Making Things

I'm originally an electronics guy from since before computers as a hobby were even an option. I fondly remember the days of building small transistor radios from scratch, etching my own circuit boards and soldering the hell out of all the components.

I also had several of the amazing Philips electronic kit sets that made experimentation with electronic components ridiculously easy.

So I remember electronics as a hobby from way before even BBS came around, when all the schematics you could find where in books and magazines. If you didn't actually know somebody else in person who can use a soldering iron, you were on your own. And parts were hard to come by. You had to order them through the mail or take the train to the next reasonably big city where they had stores full of components.

Once home computers came around I slowly moved away from pure electronics and software became my main interest.

So it was strange now to surf around a bit and see how amazing the projects are that one can attempt nowadays. The Electronics Forum is full of cool, complex projects that are possible thanks to the marriage of modern electronics and the web.

There are also fantastic magazines and blogs like MAKE that open the world of electronic tinkering to a new generation of people who have never even considered that they could make something like a MP3 player by themselves.

And then there are the kings of the makers, like Ben Heckendorn who redesigns the world of video game consoles around him.

All of this makes me feel like I should start making things again...