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Street Tech is a personal technology site. We offer honest views and reviews on technology from our many years of experience in the digital trenches. We're known to rant about what sucks and rave about what doesn't. We love technology but know the smell of bullshit when it arrives as the latest "killer app." Got something you want to share? Hit the "Submit News" button and send it along.
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Posted by: gareth on Thursday, November 12, 2009 - 05:03 PM EST
I love "lazyweb" sites, Q&A sites, and other crowdsourced resources that deal in instant-gratification content. I especially like them when the signal to noise ratio is high; when a lot of really smart, inspired people come together to share their expertise.
As of a few weeks ago, O'Reilly now has its own such site, O'Reilly Answers, a place where O'Reilly authors, editors, conference speakers and goers, readers, i.e. the O'Reilly community, can share knowledge and ideas. Some have asked: how is this any different from StackOverflow? StackOverflow is about programming. O'Reilly Answers is about anything its community of users wants it to be about. The site's tagline is: "Clever Hacks. Creative Ideas. Innovative Solutions." If that's what it turns out to be about, it'll definitely be a place where you'll want to hang.
O'Reilly Answers
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Posted by: gareth on Tuesday, October 13, 2009 - 10:29 PM EST
I hope you have our Make: Online Halloween contests on your radar. We've teamed up with Microchip, Inc. this year and are giving away Microchip products (microcontrollers, sensors, I/O boards, etc.) leading up to our big Halloween contest where we'll be giving away nearly $1,000 worth of microcontrollers and accessories. To enter the weekly drawings, you just have to comment on the appropriate item on MAKE. To enter the big contest, you need to do a Halloween project that involves any brand of MCU, document it, and send us the deets.
Full contest details here.
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Posted by: gareth on Tuesday, September 15, 2009 - 09:36 PM EST
I am thrilled to announce that we've launched a new area on Make: Online, called the Make: Science Room. Here are the deets (from my post about it):
The Make: Science Room is our DIY science destination. Here you'll find how-tos on setting up a home lab, evaluating and buying equipment and supplies, and conducting all manner of fun and educational home science experiments. We also provide a forum, through Comments, for our readers to share their ideas and collaborate on their own experiments and discoveries. Robert Bruce Thompson is your host. He's the author of the best-selling Illustrated Guide to Home Chemistry Experiments (O'Reilly/Make: Books, 2008) and the (not-yet-published) Illustrated Guide to Forensics Investigations. We'll be including modified content from these books as well as creating original content. As time goes on, we'll expand the Science Room to include sections on astronomy, Earth sciences, biology, and other disciplines. We already have dozens of additional articles on deck and will be posting batches of them each week, so check back often.
Here's the rest of my post.
Here's the front door of the site.
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Posted by: gareth on Tuesday, September 15, 2009 - 06:22 PM EST
Last year, I had the pleasure of contributing to an art book put together by Greg and Amy Brotherton, for their Device Gallery in La Jolla, CA. The book was called Fantastic Contraption, and featured some of my favorite artists working in what I call mechanical animism (and what Greg calls post-industrial surrealism). The book was beautiful, filled with art by the likes of Stephane Halleux, Mike Libby, Nemo Gould, and Greg Brotherton himself.
This year, they asked me to do the intro to the second volume in the series, called Reconstructed. All the above artists are back, joined by Christopher Conte, Jeremy Mayer, Lewis Tardy and many others. It's hard for me to imagine, but Volume II could be more gorgeous than Vol 1, but it is. Everyone who sees it on my coffee table freaks out. It's really a beautiful piece of book art and a fantastic collection of significant artists working in a fascinating, deliciously uncategorizable genre.
The Maker Shed sells Volume I of Device. You can buy Volume II directly from Device Gallery.
[BTW: The gallery has now moved. They're located in San Diego.]
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Posted by: gareth on Friday, May 09, 2008 - 03:28 PM EST
I'm just back from the third annual Bay Area Maker Faire. This year, one of the things I helped organize was the steampunk presence at the Faire, namely the Contraptor's Lounge, featuring such icons of the scene as Jake von Slatt, Datamancer, and Molly Porkshanks, and the Saturday Night Steampunk Spectacular, featuring the band Abney Park. Here's an excerpt from the piece I just posted on the Make: Blog. Read the entire article here.
The steam mechanics, oilpunks, contraptors, neo-Victorians cosplayers, retro-futurists, post-apocalyptic Playa pirates, New Dandies, and electric cowboys were all out in force at this year's Bay Area Maker Faire. There was the Victorian castle on wheels, the steam-powered runabout, the steam-effects scooter, the fire-spewing bar with vaudeville side-stage, the radio-tubed Theremin, and the outdoor Victorian sitting room with a disgorged cabinet of wonders of brassy computer mods, rayguns, clockwork guitars, and a light-spewing violin covering several tables. There were also at least three airship crews.
One of the coolest things about all this is that many of these artisans were already great virtual friends, even collaborators, but had never actually met in person. Seen above is a drawing, by the amazing Suzanne Forbes, of the inimitable Jake von Slatt (left) and Datamancer (right). This is the first time these two well-known steampunk makers had met in meatspace. Here they're seen building a special Maker Faire Contraptors' Lounge keyboard (which we'll likely give away here on the blog at some point). More of Suzanne's drawings from the Lounge can be seen after the jump.
Sitting in the Lounge: Crewmembers of the HMS Chronabelle, Magpie of Steampunk Magazine. In the background (left) Captain Robert of Abney Park and Jake von Slatt, (center) MAKE photographer Sam Murphy and me (the bald dude -- and I swear I'm NOT picking my nose), (right) David S. Dowling (black vest). Seen on the table is Molly Freidrich's Sinister Device and one of her rayguns.
One of the tables in the Lounge, this one mainly featuring work by Jake von Slatt, including his clockwork guitar, his copper-plated etched mint tins, his telegraph sounders, and a phone project he's currently working on. Also seen is the forthcoming Steampunk Anthology edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer and a portfolio of Molly Freidrich's work.
Tom Sepe's steam-assisted motorbike.
Jake von Slatt: You've just been "steampunked" (by Meredith Scheff).
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Posted by: gareth on Monday, March 17, 2008 - 03:59 PM EST
Tuesday, 25 March 2008
7 PM - 9 PM (ET)
ALWAYS FREE!
Location:
Smith Hall of Art, Room 114
George Washington University
801 22nd St NW
Washington, DC 20037
Tom Lee : Cheaper Arduino Wifi
 Bringing ethernet connectivity to the Arduino for around fifty dollars, Lady Ada's XPort Shield has gotten people understandably excited. But with a little elbow grease and a custom firmware, you can do even better: a $10 component can bring Ethernet, wifi and a full Linux environment to your microcontroller project. Not bad, right? Tom Lee will explain how, and show a simple Arduino-based ambient display that uses the approach to show Metro schedule information.
Tom Lee is a DC web developer and technologist who contributes to DCist, Techdirt and whatever other blogs will have him.
Gareth Branwyn : Jack Parsons: The Original Burning Man
Gareth will present a "Maker Profile" on under- appreciated American rocketry pioneer Jack Parsons, based on "Darkside Rocketeer," his piece on Parsons running in MAKE Volume 13.
Jack Parsons is one of the most important figures in the history of American rocketry and space development. He invented the JATO (jet-assisted take-off) motor-- America's first rocket program, co-founded the Jet Propulsion Laborartory and Aerotech Corporation, and created the formulations for solid rocket motors still in use today. Unfortunately, Parsons' controversial private life -- as a practitioner of ceremonial magick, a follower of infamous British occultist Aleister Crowley, and as a devout hedonist -- has caused many of his technical achievements to be shoved into the closet of history. Parsons' untimely death in a mysterious home lab explosion, has only added to the sordid nature of his story.
Gareth will talk not only of Parsons, but the group of fellow amateurs and CalTech students he worked with, known as The Suicide Squad, and the amazing intellectual backdrop of Pasadena and CalTech in the 1920s and '30s.
Gareth Branwyn is a writer on technology and fringe culture. He is a contributing editor to MAKE, writes for the Make: Blog, and is an editor for O'Reilly's Make: Books imprint.
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