Discount Make: Technology on Your Time Volume 04 On Sale.

	Product Description: If you like to tweak, disassemble, re-create, and invent cool new uses for technology, you'll love MAKE our quarterly publication for the inquisitive do-it-yourselfer. Every issue is packed with projects to help you make the most of all the technology in your life. Everything from home entertainment systems, to laptops, to a host of PDAs is fair game. If there's a way to hack it, tweak it, bend it, or remix it, you will find out about it in MAKE. This isn't another gadget magazine. MAKE focuses on cool things you can do to make technology work the way you want it to. The publication is inspired by our bestselling Hacks series books but with a twist. MAKE is a mook (rhymes with book). We've combined the excitement, unexpectedness, and visual appeal of a magazine with the permanence and in-depth instructiveness of a how-to book. Whether you're a geek or hacker who delights in creating new uses for technology, or a Saturday afternoon tinkerer who loves to get his hands dirty, you'll keep every issue of MAKE on your bookshelf for years to come.

• MAKE: Technology on Your Time Vol. 1
• Make: Technology on Your Time Volume 05
• Make: Technology on Your Time, Vol. 2
• Make, Volume 6: Technology on Your Time (Make: Technology on Your Time)
• Make: Technology On Your Time Volume 07

Rating : - Nicely laid out magazine with many challenging projects
I purchased this magazine specifically to make the cigar box guitar. One material in particular (#15 mason twine) was impossible to find. I went to no less than a dozen mom and pop and chain hardware stores, with no luck. I ended up having to improvise and use mason twine of lower gauge. But that's the fun and challenge of making something on your own out of cheap, random parts. If you aren't adept at crafts (like me), I suggest doubling up on parts and essentially make two guitars. The second one will likely be crafted better.

The magazine is constructed out of heavy-duty paper and every page (not just the covers) has a matte finish. It's colorful, has many helpful photographs, and is fairly well written. There's also a website tie-on that's of decent quality.

There are a variety of articles and editorials. The main projects are the cigar box guitar, homemade synthesizer, strobe photography, programming computer chips, LP-to-MP3 converter cabinet, and a webcam music machine. All of these projects (and other smaller ones scattered throughout the magazine) are exciting, but you will need to have some familiarity with electronic circuitry to build some of them. None of them are impossible to do, but bear in made that Make isn't devoted to the easiest and least frustrating kinds of hobbies.

Making something on your own is a humbling experience. You realize what ingenuity must go into professionally made products. In the end, my cigar box guitar was nothing special, but I had fun, challenged myself, and got away from the television. It was definitely worth my time and money. I think you'll agree.