If you enjoy maps at all, I warn you that learning about the content of this post may result in great loss of time for you.
Now that you’ve been warned, check out Historic Aerials. For any address, you can scroll back in time and see satellite images of what it looked like in previous years! You can even click the Compare button, choose a map on each side, and then adjust the transparency slider back and forth to really spot the differences.
It’s time for another “Best of YouTube” post. We subscribe to the ad-free YouTube because it’s the streaming service we watch the most. Yes, there are lots of garbage videos there, but if you want to learn something, there is an endless flood of educational content too.
First up we have a video from Donut. Honestly, this might be one of the last videos I watch from that channel because my favorite hosts left to do their own thing at the new Big Time, channel, but this is still a great video. In 15 minutes (and what appears to be a single take), they explain every part of an engine:
If you have even a passing interest in engineering, check out Stuff Made Here. Every video is a home run, and his most recent video is no exception. He set out to make the world’s smallest bicycle. It’s incredible how much energy he puts into these ideas!
And finally, here’s a shoutout for the Practical Engineering channel. There are so many interesting videos with solid explanations of things that you might take for granted. He recently had a good one that goes into detail about how French drains work which is worth watching even if you already think you know, but for this post, I want to highlight “Why Railroads Don’t Need Expansion Joints.” Think about it… you have a thousand miles of a solid metal bar baking in the sun. That must expand and contract a lot! How do they deal with it?
Usually when I do a “Best of YouTube” post, I feature about three different videos. This time I’m only going to mention one. For the past few years, Colin Furze has been building a tunnel from his house to his shed. He has been releasing videos periodically showing his progress, but he recently combined them into one magnificent 2.5 hour video. If you haven’t seen this project before, grab some popcorn and settle in for a treat!
Colin Furze is a madman. Many YouTubers talk about burnout, but Colin keeps outdoing himself. He’s built a hoverbike, jet bicycle, and screw tank to name a few. Years ago, he built an impressive underground bunker in his back yard, but for the past couple years, he’s been working on an even bigger project: connecting his house, shed and bunker with a tunnel!
Check out his playlist that goes into all the details, but this is an incredible undertaking. Currently he has connected his pantry to the shed and now he’s heading out towards the bunker. In a recent video he also mentioned that he wants to connect to his driveway so that an elevator can lower his car down into the tunnel. He knows no limits!
After 2.5 years, I’m back with another “Best of YouTube” post! How have you found anything to watch without these incredibly valuable posts? I’m definitely not claiming that these are the best videos I’ve seen since that last post, but I don’t think any of them will disappoint you.
Frank Howarth’s meticulous combination of math and woodworking resulted in an amazing wooden globe. He went into great detail about the process and the complexities of getting this all to work correctly. Wonderful! If you like this one, his followup video where he makes a stand for the globe is good as well.
The Swiss Army knife that I’ve had since I was a child has a sewing awl in it. I’ve never had any idea how to use it. If I had to do it in an emergency, I probably would have poked the awl and thread through, pulled the thread out of the awl and all the way through the hole, rethreaded the awl on the other side and poked it back through. Now if I have to do it, I’ll know there is a better way… but I probably won’t remember the details so I’ll be stuck with the same dumb approach as before.
It’s a traditional old man joke to see a flyover at a game (remember when we didn’t have parenthetical comments after talking about public events?) to say “There’s our tax dollars hard at work.” It turns out that those flyovers are actually valuable training opportunities and not just ostentatious displays of money burning.
As penance for the last 2.5 years, I will not just give you a fourth video, but I’ll give you hundreds of videos. I recently started watching the very popular Donut Media channel. I wouldn’t call myself that much of a car guy but the production value of these videos is fantastic and most of the videos interest me. They put out videos every day and they have a variety of content types. My favorite so far was a “High Low” series where they bought two identical trucks and then outfitted them with overlanding gear. One truck would get an expensive version of the item while the other truck got the budget version. You can see the whole season in this playlist or just watch the summary video. That playlist also includes a previous season where they did the same thing with 350Zs.
About a month ago I wrote a post about how people on the internet are manipulating your emotions. Destin from Smarter Every Day completed four videos that are extremely helpful in understanding what’s going on and how to protect yourself from it. This is the kind of thing that I think will be critical to teach our kids as they grow up in a world that looks very different from our childhood. (Video links: 1 2 3 4)
Matt Cremona built a ridiculously nice tool storage cabinet. The highlight for me was how he used bookmatched pieces of wood surrounded by epoxy. They look incredible and the process for making them is wild as well. The video below should link directly to the point in his video where he talks about them, but if not, jump to 4:26.
Rocket powered golf club? Yes please!
First up is Steve Ramsey with a bunch of woodworking tips. I love watching woodworking and making videos on YouTube, but it’s really easy to fall in to some traps if you only learn that way. Steve gets real and gives 18 good tips for woodworking. He labels the video as tips for beginners but I think that any level of experience would benefit, even if it’s as a reminder.
Over in Toledo, David Picciuto enjoys going to the antique mall and rehabilitating old things. His xylophone video is a great example and the soundtrack he made using the xylophone is one of my favorite parts.
And why not stay with David to show his “bowl without a lathe” video. Tyla has been asking me to make a bowl for a long time and this might be a way I could pull it off. I’m not sure it’s exactly what she’s looking for but I’m interested in trying this.
As the resident AV geek at church, holidays are a busy time. This Christmas was no different as I burned away the CPU cycles rendering out a lot of video. They’re all available in curated playlists on our YouTube channel, but I’ve listed them out here as well. If you’re just here for content featuring Elijah, check out the two kids Christmas programs and the first English verse of Silent Night (if you listen closely.)
I first stumbled across Zane Lamprey when he had his Three Sheets show on a now-defunct cable channel called MojoHD. If you’re a Hulu subscriber, you can still watch the whole series and I highly recommend it. After Three Sheets, he had a show called Drinking Made Easy and then a Kickstarter show called Chug. All of them are travel/alcohol shows that mix comedy and learning about other cultures and their drinking customs. It’s a great formula that never seems to quite stick with the people writing the checks.
Now he’s off filming again for something he’s referring to as Four Sheets.There’s a Facebook page for it, but I can’t find a lot of other details. I know a few of you are fans as well, so you might want to follow that page and his Instagram account in hopes of finding out how we’ll be able to watch these new episodes.
Cheers!
OK Go is famous for their incredible Rube Goldberg style music videos. They recently published a series of videos that is kind of a mix of “how we make music” and “science for kids”. They have a playlist on YouTube. I’ll embed one example below, but if the whole playlist is worth a perusal, especially for parents.
Bob Clagett makes yet another appearance in this post category for his recent ping pong table build. It’s a collaboration with two of my new favorite YouTube makers, Evan and Katelyn.
Colin Furze has another ridiculous build: a huge Hulk Buster from the Avengers movie. It’s full of hydraulics so it’s not just a big statue. The reveal is embedded below, but I recommend watching his build videos too: Part 1, Part 2