Category: diy

  • Is The End of Television The Beginning of a New Resistance?

    I’ve discussed the idea of reclaiming the analog TV spectrum when the digital changeover happens in February, and talked to Free Radio Berkeley’s Stephen Dunifer about his unlicensed TV transmitter kits. Now it looks like someone is ready to put the idea into action with The End of Television project. The project is accepting video…

  • Tom Roe on free103point9’s New FM Station and Microradio Past

    Tom Roe, program director for free103point9, was my guest for last week’s radioshow where we discussed that organization’s approach to transmission arts and how they were able to obtain a rare noncommercial full-power FM broadcast license. That show is now available for downloading or listening online. In the second half of the live broadcast version…

  • Flip weighs in with pocket-size HD

    The folks who brought you the original pocket-size, one-button Flip camcorder have now released their high-definition version. For the last couple of years I’ve expressed skepticism at both tape-less video recording and the true viability of HD in inexpensive cameras. But recently I’m coming around to the idea, primarily because the cost (under $250) is…

  • Saturday Is Home Movie Day

    Dig into your closets, attics and garages and rescue your old home movies. They deserve better than that. They need to be preserved, archived and seen! Home Movie Day is an annual event in service of celebrating and educating people about the cultural and historical value of their old home movies, especially ones on film.…

  • Catching Up

    It seems like all of my available mediageek energy has been poured into the radioshow lately, the result of having a firm weekly commitment to dozen stations. Were the radioshow a non-broadcast podcast I’m not so certain I would be so diligent. At least I can say that I’ve had a couple of great guests…

  • Free Chicagoland Music

    WFMU’s Free Music Archive–as discussed Friday on the blog and radioshow–is featuring a whole mess of music from artists around my new hometown of Chicago. Happy downloading and listening!

  • DIY Spiderlite and Softbox

    This one’s for the video/photo geeks. Back at my last gig we used a pile of Spiderlites, which are pretty easy to use and relatively inexpensive lights that accommodate five bulbs, switchable in banks, that can be either incandescent or fluorescent. They’re not super-cheap–several hundred dollars–but for flexible continuous lighting they’re not bad. Lighting is…

  • John Anderson on Freak Radio Santa Cruz: the State of Media in 2008

    My pal John Anderson recently joined Skidmark Bob on Santa Cruz’s long running unlicensed station to dish about many of the topics he writes about at DIYMedia.net and discusses with me on the radioshow. Topics include Pirate Radio, FM Radio, on-air Television, Net Neutrality (or lack their of), translator FM stations and the very bleak…

  • When Underground Culture Was Hard(er) To Find

    Filmmaker Danny Plotnick’s “Out of Print” is an absolutely brilliant and simple but effective short film about the somewhat lost pleasures of hunting down underground media, from cult films and bands, to underground literature and zines. By his own description, it’s “an ode to the counterculture of the 80s and 90s when unearthing quality culture…

  • yes! Magazine and the SF Chronicle on Micropower Radio

    Why is it all of a sudden micropower radio articles are cropping up in both the mainstream and alternative press? Is it just a slow news time at the end of the year outside of the assassination of Benazir Bhutto and the Iowa Caucuses? At least the last two I’ve seen have been far more…