Wow! It creeps me out to see myself as a zombie like this! Check them all out! - Link
Monthly Archive for November, 2007
Best writeup ever.
LEDs are to hobby electronics what peppercorns are to cuisine: they can be sprinkled anywhere.
Read the whole article here. - Link
Being with Monochrom in Vienna has given me a new appreciation for pranksters. Today, while browsing Metafiilter for Berlin advice, I stumbled upon Unter Gunther. They are an urban exploration group that found an antique clock in France and infiltrated it, gave it a high quality reconditioning and when they were done, went to the building management and asked them to re-attach the bells.
At first they were happy, then they were not. After the group broke in around Christmas and connected the bells, the management mounted an unsuccessful lawsuit.
Hurray for productive and thoughtful urban exploration and restoration! (via) - Link
My podcast is featured in the Wall Street Journal for a piece about how businesses can use podcasts to be awesome. If anybody’s got a picture of themselves reading it, send it to me!
Here’s a pdf of the entire article! - Link
And a link to the WSJ site. - Link
MAKE MAGAZINE: BE USEFUL
Entertainment value helps a video succeed. But that isn’t the only approach that works. Some small businesses have carved out a lucrative niche by giving viewers information they can use.
Consider Make magazine, a guide for do-it-yourselfers. Published by O’Reilly Media Inc. of Sebastopol, Calif., the magazine produces weekly how-to videos for a host of projects — everything from making your own catapult to creating a cigar-box banjo.
The clips average about a million views a month on iTunes, Blip.tv21 and YouTube. (The most popular: a guide to screen-printing T-shirts.) The videos have also brought in lots of business. For instance, attendance has ballooned at an annual convention sponsored by Make, and the magazine sees dozens of new subscriptions every month. (See some examples.22)
“How-to videos are one of those things that lasts, that have a shelf life,” says Phillip Torrone, senior editor at Make. “It’s not like a YouTube video that’s a 30-second funny thing. It might be something that they can watch over and over again.”
Of course, entertainment value is still important, even if it isn’t the main focus of the videos. For instance, Make realized it would need a charismatic host to make the clips lively. Mr. Torrone discovered Bre Pettis, an art teacher from Seattle who had been videoblogging about his students’ art projects. Mr. Pettis, Mr. Torrone says, was like Mr. Rogers, Mr. Wizard and Bill Nye “The Science Guy” rolled into one.
Make’s publisher, Dale Dougherty, agreed to bring Mr. Pettis on board in early 2006 — after seeing a video of Mr. Pettis accidentally harpooning his cellphone. “There was a bad-boy kind of thing that I liked about it,” Mr. Dougherty says. “It wasn’t boring.”
Mr. Pettis, jokes Mr. Torrone, “has been voiding the warranty of electronics ever since.”
The 35-year-old Mr. Pettis, who now lives in New York, posts a video each Friday. In general, he spends one or two days on research and two days filming. He then takes a day or two to edit the video and write up a PDF with detailed instructions for viewers. “It’s what I love to do,” says Mr. Pettis. “It’s my passion, making things and being creative and supporting others’ creativity.”
Photo Credet: eSeL
My presentation at roboexotica went really well.
It was about the DIY future.
It was about exponentially accelerating change.
It was about how exciting it is to be living right now when we can make whatever we want and the tools are mostly open source and the most important resource is inspiration.
It was about self replicating 3D printer robots that anyone can manufacture.
It was about building community to make things happen.
It was about making things that will be handy when the world we live in changes so much that our current lives are lost to history… or we upload our consciousness to a computer to avoid the obliteration of humanity.
Thank you for all the questions and contributions and to my friends who helped me focus it! I’m going to make it better and give it again someday soon.
This week, take the first step towards making your own self-replicating rapid-prototyping robot! You can order up your boards, from the Reprap foundation or make your own since the whole project is open source. Get your parts and solder these up and test them! Huge thanks goes out to Zach Hoeken, who inspired this project. Marius Kintel, Philipp Tiefenbacher, Benko, Red, and other folks at Metalab along with Michael Zeltner and Flo of the GRL Vienna crew pulled a lot of all nighters this week getting this robot together to present at Roboexotica. The best ways to make excellent new friends is to ask for help on an ambitious project!
Sponsored by Ponoko: Ponoko is a new concept that’s perfect for Makeziners. Use it to make and promote your product ideas. Ponoko supplies the digital manufacturing technology and the materials, you supply the creativity. Plus you can sell your product ideas in their showroom. Ponoko is this week’s sponsor of our weekend video podcast.
If you’re one of the first 10 Makeziners to make a product using Ponoko you’ll get shipping for free. Click here to get going
I’ve put together a zip file that has 21 MP3 Ditties. They’re short pieces of music that I’ve made when I needed music. I’m proud of them! - ZIP File Link
Please download and use my music! These bits are good for:
- putting under sped up video of making things
- time lapse
- travel times when you show going from one place to another
- anything else that you can think of.
I’m releasing them under the creative commons attribution license. You can use them for whatever you like, you just have to give me credit by having music - bre pettis brepettis.com in the end credits of the video. Of course it would also be nice if you’d tell me you’re using it and link to brepettis.com and mentioned me in your blogpost, but that’s really just icing on the cake. My goal here is for people to have access to the music I have made to use in my DIY videos.
I want to spread my wings and find new ways to create music for my videos. I feel like I’ve maxed out garageband now and I may get something like ableton live to play with to give me more options for making new music. Please send me an email or leave a comment telling me your strategies for making music. I’d love to hear how you make music!
This weekend, make a flower out of 3 bills. This makes a great tip for a nice dinner out or just a way to spend 20 minutes or so folding paper! This project is from Craft: Magazine Volume 5 and the origami was designed by Robert J. Lang and Diagrammed by Jeffrey Rutzky.
On a sidenote, I really like the music I hacked together for this video. I’m releasing it as an mp3 under the creative commons license! - MP3 Link
Sponsored by Ponoko: Ponoko is a new concept that’s perfect for Makeziners. Use it to make and promote your product ideas. Ponoko supplies the digital manufacturing technology and the materials, you supply the creativity. Plus you can sell your product ideas in their showroom. Ponoko is this week’s sponsor of our weekend video podcast.
If you’re one of the first 10 Makeziners to make a product using Ponoko you’ll get shipping for free. Click here to get going
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