch is almost done so I’ll post how that turns out soon) that I saw on a post on the website, but found an even more interesting link in the magazine. Of course, as most of the people who post comments seem to think, it’s not a real Make attitude if you’re using a kit, which I think is a lame attitude since you have to start somewhere.
I’ve brought a few copies to work with me and everyone who sees them is enthralled. I wouldn’t be surprised if a few people have gotten subscriptions just after seeing the cover. I think a lot of these construction, carpenter, engineer types are even more interested in a magazine like this than I am.
As soon as I finish all my software projects and read all the books I want I’ll start in on making every project in the mags. Alright, so I’ll never have time to do them all, but some of them, and by some I mean one or two. That is, unless I can find a way to get by without those pesky time consuming activities of work and/or sleep.