Things To Do On Vacation: The Maker Playlist
Week Three: Things To Do On Someone Else's WiFi
I was a weird kid. You probably guessed that. You might not have guessed that I used to sit planted in front of PBS to watch things like This Old House and The New Yankee Workshop. I thought they were fascinating, and way less stressful than the actual people in my actual life.
Delightfully enough, the same sorts of things now occur on YouTube. They refer to themselves as the "maker" community, which fits well enough -- they make stuff, often with unnecessarily elaborate power tools, and for no particular reason other than making stuff is cool. Here are a few of my favorites.
Peter Brown of Shop Time is a cheerful lunatic who enjoys playing with wood, crayons, salt, milk plastic, concrete, and resin. He made something out of Jolly Rancher candies once, and ended up using a blowtorch to clean off the bandsaw. His wife is very tolerant. He usually puts her in charge of the fire.
Nick Zametti has a magnificent beard and an equally magnificent English accent. He likes gluing things together and making weird vases out of them. If you just want to hear him ramble, he posts the occasional Wednesday Waffle, where he waffles on about whatever for a while.
Bobby Duke is from Texas or possibly Mars? He started in woodcarving, I think, but also works with natural stone, resin, and, uh, pencils. He carves tiny things from pencils. He once carved a smaller pencil out of the lead of a regular pencil, and then also carved a tinier pencil out of that. His dogs and lizards make the occasional cameo.
Tim Yoder likes to pretend he has more enthusiasm than sense, although some of the time you get the feeling he's fucking up on purpose. The good ol' boy accent is probably about 50% put on, but 100% entertaining.
For a slight change of pace, pocket83 (and the companion channel pocket832) has a more mathematical bent. He makes finicky puzzles and games, out of wood and epoxy and so forth, and explains quite a lot of the theory behind how all of them work. It's a little like a mashup of Norm Abrams and Martin Gardner.
And of course, the ur-example of binge TV, How It's Made, covering the manufacture of everything from instant ramen noodles to fiberglass hull boats.
I was a weird kid. You probably guessed that. You might not have guessed that I used to sit planted in front of PBS to watch things like This Old House and The New Yankee Workshop. I thought they were fascinating, and way less stressful than the actual people in my actual life.
Delightfully enough, the same sorts of things now occur on YouTube. They refer to themselves as the "maker" community, which fits well enough -- they make stuff, often with unnecessarily elaborate power tools, and for no particular reason other than making stuff is cool. Here are a few of my favorites.
Peter Brown of Shop Time is a cheerful lunatic who enjoys playing with wood, crayons, salt, milk plastic, concrete, and resin. He made something out of Jolly Rancher candies once, and ended up using a blowtorch to clean off the bandsaw. His wife is very tolerant. He usually puts her in charge of the fire.
Nick Zametti has a magnificent beard and an equally magnificent English accent. He likes gluing things together and making weird vases out of them. If you just want to hear him ramble, he posts the occasional Wednesday Waffle, where he waffles on about whatever for a while.
Bobby Duke is from Texas or possibly Mars? He started in woodcarving, I think, but also works with natural stone, resin, and, uh, pencils. He carves tiny things from pencils. He once carved a smaller pencil out of the lead of a regular pencil, and then also carved a tinier pencil out of that. His dogs and lizards make the occasional cameo.
Tim Yoder likes to pretend he has more enthusiasm than sense, although some of the time you get the feeling he's fucking up on purpose. The good ol' boy accent is probably about 50% put on, but 100% entertaining.
For a slight change of pace, pocket83 (and the companion channel pocket832) has a more mathematical bent. He makes finicky puzzles and games, out of wood and epoxy and so forth, and explains quite a lot of the theory behind how all of them work. It's a little like a mashup of Norm Abrams and Martin Gardner.
And of course, the ur-example of binge TV, How It's Made, covering the manufacture of everything from instant ramen noodles to fiberglass hull boats.
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