Two of my favorite things in one bottle!

Howdy again, folks!

I'm trying to institute a bit of a video/blog posting schedule. I'm hoping people will like me more if I'm consistent :)

Here's how the schedule looks so far:
On weekends or early in the week I'm going to try to post a video/blog about workshop,
radio controlled things or "fun with science" type subjects. Annnnd fridays are beer review day!

This week was a long time favorite beer that I can't get locally anymore (thanks, NSLC): Young's Luxury Double Chocolate Stout. As usual I'll give you a relatively quick and very nearly informative review in the video below:

Clutching At Cordless Drills

What's happenin, forum?

Yeah... I just wanted to be like Raywilliamjohnson on youtube there for a minute...

Anyway, if you haven't figured it out by now I like to take stuff apart. Sometimes on a good day these things even go back together and work again. Sometimes not...
In any case I generally learn something and/or injure myself in the process.

My latest quest of knowledge involved the drivetrain of a cordless drill. I wanted to know how the clutch part worked... in fact I wanted to know how to defeat the clutch so I could use the gearbox without it for another project further on down the road.

As per usual I'll do the actual explanation in the video below and you can learn with me for a couple minutes... think of it as edu-tainment!

Don't be afraid of the dark... beers.

Howdy!
I'm trying a new thing out to better combine Youtube with another of my hobbies: beer. The basic concept is quick and simple beer reviews. Us beer snobs find it way too easy to ramble on about the "nose" of a beer or what every detail on the label says. Basically we tend to bore all the sober people and some of the less sober people pretty badly. That's what my idea is about/for. For the inaugural run of my new review style I'm trying out St. Ambroise Oatmeal Stout. That's about all I want to tell you in text form so watch the video for the rapid review:

Stuff I've been doing

Since I'm home sickly today I have time to fire a note here for the people who might actually look at my blog.

First I did some science with boiling water and cold air:



Then I did a two-part breakdown look at my R/C snowplow truck (and plow) for all the people who are asking about it all the time:
Part 1:

Part 2:


Fortunately my power-nerd buddies Sean and Vic lead me into my next video. They had been fooling around with some thermite and when they set up another round of burnination and invited me along for the event. Good times!:


And final video update: I got a little rambunctious and started added parts to other parts and things and I ended up with a lunatic rechargeable flashlight that happens to be in the shape of a cordless drill:

Tiny helicopter... tiny video camera... HMMMM

This likely won't surprise anyone who knows me but I took some stuff that wasn't supposed to be put together and put it together... again. This time I didn't even bust out the angle grinder or welder! Just a knife, a little screwdriver, and some tape.

Today's project was one of curiosity. The picture below basically illustrates the thought process in my brain:



What you see there is my little s107 micro chopper being mentally added to an "808 keychain video camera" (google it or check eBay out). I could go through the whole process with you in text but I'd rather just let the video take over from here:

The whirlybird of paradise...

Christmas has finally come and gone. Santa (my in-laws) brought me a cute and completely unexpected toy this year. No, not one of those. No, not one of THOSE either, good lord! The toy in question is a Syma s107 mini R/C helicopter and it's fantastic.

Seriously, if you're a little nerdy and like toys you should probably go to eBay right now and source one up (for about $25cad shipped to your door). Go now. I'll wait here for you.

I had never flown an R/C chopper before this thing arrived so naturally I was expecting mass amounts of carnage and possible injuries. Nope. This thing is as tough as nails and even easier than the super-easy cheap R/C plane I augered into the earth a couple years ago. That was sort of on purpose... I'll tell you that story some other time.

In true YouTube nerd fashion I have hand-crafted an organic, free range video of the included kit and some airborne footage of the wee little chopper for everyone (mostly me) to enjoy:

Video blogs belong in videos.

I'll accept the fact that I'm basically just another video blogger in the interweb sea of millions of video bloggers... and that fact combined with the fact that my spare time is very slim right now means that I'm going to be going pretty light on the written blogging that usually accompanies my video releases. I'll keep updating the word-blog when I do a video because anyone following me here deserves fair warning like that... but I probably won't do as many big elaborate write-ups for a while.

C'est la vie.

Hot off the harddrive platters today we have a care&feeding video about lawnmowers for all of my fellow turf tamers out there: