Jim Cantrell Quotes

Back in the '40s and early '50s, building simple electronic projects was a popular hobby of many people. Back then, you could buy, you know, a few parts and - with tubes and build something on your kitchen table, and it would actually work.

I spent my childhood tinkering with electronic circuits, on breadboards, as they used to be called, in particular making radio transmitters.

People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware.

I've been a bit of an electronics enthusiast and maker for a long time. I actually started the forum called ModRetro. It's an electronics enthusiast community that focuses on modifying vintage game consoles, and it's actually one of the larger game console modification forums on the Internet.

My father raised me to build computers, hardware. Literally, as an 8 year old, I had a soldering iron and circuit boards, and this was in neighbourhoods that wouldn't have a whole lot of money or anything. And I figured out ways to just hustle.

Electronics are getting more and more accessible now - you don't have to be an engineer to start building things.

The only thing Martha and I have in common is that we both used to model. Martha Stewart is extremely talented. Her designs are picture perfect. Our philosophy is life is messy, and rather than being afraid of those messes we design products that work the way we live.

I always wanted to be an actor, but I always loved design, and growing up in New Orleans there was such great style, great architecture. I would decorate my little apartment in New York over and over again, because it only had a couple of rooms. And I did it for friends and family on the side just for fun.

I always liked creativity, whether it was to draw or sew - any creative assignment I was getting from school, or just on my own.

I love HGTV. I love working on my house and have really been bit by the 'luxury remodeling' bug. 'Million Dollar Rooms,' 'Million Dollar Listing'... any show that can give me design inspiration, I soak it in and try my hand at it. Home Depot is my second home!

I liked to work in a shop down in the basement and invent things and build gadgets.

'Design Star' was incredible, and I didn't think it could get any better, and then 'Color Splash' happened.

Learn how a 3D printer works. Get inspired. Make your own stuff. It is a wonderful time to be innovative. Connect things together. If you're into electronics, get an Arduino.

Leon Theremin's original designs are elegant, ingenious and effective. As electronics goes, the theremin is very simple. But there are so many subtleties hidden in the details of the design. It's like a great sonnet, or a painting, or a speech, that is perfectly done on more than one level.

I actually built a tiny computer as a junior high school project.

My training as an engineer has enabled me to design the stuff, but the reason I do it is not to make music but for the opportunity to work with musicians.

I have an expensive hobby: buying homes, redoing them, tearing them down and building them up the way they want to be built. I want to be an architect.

In the 1920s and 30s, when Radio Shack was young, a much earlier generation of nerds swarmed into these tiny shops to talk excitedly about building radios and other transmission devices. You might say that Radio Shack helped define gadget culture for four generations, from radio whizzes up to smartphone dorks.

Forrest Mims is the author of the famous book 'Getting Started in Electronics,' published by RadioShack for many years. I bought the book in the 1980s and had a blast making the projects in it. When I was editor-in-chief of 'MAKE,' I asked Forrest to write a column for the magazine, called 'The Backyard Scientist.'

Victor Papenack, who was teaching design, had his students making radios for a penny each that could be shipped to Third World people.

I used my mother's radio as a PA system. I'd take the telephone, the speaking part, and take those two leads off and lead them into the radio and the sound would come out of the speaker.

Ever since I was young I loved making things and being part of the design process.

I love Pinterest! Pinterest is absolutely phenomenal when you're trying to come up with a costume design.

All I've ever wanted to do is design and make; it's what I love doing.

It sucked to make my own CDs. I'm bad at that. It sucks to figure out how to power my amp. I don't know that stuff.