I never thought I could be a Maker

My maker journey, or lack there of

I failed my middle school shop class test four times. Four times.

What are the types of wood drill bits? Spade, spiral and fortsner.

Sorry I took so long to learn that Mr Buzz. ^[1]

I grew up loving software. By that I mean in fifth grade I asked my parents to buy me a C++ textbook. Projects in the physical world always seemed harder to me. So, over time I kept doubling down and investing in that craft of code. Now I find myself wishing I had diversified my skills more.

I've been reading Material World by Ed Conway^[2] and in the book he discusses the "ethereal world" we live in most of the time. We are disconnected from the physical processes that transforms raw materials into the products we use. We spend more and more of our time interacting with digital devices. I think I've been trapped in the ethereal world.

For a long time I've joked with my friends that working in software and finance means I'm two degrees deep into made up ideas. I suppose three degress when you thrown AI into the mix. Don't get me wrong, ideation and reification are very cool: with software you can go from an idea to a creation using nothing more than a keyboard. However, that lacks the kind of craft I want.

I remember sitting in my grandfather's living room as a child and disassembling a stereo. My grandfather learned electronics when he was a radar specialist in the airforce. So I imagine he was happy to see me taking an interest. I did not know what any of the parts did, but the act itself was fun.

After that I remember soldering a couple of times, and maybe doing a breadboard project. I also remember taking a battery, nails, water, and trying to do electrolysis. No reason why, I just read about the concept and thought let me try that.

I had a couple of small projects like modding a DMG-01 Gameboy with pro sound and a backlight.^[3] Then at some point I started to shy away from non-software projects, because they felt outside of my skill-set. I was able to pick up software so much easier, that I started to lean away from the more difficult feeling projects in the material world. What I realize now is the avoidant behavior actually made the situation worse. If those projects were harder, I could have used deliberate practice to try, fail and eventually learn.

Why do I want to learn these skills now?

Solostolgia is the lived experience of negatively perceived change. My mind is scattered, so this section is as well. Here's a progression of my thoughts over the last year.

Google is restricting Android, requiring all apps to have their developers register with Google in order to run on certified devices. See my related post I Picked A Really Weird Time to Try Out GrapheneOS. ^[4]

In Breaking The Creepy AI in Police Cameras Benn Jordan talks about AVLR cameras and their ethics^[5]:

And even after stolen data was used to manipulate and subvert democracy in 2016, another decade passed without any meaningful protection from the federal government. So yeah, I guess we'll just fucking DIY it.

A company Enel X Way bought an EV charger startup and didn't want to continue supporting the tethered services the chargers required to run. So they killed the chargers. In Escaping the chains of tethered products: the Juice Rescue project, Dr. J. Nathan Matias talked about the community that removed the restrictions to restore the chargers.

My podcast player started showing ads to users that were grandfathered into the premium plan. Well the app is open source so I can just remove those ads.

Subvert... subvert?

In high school:

• I took some communications classes. I wanted to install plugins for more effects in Final Cut Pro. Back then you could use recovery mode on macs to create admin accounts. So I did.
• I had a teacher that wanted to watch sports during their lunch break. I helped them set up a proxy. Helping another person get around restrictions felt good.
• A friend ask me to obtain a CD of some software. Instead, I made a CD that would auto open Rick Astley's Never Gonna Give You Up and a link to Let Me Google That For you.

As a kid I owned a print copy of the Jargon file:

1. The belief that information-sharing is a powerful positive good, and that it is an ethical duty of hackers to share their expertise by writing open-source code and facilitating access to information and to computing resources wherever possible.
2. The belief that system-cracking for fun and exploration is ethically OK as long as the cracker commits no theft, vandalism, or breach of confidentiality.

This is how I've always thought about that ethereal world. Self-hosting has been a form of this for me. A way to exert some small amount of control over my digital life. Why not do the same for the material world?

I have a lot of groundwork and learning to do though.

What do I actually want to learn?

This year I finished reading Cory Doctorow's book The Internet Con. At the end he recommended some other reading material. One was The Hardware Hacking Handbook. ^[6] When I started reading I realized I was in over my head, and should go back to the fundamentals.

First I wanted to start with what I already had lying around:

• I bought a Pinecil v2 [^ Everything is USB C in the future.] when it released in 2022 and never even opened the box. So I picked up some solder, wick, and brass sponge, from Micro Center. See my HackerBox review series.
• Last year I wanted to build a SmartSpin2k. I got all the parts and they are just sitting there. So I sat down, started printing and assembling. See 3D Printing the Smartspin 2k.

Then on my bucket list for what to do next:

• I took AutoCAD and Autodesk classes as a kid. Time to restart those ancient neurons. ^[7]
• The workshop Artist Asylum is near me and does a free weekly "Circuit Hacking Night". Time to finish that GBA SP mod project that's been sitting on my desk. They also had an intro to electronics class that I took.
• The MIT Radio Society offers a ham Radio license exam. That's a perfect thing to study over winter. There's a great video series practice guide.
• I want to build a Meshtastic node. I have friends that own Meshtastic devices and I could possible communicate with.

More important than all of that though, is that many projects I currently do feel derivative: assembling and using what others have figured out. I think a core part of the maker mentality is the process of creating or remixing new ideas. So what I really want to do is craft something of my own.

I've been particularly feeling the enshitification of fitness wearables. Strava is suing Garmin and Whoop is suing Polar. I spun my wheels last year trying to make an Android app for capturing fitness data, but I always felt like I was swimming upstream. I want to get closer the hardware now.

I'm not the only one that feels this way

I think it's safe to say that there are others that wants to recapture some agency. There is a sense of hope in having the skills to make small change in your life on your own.

One example of this I never expected was Justin McElroy. In the episode How to Get Started in Handheld Gaming with Retro Game Corps from the podcast The Besties, he had a chance to talk with Russ about emulation. Then over several episodes he started talking about emulation devices. Then he talked about tinkering with a Raspberry PI. Then in this episode he said:

That was a trigger moment for me that episode [talking to Russ]... after that episode I went like absolutely mad.

I think in order to keep gaming history preserved, I think we need more people that are fluent in at least the basics of this stuff. You know what I mean? Like how to, to replace a battery, things like that.

There's an ethos I think that I would love to see that is at play here, and part of it is definitely that 3D printing is open source in a way that I find kind of moving a little bit. It's genuinely a really open thing.

I appreciated getting to hear someone talk about their experience on their maker journey^[8]. Everyone that starts down this path has their own spark in their life that helps them get started. My hope is this blog could do that for others.