Nuts & Volts: I <3 Maker Types
Nuts and Volts is one of the few magazines I subscribe to that I go through cover to cover each month. This is odd, cuz I don’t really understand it and read very little of it. It’s one of those magazines, like certain books I own, that I aspire to read and which I benefit from looking through.
For the uninitiated (or well-adjusted), Nuts and Volts is an electronics hobbyist magazine. It’s got product reviews, news (including the circuited contact lens), projects each month, loads of advertisements (which is a big part of the charm - electronics geeks writing copy and figuring out images that sell), tutorials, circuit walk-throughs.
My knowledge of electronics came from a month between jobs where I mucked around with the Arduino and some solderless breadboards. I’m better than a beginner, but the intermediate stuff in Nuts and Volts is beyond me right now. So, each month I browse it looking for content that helps me past my current plateau of understanding and, more importantly, I revel in the making culture that I admire.
The April 2008 issue (cover above) had particular charms for me. The cover story is “High Voltage Power Supply”(!) featuring a nixie display board and the line: “It’s fun to collect and experiment with forgotten technology! But, you will need a stable high voltage power supply to get started.” This might be the equivalent of the swimsuit issue for Nuts and Volts readers . . . I really can’t tell.
I loved this piece, a project for a timed/self-monitoring bird feeder, requested by a reader:
Retired, limited income, limited mobility guy . . . and they do a project for him to build a bird feeder. love Love LUV it.
And, lastly, you gotta love the advertisements:
