Catalog of urban legends

Catalog of urban legends


Snook on YouTube did a video that covers just about every major urban legend and famous conspiracy.

Here’s a list of subjects he covers in his 70 minute video:

Gray aliens
Loch Ness Monster
Area 51
Bigfoot
Boogeyman
Men in black
Bloody Mary
Candyman
Spider bite
The hook
The kidney thieves
Glad you didn’t turn on the lights
Killer in the back seat
Humans can lick too
Body in the bed
Body in the water tank
Man under the car
Halloween hanging
Cropsey
Corpse in the chimney
Toxic fumes lady
The goat man
Dog boy
Mothman
Black eyed children
Chupacabra
Techiteki
Lo Llorona
Charlie no face
Slitilated woman
The Jersey devil
Krampus
Springhealed Jack
The Monkey Man
Paul is dead
Red cloak
The red room
Walking Sam
Seven midnight jogger
The night marchers
Stolens gateway to hell
The well to hell
Fatal flair
Foreign dreams
The rat king
Water babies
Pond monster
Pinky pinky

Making a John Wick 4 suit

Making a John Wick 4 suit


Hacksmith Industries
builds a lot of interesting stuff. A plasma light saber, magnetically attracted Captain America shield, and many other cool creations. This one, however, was really interesting.

I found the gunplay in John Wick 4 to be pretty ridiculous – which was made more so by a paper-thin suit that was supposedly bullet proof enough to get hit hundreds of times and still work.

These guys decided to put this idea to the test. They try to make a suit that is actually bullet proof.

It took them well over a year and many failures and a full reset that involved material research, testing, etc. However, in the end, it turns out that it is reasonably possible – at least for a few rounds. Like most things, if you shoot the same spot a few times, it’s unlikely to stop bullets. It also is unlikely to keep you from broken ribs and massive contusions caused by the round impacts. Still, surprising results.

3d printed mathematical models

3d printed mathematical models

Henry Segerman is a mathematician who likes to help visualize mathematical principles using 3D printing. He has a book that pairs the ideas and topics with 3D objects you can print out.

His YouTube channel covers an amazing number of topics. Different kinds of irregular dice (slant, skew, dLX, wild d6’s, and others) that are fair but look very different than the standard regular polyhedral style dice. He makes interesting puzzles, visualizing 3D printed objects of higher dimensions, impossible geometry, interesting gearing, topology, and many other cool topics.

What’s great about his channel is that he’s a mathematician so you get a healthy dose of the theory that makes the objects possible.

Classic Ghost Story channels

Classic Ghost Story channels

It’s fall – my absolute favorite season. That means cooler weather, shorter days, and crisp brisk nights under starry skies. It also means it’s perfect time for a good classic ghost story next to a crackling fire at the end of the day. You can keep your modern low-budget gory, cheap jump scare movies. I prefer a good Victorian/Edwardian era ghost story on a cool fall evening.

Here’s some of my favorite places to get some great ghost stories read to you.

Bonus: Sherlock Holmes

  • Magpie Audio – Greg Wagland gives one of the undisputed best renditions of the complete Sherlock Holmes collection of stories. He voice acts the various characters magnificently. I think it’s far superior to even paid versions. Absolutely worth a listen. He also has stories from G.K.Chesterton, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Jane Austen, H.G.Wells, and many others of the era.

Halloween Drive-in Cinema of Horrors

Halloween Drive-in Cinema of Horrors

At the Clark County Fairgrounds in October, Cinema of Horrors sets up a temporary drive-in and puts on a few weeks of scary movies.

I’ve gone in years past and it’s a lot of fun for what it is. There are a few small booths with food carts, merch, and people walking around dressed in scary costumes. They have classic scary movies (Halloween, Nightmare on Elm Street, Scream, etc) as well as a few family nights (original Ghostbusters, Casper, Beetlejuice).

Definitely fun for fall.

Sub-ambient cooling

Sub-ambient cooling

Most PC cooling solutions cool your CPU/GPU/memory using fans or water that exchange the generated heat with the surrounding air. This means you can never cool the components to any lower temperature than the surrounding ambient air temperature.

There are people who push those boundaries to hyper-low temperatures by pouring liquid nitrogen or other hyper-cool liquids into specially designed heatsinks; but it introduces a new set of issues. A big issue for cooling below ambient temperature is condensation.

As soon as a surface is cooler than the surrounding air temperature dew point, then water from the air may start forming as condensation on the surface. We see this every summer on the sides of iced drinks. As anyone with electronics experience knows, water and electricity don’t mix.

Many people have experimented with sub-ambient cooling solutions before. The latest is EKWB with their EK-QuantumX Delta TEC EVO water block. Instead of using just a normal water block connected to a radiator, this solution uses a Thermoelectric Cooler (TEC) with a controller that then dissipates that heat through a radiator.

It’s an interesting, and surprisingly complex problem.