| CARVIEW |
RSS
Archive: Interviews
January 9, 2009
Interview with Freeman Transport
Selectism did an interview with American commuter bike makers Freeman Transport on the importance of feeling the hand of the maker in their product (bikes). It's all around inspiring!
...We wanted people to know how important it is for us to support US manufacturing and the lack thereof. If things continue to go the direction they are going, we could potentially have no products made in America. I think it is important for us to take control of that. I see that Jeff Staple has produced a line of button down shirts made in New York. Steven Allen makes some clothing in New York. Freeman Sporting Club makes most of their clothing in New York. Band of Outsiders, Thom Brown, Engineered Garments. I just saw that Huf did a bunch of his cut and sew in America. So that's really nice. That's not to say we don't see both sides of the conversation and recognize the challenges and limitations. I mean after all, there are certain things that just can't be made here anymore.
Via Core77.
Posted by Becky Stern |
Jan 9, 2009 12:00 PM
Bicycles, Interviews |
Permalink
| Comments (0)
| Email Entry
January 2, 2009
Takira shows the thermistor
Thermistors are pretty cool little items. They convert heat into resistance. By having the temperature available as resistance, you can use the value to control other things like circuits and programs. Photo cells do the same thing with light, and they are in lots of common devices from night lights to dimmers on clock radios.
How could you use a thermistor with your shiny new Arduino? What could you measure with a thermistor? Have you got any videos like this where somebody demonstrates an interesting device? This video came from a summer youth program in Boston. Does your community have a similar opportunity for teenagers to learn incredible things and work on neat projects? Show your ideas in the comments, and iinclude your photos and video in the Make Flickr pool.
Posted by Chris Connors |
Jan 2, 2009 12:00 PM
Arduino, DIY Projects, How it's made, Interviews, Kids, Science, Something I want to learn to do..., Toolbox |
Permalink
| Comments (0)
| Email Entry
Electricity Exploration Kit Concept
This morning, Ed Baafi, Amon Milner, Jacob William, and a number of the youth leaders at Learn 2 Teach, Teach 2 Learn developed an idea of how to teach electricity to youth with a new kit idea.
What we are looking to do is reinvent the Alternative Energy module in the summer program. The kit will be flexible enough that experimenters can have hands-on experiences with power generation, storage and output. We also hope that they will be able to add on various technologies as they become available to the experimenter.
The Electricity Experimenters' kit helps promote exploration and understanding of the ways that people can use store, and generate electricity. A focus is made on allowing the user to interchange a number of different modules for generating, making use of and storing small amounts of electric current. These modules will enable youth to gain hands on experience with creating, storing and using energy for personal exploration.
The result of exposure to this kit is that we want people to be able to think, say and believe:
I can make a choice between clean and nonclean generation and the electricity is the same.
and:
I can make my own electricity without harming the environment.
How do you teach electricity? What do you do to help people understand the systems in their lives? What could you add to this kit idea to make it better? What information would you want people to have when they do experiments with electricity? Do you have any existing projects that could be used with a kit like this? How would you make the physical objects? What activities would bring out valuable learning outcomes when experimenting with electricity generation, storage and use? How can we use modifiers like voltage regulators and resistors in ways that don't confuse experimenters? What do you tell or show people that helps them understand the workings of a multimeter?
Add your comments to the discussion, and post your photos in the Make Flickr pool.
Posted by Chris Connors |
Jan 2, 2009 01:00 AM
Electronics, How it's made, Interviews, Kids, Kits, LEGO, Remake, Science, Something I want to learn to do..., Toolbox |
Permalink
| Comments (0)
| Email Entry
December 20, 2008
Tiny grand battles
One of the great things about Maker Faire is the opportunity to meet clever people and their fascinating projects. Often you have a conversation with a person who is highly skilled in an area you have never really considered before. This was the case when I met up with Jerry Etheridge of the North Texas Battle Group.
The idea behind the battles is that each ship is a 1:144 scale model of ships built prior to 1945. The hulls are made of balsa sheet, and each ship is armed with a CO2 powered gun firing ball bearings at each other. You fire onto the other ship until somebody gets wet. Since they run in fresh water, they don't worry too much about motors and other electronics getting damaged. When you sink, somebody rows out and grabs your superstructure and recovers the vessel, you patch up your holes, and go out to battle again.
The North Texas Battle Group has a wealth of information on their site. You may find that there is a group doing similar work near you. There seems to be a decent collection of battle ship videos on Youtube.
Has somebody sunk your battleship? Have you built, battled or seen a battle in miniature? How can you use your students' and your maker skills to help understand other subjects like history, science, language, math or art and music? Add your ideas to the comments, and contribute your photos and video to the Make Flickr pool.
Posted by Chris Connors |
Dec 20, 2008 08:00 AM
Crafts, DIY Projects, How it's made, Interviews, Makers, Retro, Toys and Games |
Permalink
| Comments (2)
| Email Entry
December 9, 2008
Raelinda's Story Jewelry
Raelinda Woad is a storyteller and jewelry maker.
She began in jewelry in the 1980's working her way up from bead sorter to jewelry maker's assistant.On New Years Eve of 1989 Raelinda had a chocolate induced vision: Become a storyteller! Two years later she was sharing her 'true stories that haven't quite happened yet' with coffeehouse audiences across New England. This led her to create and host StoryLAB, a storytelling concert series in Harvard Square's legendary Club Passim.
In the early 90's Raelinda combined her love of storytelling with her skill as a jewelry designer. The result was Storyteller Jewelry, a line of wearable books with her own coffeehouse stories hidden inside.
Take a look at some of her work, and maybe even read one of her stories.
Do you tell stories? How do you combine your various creative selves? Add your comments below, or send your photos to the Make Flickr Pool.
Posted by Chris Connors |
Dec 9, 2008 01:00 PM
Arts, Crafts, Interviews, Makers |
Permalink
| Comments (0)
| Email Entry
November 24, 2008
Jenna Faden and Jess Horton are pickled
Jenna Faden and Jess Horton, recent Fine Arts graduates of Umass Amherst showed their recent work at the Duxbury Art Association Winter Craft Showcase. Together, they are pickled. They took a brief break from sales and knitting to show their work, saying "we're really just grandmothers in disguise", told some stories and returned to the yarn.
Jenna made friends with a pack of alpacas. They wouldn't look at her until long after she started visiting with them. She used minimal photomanipulation, leaving the backgrounds intact.
Jess makes these neat birds, that were inspired by the suggestion of a child she was babysitting for.
This is the 36th year for the Duxbury Art Association's Winter Craft Showcase, a juried show with artists and crafters from all over the Northeast.
Does your work bring out a story? How can you get your tale told?
Posted by Chris Connors |
Nov 24, 2008 03:30 PM
Arts, Crafts, Interviews, Photography |
Permalink
| Comments (0)
| Email Entry
November 17, 2008
A conversation with Mitch Altman
During a quiet moment on Sunday afternoon at Maker Faire Austin 2008, I had a nice conversation with Mitch Altman. At the end of a very busy weekend, he was pretty beat, but I was struck with what a wonderful and peaceful guy Mitch is.
Mitch Altman creates kits that inspire people to make things. "If we don't make things on our own, then we're stuck with what the corporations want to give us....If we make our own things, we can make whatever we want. If we can imagine it, we can make it."
Check out Mitch Altman and his TV-B-Gone and Brain Machine projects.
Posted by Chris Connors |
Nov 17, 2008 09:00 AM
DIY Projects, Electronics, Interviews, Kits, Makers |
Permalink
| Comments (0)
| Email Entry
November 10, 2008
Best of Maker Faire: Maker's Notebook mod-a-rama
I understand Maker Faire Austin is done and gone, but I'm still thinking about how much fun it was. Over the next week or 2, I'll continue to share some highlights from the most make-tastic event Austin's ever seen.
Courtesy of Chris Connors, here's Steve Davee at Maker Faire Austin explaining some of his many mods to a Maker's Notebook:
What are your best notebook hacks?
Posted by Luke Iseman |
Nov 10, 2008 04:00 PM
Interviews, Maker Faire |
Permalink
| Comments (0)
| Email Entry
ACTLab: making the University of Texas make things
Joey Lopez and Brandon Wiley were kind enough to let me pick their brains about ACTLab, an interdisciplinary program at the University of Texas focused on the intersection of technology, culture, and art:
Dorkbot/Make interviews ACTLab from jl on Vimeo.
Video editing by Joey Lopez
If you're in Austin, check out their space this Wednesday at Dorkbot.
Posted by Luke Iseman |
Nov 10, 2008 10:00 AM
Arts, Events, Interviews |
Permalink
| Comments (0)
| Email Entry
November 7, 2008
Step inside the Machine
Rhizome has a nice interview / article with Make-friend Mark Allen, founder of Machine Project, an experimental art / exhibition / workshop space in the Echo Park nieghborhood of Los Angeles. Machine has hosted many DIY workshops including building circuits, cooking workshops, sewing, primitive synth construction workshops and many more.
Machine Project, Inside Machine Project: 
An Interview with Mark Allen
Posted by Jonah Brucker-Cohen |
Nov 7, 2008 04:00 AM
Arts, Interviews |
Permalink
| Comments (0)
| Email Entry
November 4, 2008
Mythbusters interview, part two
Here's part two of my interview with Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage of Mythbusters.
PS: So where are you going to be in 10 years, with fleeting fame?
AS: I have no idea.
PS: Do you have things you want to do? Do you have time to even think about it?
AS: I want to teach. Absolutely, I look forward to teaching; I taught for a couple of years at the Academy of Art College, I taught advanced model-making and problem- solving for the industrial design department. I would love to do more of that. I'd also love to work in pure research. Which is effectively what we get to do. Don't get me wrong - there's likely going to be more television in our future, but if I was never again on television after Mythbusters, I wouldn't necessarily miss it, there's plenty of things to try out there. We've worked with some amazing groups and some amazing companies - I could see a very happy future doing pure research with a nice little hand-picked team of people, prototyping various concepts and trying out different things.
JH: Fortunately, the success of the show has allowed us such freedom, and respect within Discovery and the production company that hires us, that they'll basically pay for us to do whatever the hell we want, because they've found that if we're having a good time, if we're enjoying ourselves, it tends to make for good TV. That's a great thing. The show will, over time, evolve one way or another, it may even become something that's not really at all like Mythbusters, but this kind of general curiosity we have about the world at large and the way we like to playfully explore it is something that's kind of timeless. We could continue doing that quite happily in one incarnation or another for a long time.
AS: If there's one thing that typifies being freelance, it's always wondering what's next, always thinking about what's next. It is a constant and ongoing conversation between us as partners, to the degree that what we will do, we will do together; we're not going to kill the goose that has laid this terrific egg for us. At the same time, we're both thinking, what do I really want to do? Maybe I could try that. We were talking a couple of months ago, we both had decided at some point, once I'm done with Mythbusters, I think I'd like to get my pilot's license, and Jamie was like, me too. (laughs) Fly some planes. It could go anywhere, and that what's next, what's next, what's next - when you're freelancing and one industry you've been working in dries up, then you start moving into other things, like Jamie did with M5 when commercial work in San Francisco got light, and he started moving into prototyping and other fields. It holds the same here. Mythbusters has been an incredible experience, and I have no idea what what form this body of knowledge I've developed will take, but we could end up miles from here.
Posted by Patti Schiendelman |
Nov 4, 2008 07:00 AM
Interviews, Kids, Makers |
Permalink
| Comments (3)
| Email Entry
November 3, 2008
Mythbusters interview, part one
Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman of Mythbusters were recently in Seattle for a live show - I got to hang out and ask them some questions before the show. I also passed on your suggestions - you guys were awesome, there were tons! They were great to interview; they're not bored by each other or jaded, or full of themselves - they were both very gracious and excited about ideas and very curious about everything, which makes them fascinating people to talk to. Both have a great appreciation of what an incredible opportunity they have with this show, and they're having an awesome time.
It's a long interview and I'm posting it in two parts - part two will go up tomorrow morning. Make sure you click, there's lots more behind the cut!
PS: How did you get started doing the show?
JH: Well, we'd both been working in effects for over a decade, for decades in my case, for almost as much for Adam, and some years ago an Australian documentary filmmaker had the idea to do a show about urban legends that did more than just talk about them, would actually have someone who could replicate them and he had the idea the people doing effect would be good at doing that because we build all sorts of crazy stuff for movies and television commercials.
AS: And one of the central ideas was that we're not scientists, that it's a couple of guys trying to figure out a problem in their garage type of approach.
JH: And that's pretty much it. He had run into us years before on an unrelated story with us - it was to do with Robot Wars and BattleBots. There was a robot that we had built that was notorious; he'd interviewed us about that and later on remembered us. He approached me and I thought about it and was like, I can do this, but I didn't think I could quite carry it myself, I needed someone who was more animated than I was to work with me, and it turned out to be a good call, because that's how the show seems to work, this interplay between Adam and I is an important part of it. So I brought Adam in and we did a demo tape and it turns out that was basically what the show became; it was us playing around in the shop, setting things on fire and blowing things up.
AS: That was the demo reel, and if you watch it now, it's shocking how much it looks almost exactly like the show - yeah, it was uncanny.
PS: So you guys had met through special effects?
AS: Yeah, Jamie had hired me to work in his shop around about 1993 or 1994, and I'd worked for him for a few years before moving up to ILM, to the toy business and other points.
JH: He eventually got sick of working for me, so he started working at other places. (Adam laughs) We'd kept in touch over the years, and occasionally we'd get involved in some crazy project or other, and when this came up, he was the first person who came to mind. He's very fast and very animated about his work, and so the rest is history.
Posted by Patti Schiendelman |
Nov 3, 2008 07:00 AM
Interviews, Kids, Makers |
Permalink
| Comments (3)
| Email Entry
October 15, 2008
Mr. Jalopy Interviews Illuminati Motor Works
From now until the awesomeness that is Maker Faire Austin, I'll be highlighting projects that you can find at Travis County Fairgrounds on 10/18-19. Tickets here; see you there!
One of the projects I'm most excited about is the Eco-Modding Illuminati has been doing on a Hyundai Genesis:
The Illuminati Motor Works Team is an official Automotive X-Prize Contender. They are competing for the "1 Gallon of Gas, 100 Miles -- $10 Million: The Race to Build the Supergreen Car." At Maker Faire, they will be conducting daily eco-modding workshops as they focus on how to get better mileage and improve performance on the Hyundai Genesis.
Mr. Jalopy has interviewed Kevin Smith From Illuminati, and you can hear the audio here. Much respect to Kevin for doing this interview, even though he's clearly exhausted from working on this project non-stop! Also check out the Illuminati blog for video updates. See you this weekend!
Posted by Luke Iseman |
Oct 15, 2008 02:50 PM
Interviews, Maker Faire |
Permalink
| Comments (0)
| Email Entry
September 30, 2008
Neal Stephenson Answers Our Questions
Thanks to Neal Stephenson for taking the time to ride in my pedicab for an interview last week. Lesson learned: it's difficult to bike and interview at the same time. Fortunately, Neal sat down w/ me for a less-strenuous interview after the ride. Here's his message to aspiring makers:
Here's what Neal had to say in response to our questions:
I read you have an english wheel in your basement, and the article where I read this said something like 'thanks to the wonders of Harbor Freight, cost has come down from thousands...' does this mean that you subscribe to the dangerous drug that is harbor freight?
An English wheel is a really simple device, so I figured there wasn't that much that could go wrong with one from Harbor Freight. And, that was really the only option to get one... sometimes, I'll buy the first version of a tool cheaply and then upgrade if I'm using it a lot.
What's the most surprising technological development you've seen over the last 10 years?
It's a boring answer, but I have to say the growth of the Internet.
What technology today do you think will really surprise people over the next decade?
I'm not big on making predictions like that...
Do you think nanotechnology development has been slowed by government policy, and do you think it'll ever reach the levels of Diamond Age?
Honestly, I haven't been following nanotech closely enough to stay abreast of the latest in the area of government regulation. I tend to dive into a topic for a book and then let it go.
Why make a video trailer for Anathem?
It's a popular trend in publishing. I'd never heard of the idea until I got an email from my publisher announcing that they were going to do it. So I was more intrigued than anything. The filmmaker, Brady Hall, put the thing together amazingly quickly. He paid close attention to the book and listened to my input. Now he's working on one for Neil Gaiman.
I've read you 'went all in' with Snow Crash, writing what you wanted and not what you thought would be commercially successful. If nobody bought it, what would you be doing today?
At that point, I knew enough about the world of publishing that I probably could have bounced back and eventually written something else to keep my career going... if I had gotten a normal job, it probably would have been some kind of gig in the high-tech industry.
What DIY projects don't seem to be receiving the manpower that they should
I'm kind of surprised that people don't use composites more. I think there are a lot of things done with wood, nails, and metal that could be done with composites. It's a different toolset and a different way of thinking. But it's very accessible now: it doesn't take much to tool up for. Scissors, gloves, experience... but amazingly versatile. I suspect many get turned off because they try to go cheap and use polyester resin, which is hideously smelly. If you work with epoxy, it doesn't stink and it's stronger. The good stuff has a high mixture ratio, 4:1 or even 5:1 of resin to hardener. Don't use 2:1 or 1:1 epoxy unless you specifically want a flexible result, e.g. laying glass over wood where you have to account for differential expansion.
Is there a composites resource or project you'd recommend starting with?
Braided tubes are a good starting point: they come in a bunch of different sizes, and they're relatively easy to work with. They work like Chinese handcuffs. You can put them over any kind of tube or strut, pull on both ends, and the braid will tighten over the strut. Apply resin and a little while later you have a very strong, nice-looking structural member.
what's your favorite tool, and why?
It's a tossup between an oxyacetelyne torch and a portable Lincoln wirefeed welder. The welder's infinitely more useful, and the torch is just cool because of what it is.
What's the grandest failure of a project you've achieved?
I've had some pretty grand failures with composites, because once you start to get ambitious, you can have a catastrophe on your hands when the epoxy starts to cook off ahead of schedule... Actually, my grandest failure has been with rockets that didn't do what i wanted them to... a few of them that came to bad ends, but i think the worst was one where I was using a hybrid nitrous oxide motor that was supposed to work a certain way based on my computer modeling. It was at a rocket launch meetup and something went wrong with the motor so that it delivered only about a third of the expected total impulse. It went up 100 feet, nosed over, and slammed into the ground.
How do you choose what projects to work on when, and how do you know if you're working on the right things?
With books, I've just got a sense now for what's going to work. I didn't used to. Now, I can tell what's gonig to go or not, just from experience, having done it before. As far as building stuff, what tends to happen is if I can keep doing it on my own with the tools I've got and maybe a couple of collaborators it goes. But it gets stuck if it requires tools I don't have or cumbersome processes.
Do you have any advice for aspiring writers, in their cubicles waiting to have that 'big idea' for the next great novel?
Just keep writing. The big mistake is to write something and then stop for a long time while you try to sell it. Don't ever stop. If you stop, you get out of practice. And writing is like cabinet making or soccer playing, it's all about practice.
If you could change one thing about one of your books, what would it be?
Well, technically I can: they're my books, and I can change things for future editions. But, to go back and start rewriting is really a mistake. There's a saying in the bible about dogs returning to their vomit...
You have a magic wand to make one change in the world. what would it be?
Hmmm, a magic wand question. I would move us decisively away from oil, which seems to be at the root of all sorts of trouble.
Do you think that 'Snow Crash' led to a boom (then bust) in virtual communities (e.g., Second Life) before their time?
I'm not close enough to the industry to know if there was a true 'boom and bust' in that field. There have always always booms and busts... The basic idea of a metaverse is sort of obvious; it's nice that people look to "Snow Crash" as inspiration but I'm sure that similar things would exist now even if I'd never written that book.
Anathem raises the new question for me: Are human beings evolved to only think short-term, or is civilization warping us? You would think that if nature is about wanting to preserve your bloodline, ensuring the world is habitable in 100 years is a pretty reasonable evolutionary imperative, no?
Evolution only relates to having kids, so once you've gotten past the age when you've had kids evolution ceases to really fuction. I would be awfully surprised if evolution has done us any favors whatsoever in the long-term thinking department. It has been incredibly effective, however, at making us want to have sex with each other.
Where do you find your inspiration?
I don't analyze myself enough to know where I get inspiration from... I'm disturbed by how little I've been reading of late... so many things can be done on a computer and I just chain them all together: socializing, mail, taxes, work, phone calls, entertainment.
Do you do all of your own historical/technical research or do you solicit help?
I do all my own research, and I don't use any proprietary databases. Although, I did hire Lisa Gold, Research Maven to help generate some family trees and a few other ancillary things for the Baroque Cycle after the books had been written.
What's your favorite creation outside of your books?
A telescoping practice sword... you can put a pad on the blade of a sword so it doesn't hurt so much but the thrust will still hurt. I made a sword that telescopes inward on impact.
How deeply did you imagine the culture of Arbre? For example, there aren't texts for the Hylaean Anathem in the book. Did you conceptualize more than you wrote down about music, language, architecture, etc.?
Very little... not one of those projects w/ a whole world created around it. And yes, I am wondering how much more development Jeremy Bornstein will do on the Orth grammar. That's up to Jeremy, he seems to be having fun with it... I don't think they'll be a klingon or elvish demand for it, but I could be wrong.
I'll post about Neal's telescoping sword later today. Thanks again, Neal!
Posted by Luke Iseman |
Sep 30, 2008 11:45 AM
Interviews, Science |
Permalink
| Comments (3)
| Email Entry
September 24, 2008
Interview with circuit bending originator Reed Ghazala
Gearwire sits down for a talk with Mr. Qubais Reed Ghazala, widely regarded as the father of circuit-bending. Ghazala speaks at length as to the origins and popularity of bending's most iconic project - the modified Texas Instruments Speak & Spell, aka the Incantor.
Posted by Collin Cunningham |
Sep 24, 2008 06:00 AM
Interviews, Music |
Permalink
| Comments (0)
| Email Entry
August 25, 2008
Urban Sustainability Q&A; With Scott Kellogg
Scott Kellogg, author of Toolbox for Sustainable City Living: A Do-It-Ourselves Guide, took the time to let me pick his brain. He's also agreed to check out the comments below himself; if you're lucky, he might even answer some of your questions there.
A sketch of a floating trash island from Scott's book.
1. What project have you built that you're most proud of?
If I had to pick one, it would be the floating trash islands [water-loving plants growing on a
raft made of plastic bottles]: they're beautiful, utilize trash and recycled materials, create wildlife habitat, and remediate urban stormwater runoff, which is a nasty problem. It's a synthesis of trash to mimic nature: chunks of river banks will sometimes float away naturally. Slaughterhouses use a similar concept to filter cesspools, but theirs relies on expensive components and chemicals.
2. What one project, from your book or otherwise, would you recommend as a good introduction to DIY sustainability?
For a general audience, the thing i would recommend to most people to do is keep a worm box: it's simple, doesn't smell, and you can do it in your apartment apartment. For the more technically inclined, I want to see people play with autonomous energy systems, especially efficient small-scale wind turbines. I want to see people really try to push the envelope on how to build safe and efficient turbines producing significant wattage using recycled materials. Also passive solar technology, specifically parabolas. In general, making sustainable technology more practical, simpler, and cheaper, using your intelligence and skills in ways that benefit people who don't have access to tools, information, know-how...
3. In your book, you criticized the use of solar cells because of a lack of affordability and long-term availability, while others say we should use tech and high-embodied energy resources, like concrete, while they're still available. And, others are paralyzed into inaction by the many downstream impacts of any project. Do you have any heuristics to quickly decide when a technology makes sense to employ in a project, to differentiate between necessary sustainable tech vs. technofetishism?
I don't have cut-and-dry criteria: there's a lot of gray areas. Generally I try to make things that can be built quickly and cheaply using recycled materials, user-serviceable, and whoever is using the technology can process the waste in the end. It's sort of a continuum, transitional strategies like solar panels in the middle. They're much better than coal or nuclear, but they're not the magic bullet to energy problems. Nothing against them, the Rhizome Collective has a 3,200-watt system from the Austin Energy rebate program. We did it because it's better than burning coal. I want to caution people not to be looking to solar as the solution to all their problems, because active solar will never be affordable to those in the global south.
4. Do you see a gap between permaculture movements and and the DIY technology scenes? If so, how can we bring them more together?
I look at both of the groups as same but different: there's a lot of crossover. I mean, food is primary to everything, we all have to eat, we all have to have drinkable water... that's our greatest commonality across barriers, the need for food. we can think of this as the base of the pyramid, and work together to teach each other about both the technology and the traditional knowledge of the land.
5. You wrote about inspections of composting toilets, and I'm going through the same bureaucratic mess w/ some of my projects. Is this worth the time, or should we all be moving to the West Texas Desert or a different, less-developed country to spend more time on building and less on bureaucracy?
They both need to happen. Basically, the systems need to be first experimented with, tinkered with, to figure out what works so that by the time a system's ready to get approved through all those roadblocks you've got the details worked out and have the data ready to present. There's plenty of need to do this work on a clandestine level as well as on a broad-scale, more mainstream level.
6. A theme of many of the questions in the comments was 'that's all well and good for extremists, but what can I do now without quitting my day job doing engineering in corporate America?'
If I had a better grasp on calculus, I would totally become an engineer myself. I think there needs to be a lot more radical engineers out there, a league of radical engineers. In order for a lot of these systems to be applied on a broad scale, the legal obstacles to their application need to be removed. By having these systems approved, by having an engineer put their stamp on it, that clears the way. This is a lot to think about with time and money constraints; we just this year got a composting toilet approved by the City of Austin. As far as I know, it's the first user-built composting toilet to be code-approved. It took us 4 years to do this, and the only thing that made it possible then was that an environmental engineer I worked with put her stamp on it. People are understandably concerned about liability issues... if we get more radical engineers out there, there's hope.
7. How can i convince you to open-source this book?
Well, The Humanure Handbook's online and free... it's really up to our publishers, we don't own the rights to the book. We'll try to talk to them about the possibility.
Thanks again for your time, Scott. Makers: let me know who else you have questions for and I'll do my best to get to it!
Posted by Luke Iseman |
Aug 25, 2008 07:42 AM
Green, Interviews |
Permalink
| Comments (0)
| Email Entry
August 21, 2008
Squeaky The Wonder Pig
Next time you're wandering around west Texas, don't shoot that feral pig that wonders into your path. Instead, adopt him and gain a cattle-herding, 400-pound friend.
But please don't feed him pizza with pepperoni on top: that's just creepy:
First to expand pig training to fill other traditionally dog-powered activities has my never-ending respect. Pig power instead of these dog-powered transports might even result in some usable methane, too!
Posted by Luke Iseman |
Aug 21, 2008 07:00 AM
Interviews |
Permalink
| Comments (2)
| Email Entry
August 17, 2008
Call For Questions: Urban Sustainability
Scott Kellogg, founder of Austin's Rhizome Collective, just released a cutting-edge book on urban sustainability. Rust, short for Radical Urban Sustainability Toolbox, is a how-to guide for reducing your footprint and improving your quality of life without having to move into the boondocks.
He's agreed to spend some time speaking with me, and I'd like your help coming up with meaningful questions. Check out the intro to his book, and comment below with any questions you'd like me to ask. I'll speak with Scott and share his answers with y'all. Please comment by Tuesday 8/26, and look for a post with Scott's responses later this week!
Posted by Luke Iseman |
Aug 17, 2008 03:05 PM
Green, Interviews |
Permalink
| Comments (4)
| Email Entry
June 23, 2008
Interview with David Lasky, comic/zine Maker
David Lasky is a Seattle artist and teacher who has been making comics and zines since 1991. He teaches both kids and adults at 826 Seattle, Richard Hugo House, Seattle Art Institute and with Arts Corps. His work has been published in The Comics Journal, The Stranger, and many anthologies, including Best American Comics 2006. His comic series, Urban Hipster, was nominated for the comic-book industry's Harvey Award.
Did you draw as a kid? How did you learn? Who helped you?
I drew as far back as I can remember. My mother encouraged me a great deal. I also had some good art teachers in school. And occasional there would be a neighbor who painted or took photos whose work I could look at. But I didn't know any cartoonists as a kid.
When did you publish your first comics/zines? Did you sell them?
I published my first mini-comics in early 1991, and sold them at Comic Relief in Berkeley, CA. This was before the Internet, so I would also submit them to a magazine called Factsheet 5, which listed all kinds of zines and comics that people were selling.
Do you think kids should try to publish online instead of paper?
Online comics (and writing) is nice because it gets ones work out there quickly and without the expense of printing on paper. But printing (or photocopying) on paper creates something that stands on its own and could potentially be kept around and mulled over by the reader. So both ways of doing it have their benefits.
How is teaching kids different from teaching adults?
Kids are usually less inhibited about trying new things. Many adults will not want to take my class because, they'll tell me, they "can't draw." Kids won't worry (as much) about what they think they can or can't do. If they really want to draw comics, they're usually willing to give it a try.
Any tips for kids who want to become comic artists?
Practice, practice, practice. Practice drawing, and also writing. Learn about storytelling. Study the comics you like reading to see how they were made. Also look closely at movies, books, TV shows, etc. -- to see how they tell their stories. Don't just copy the drawings of artists you like. Learn how to draw from life. Practice facial expressions and "body language". And don't let yourself get discouraged. Believe in what you're doing.
Drawing is kind of solitary - I know you've done comics jams, could you explain how those work?
Comics jams are one of the great challenges for a comics artist. Two or more cartoonists gather together (OR: work by mail, which is much slower). You draw a panel on a page, and then pass the page to someone else who is asked to draw the next panel in the story. Meanwhile, someone is passing a page to you, and you have to decide what will be drawn in the next panel on that page. Pages are passed until all the panels are filled up. Sometimes the results are hilarious, sometimes just... weird.
Can you recommend some books for us?
Scott McCloud's two books are great: Understanding Comics and Making Comics.
For manga, I really like Draw Your Own Manga: All the Basics by Haruno Nagatomo.
And its sequel, which is called Draw Your Own Manga: Beyond the Basics.
And for zines, this is a nice book: Whatcha Mean, What's a Zine? by Esther Pearl Watson.
Posted by Patti Schiendelman |
Jun 23, 2008 07:00 AM
Interviews, Kids, Makers |
Permalink
| Comments (0)
| Email Entry
May 30, 2008
Eliptical bike interview
In this video, Kristin White from TalkTech interviews Bryan Pate, co-founder of PT Motion Works about his elliptiGO glide bike, which is powered by an elliptical training motion. If you missed the elliptiGO at Maker Faire this May, this video is a good introduction. As a former ironman competitor, Bryan explains why this bike is a great alternative to the indoor elliptical trainer for folks who love to exercise outside but can't stand high-impact running.
Related:
elliptiGO Glide Bike at the Maker Faire site
Posted by Becky Stern |
May 30, 2008 11:00 AM
Bicycles, Interviews, Makers, Transportation |
Permalink
| Comments (0)
| Email Entry
The online premiere of Make: television is January 3rd 2009, visit makezine.tv or iTunes to see the entire first episode! The broadcast premiere will follow shortly after depending on when your local Public Television station airs it.
Happy New Year from MAKE!
MAKE's 2009 New Year's message.What we're making in 2009.
MAKE's RSS feed is here.
Add MAKE to iGoogle - GoogleGoogle.
How to add MAKE to your RSS reader - Real simple.
Add MAKE on Twitter.
MAKE's fan page on Facebook.
Add MAKE on FriendFeed
Why advertise on MAKE?
Read what folks are saying about us!
Click here to advertise on MAKE!
Makezine authors!
Senior Editor
Tel: 707-827-7311
Twitter / AIM
Gareth Branwyn
Jonah Brucker-Cohen
Chris Connors
Collin Cunningham
Marc de Vinck
Mike Dixon
Peter Horvath(intern)
Kip Kay
Luke Iseman
John Park
Patti Schiendelman
Becky Stern
Jason Striegel
Current Podcast
Make: television Episode 4: Fire Sculpture & DTV Antenna
Meet the Flaming Lotus Girls, a women-centric maker collaborative that creates gargantuan, fire-breathing sculptures. In the Workshop, John Park builds a digital TV antenna from wire coat hangers and a $10 video camera stabilizer. William Gurstelle shows surprising uses...
More...
Get the Make blog sent via email
Help | Write for MAKE | Contact Us | Subscribe | Advertise with Us | Privacy Policy| About MAKE | FAQ
© 2009 O'Reilly Media, Inc.
All trademarks and registered trademarks appearing on makezine.com are the property of their respective owners.