Great science! a toilet! and one-dimensional Pac-man.

8th January 2024

Heads up! This newsletter is more than four months old. Links may be out of date or lead to unexpected places, or the context may have changed. Please handle with care.

Hello!

And in particular, hello to all the folks who subscribed after my big-goodbye video last week. The response has absolutely stunned me: thank you so much to everyone who watched, and to everyone who sent kind words. Yesterday, I did think that it'd be a brilliant gag to put out another, lower-effort goodbye video this week, just to cash in... and then another the week after, and so on, and suddenly pivot my channel to being The Goodbye Videos Channel. If anyone wants to actually do that gag when they leave, feel free.

Anyway, I found myself stumbling for a moment as I figured out how to write the introduction here, but in summary: there's no video on my main channel! I'm on sabbatical! It's great!

But Lateral continues! And if you've not listened before, this week's a great one to start: the Answer in Progress team are back, facing questions about telltale tapes, rigorous registrations and troublesome towers. (And hey, if audio podcasts aren't your thing, you can also watch highlights on YouTube!)

So what have I found that's good on YouTube this week?

NightHawkInLight is a self-described amateur chemist, and I've no idea how I've never heard of him before. And in the same way, his video "test multiple variables at once to optimize anything" introduced me to orthogonal, or "Taguchi" arrays for the first time. I feel like I should have known about these! This is a great, step-by-step introduction, with practical examples, to a concept that could save me (and you) a lot of time.
And two makers with very different approaches: first, Emily the Engineer 3D-prints a toilet, in a video that's just as impractical and chaotic as you'd hope for.
And second, I Build Stuff makes a flying umbrella. A cynic might say that this is "just" a homebrew drone with the top of an umbrella attached — perhaps. But the style and humour with which the story is told makes this very watchable. And it's not like I could build one.

Unusually, I also have an audio link this week! BBC Radio 4 gave their last hour of 2023 broadcasting to the continuity announcers: the team of people who talk between programmes, and make sure everything runs to time. This is a very Radio 4 show, and some of the references may be lost if you've never heard of the shipping forecast or The Archers, but even if you're not familiar with the station it's wonderful to hear the sometimes-emotional stories from the people behind the microphone.

(As a side note: here is one of the most alarming shipping forecasts broadcast recently. Any forecast that starts "there are warnings of gales in all areas..." is going to be rough.)

Around the rest of the web, away from video and audio:

Now that Steamboat Willie, and one specific version of Mickey Mouse, has entered the public domain, there's been an explosion of reuse and remixing. Most of it is schlocky and low-effort, or something that would have been allowed under fair use laws anyway: but one that I found interesting is Mousetrapped. It's just a regular webcomic, almost a newspaper cartoon, and — with suitable disclaimers about trademarks — it's something that's now legally possible. Batman, Superman, all our modern (but not that modern) myths and cultural touchstones: they should already be public domain, just like this.
A picture-essay about this year's darts championships... and the many, many spectators who dress up in costumes to attend.
The mobile phones of Doctor Who. The chairs of Doctor Who. The chairs of Star Trek. Fans of a show can deep-dive into anything, but I'd bet that each one of these pages has helped out some researcher, archivist or fan-film maker.
The source of The Bloop has been identified!

And finally: one-dimensional Pac-man! (Well, unlike early Mickey Mouse, Pac-Man isn't public domain, so this is "Paku Paku".) This transforms the traditional game into a twitchy, instantly-replayable, quick reaction test. This is one of 350 small games made by ABA, who has written an interesting piece about making small games, which is fun in itself.

All the best,

— Tom

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