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Mark Frauenfelder

Mark Frauenfelder45 posts

Mark Frauenfelder is an American journalist, blogger, author, illustrator, and maker. He started the independent ‘zine bOING bOING in the 1980s with his wife, Carla Sinclair. The ‘zine became a website in the 1990s and then became the popular Boing Boing blog. Frauenfelder helped develop of cyberpunk culture in the 1980s and 90s, and worked with Billy Idol on the Cyberpunk album. Frauenfelder has published several books, and created the magazines Make: and Craft:

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15 Aug, 2014

Forbes interview

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Frauenfelder talks about the populaurity of the maker movement and how he thinks it will create new entrepreneurs, how the crowdfunding movement helps identify which ideas are good early on, as bad ideas won’t get funded, and the coolest projects he has worked on:

Instead of accepting off-the-shelf solutions from institutions and corporations, makers would like to make, modify, and repair  their own tools, clothing, food, toys, furniture, and other physical objects.

11 Jul, 2014

How to make giant bubbles

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Frauenfelder and his daughter demonstrate how to make giant bubbles using a cotton T-shirt, dowels, and washers.

Bubbles are fun, but the problem with [regular] bubbles is, they are really small

How to Make Giant Bubbles with Mark Frauenfelder

23 Jun, 2014

DIY projects for dads and kids

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Frauenfelder and his daughter Jane talk on the CreativeLive podcast about the bonding opportunities of DIY projects. Jane:

A maker is somebody who wants to try everything and when they do, they make it their own unique style.

20 Jun, 2014

Edmonton Public Library talk

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Frauenfelder gives a talk titled Making Makers: The new tools and ideas driving the maker movement. He discusses the history of making and how the early 2000’s were the start of a rebirth of making culture. In the last five years, people have created tools and technologies that enable anyone to be a maker, and collaboration with other makers is essential to the experience.

Mark Frauenfelder - EPL 2014 Leader in Residence

Jun 2014

Rule The Web

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mark-frauenfelder-rule-the-webFrauenfelder publishes the guide, subtitled How to Do Anything and Everything on the Internet—Better, Faster, Easier, which helps internet users do things like find affordable music online, and create a wiki.

23 May, 2014

Tim Ferriss interview

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Frauenfelder interviews Ferriss for Make: at the Bay Area Maker Faire 2014 Center Stage. They discuss Ferriss’s data-centric approach to everything from dancing to learning languages and finding love. Ferriss:

For anything, if you want to take the path less traveled, the shortcut from point A to point B, you have to ask very different questions and sometimes very ridiculous questions

He says he is going to walk around the Maker Faire event for the next couple of hours talking to makers about things they believe that other people think are really crazy, and other unusual questions. He says the framework he uses for learning is something called D.S.S.S. – Deconstruction, Selection, Sequencing, and Stakes, which allows a different approach to learning new things. For instance for somebody learning English, they may find that as small an amount as 1.5% of available vocabulary covers a large percentage of common language interactions, and could therefore safely focus on learning that small vocabulary set first before moving on to other parts of the language. Ferriss:

The material beats the method…People ask what method they should be using to learn Spanish but the question they should be asking is, What material should I focus on?

Timothy Ferriss: Experiments in Lifestyle Design - Timothy Ferriss with Mark Frauenfelder

6 May, 2014

Reasons to become a maker

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Frauenfelder gives five reasons to become a maker:

You get to use your hands

You become more observant about the world around you

You get to make things that are unique

You get to have a hand in creating the world around you

The most important thing, I think, about making is that you get a sense of self-reliance

Mark Frauenfelder's 5 Reasons to Become a Maker

Publishes Maker Dad

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mark-frauenfelder-maker-dad-cover-3003Frauenfelder publishes the book of 24 father-daughter projects that include Drawbot, which draws abstract patterns by itself, an ice cream sandwich necklace, antigravity jar, retro arcade video game, silk-screened T-shirt, lunchbox guitar, kite video camera, and a project to host a podcast.

The books is focused on teaching girls lifelong skills — like computer programming, musicality, and how to use basic hand tools — as well as how to be creative problem solvers.

31 Mar, 2014

Carrie Brownstein interview

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Frauenfelder and Jardin talk with Brownstein at Meltdown Comics in L.A. about Brownstein’s parts on Portlandia, what it was like working with Jello Biafra from The Dead Kennedys, her memoir, and how the show is more popular on Google than the town it’s based on.

Portlandia's Carrie Brownstein chats with Xeni and Mark of Boing Boing

10 Nov, 2013

Industrial Revolution Starts at Home

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Frauenfelder joins Heck, a console modder and visual prototyper, and Bdeir, the CEO of littleBits which makes electronic micro-gadgets that snap together using magnets to form buildable larger gadgets, to talk for Engadget about how making has become popular in the tech world.

The Industrial Revolution Starts at Home | Engadget Expand 2013

14 Sep, 2013

Art Of Manliness interview

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Frauenfelder talks on the podcast about how shucking coconuts in the South Pacific led to his do-it-yourself passion, how making things with your hands helps bring meaning to your life and why more people don’t do it, how mistakes lead to success, and how becoming more ‘handy’ can improve other areas of life.

 

16 Jun, 2013

Daughter humiliated by TSA

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mark-frauenfelder-daughter-outfit-tsaFrauenfelder sends a tweet (now deleted) about alleged humiliation of his 15-year-old daughter, who was traveling on a high school trip without her parents, and blogs about the incident at Boing Boing. He says she was told to ‘cover [her]self’ by the agent at LAX, who was glaring at her and mumbling. He includes a photo of the outfit showing she was apparently wearing black leggings, a red checkered shirt and a low-cut white tank top or T-shirt. Frauenfelder:

It doesn’t matter what she was wearing, though, because it’s none of his business to tell girls what they should or should not wear. His creepy thoughts are his own problem, and he shouldn’t use his position of authority as an excuse to humiliate a girl and blame her for his sick attitude.

19 May, 2013

Ben Krasnow Q-and-A at Maker Faire

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Frauenfelder talks about learning to make freeze-dried astronaut icecream, making the world’s most lightweight material, Aerogel or ‘liquid smoke’, at home, and using a Rapiscan-style airport body scanner on a grocery store chicken. Krasnow:

For some reason selling chemicals to individuals, especially in this country, is like, completely off the table

Maker Faire 2013 - Ben Krasnow Q&A discussion with Mark Frauenfelder of MAKE Magazine

30 Apr, 2013

Cool Tools third podcast

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On the third edition of Show And Tell Frauenfelder talks with Heater, the senior editor and media director for Engadget, and Ragan, the technical editor for Make:. They talk about products that include a solid titanium Soviet surplus crowbar, vintage Dymo tapewriter, vintage Easydriver ratcheting scewdriver, Cable Stable organizer kit, and Duolingo, a language learning website.

16 Apr, 2013

Cool Tools Show And Tell 002

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Frauenfelder talks with Cloutier-Hartsell, the research librarian for Cool Tools and Kevin Kelly, Glenn, a writer and semiotics analyst and editor of HiLoBrow.com, science writer and environmental activist, and former Cool Tools editor-in-chief Oliver Hulland, who also was an activist in China and is attending medical school, on the podcast created via Google+ Hangout. They discuss the Toggl time-tracking web app, Small Demons reference finder to characters and places from books, an aluminum tackle box, Coleman lantern, and other tools.

Cool Tools Show & Tell #002

20 Feb, 2013

Cool Tools podcast

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Frauenfelder talks with Kelly, Glenn, and Pusateri for the Show and Tell podcast, and they show off some inventions including the Munchkin Snack Catcher, Krisk Bean Stringer and Slicer, and the Illuminated Multipower LED Binohead Magnifier. Frauenfelder:

This very first podcast…has been 10 years in the making

Cool Tools Show and Tell Podcast 001

24 Oct, 2012

Lifehacker Q&A

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Frauenfelder answers questions in a live chat, including how he works, what music he listens to, and what everyday thing he is better than everyone else at:

Cutting my own hair. I’ve done it since 1980 and I have saved countless hours and thousands of dollars. The downside is you end up with ridiculous looking hair like mine.

9 Oct, 2012

Unbored interview

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Unbored editor Glenn and Frauenfelder, who wrote the intro for Unbored, talk about the book, and about how independent scenes like skateboarding and zines in the 80s helped launch the modern maker scene. Frauenfelder:

So many times, children’s activity books are filled with things that aren’t very much fun, aren’t challenging, and don’t have things that are fun or useful if you make them

Getting "Unbored" with Josh Glenn and Mark Frauenfelder

20 Jul, 2012

Kevin Mack interview for Mercedes-Benz

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Frauenfelder interviews Mack for the automobile company’s online magazine. He talks about Make:, DIY, and ‘zines:

I’ve always loved that punk aesthetic of being able to do things, yourself

About Mack’s art and influence:

A lot of his special effects involve kind of these genetic algorithms, he just plants a seed in a way, an algorithmic seed that just starts creating its own branches and grows.