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Geeky Gadgets for Halloween Parties?
Neurotoxic666 asks: "Like many others, my friends and I are going to hold a costumed party for Halloween, however we do not want it to be the typical haunt. We have some talent in computers and electronics, but we're short of ideas. Are there any good gadgets and props that the average geek can build to spice up the party? Of course, there will be the usual ambient sounds and decoration, but we're looking for more interactive, dynamic and techie stuff. One idea I've had is to use the living room computer on the TV and have white noise, ghosts and other creepy effects appear throughout the night. Does anyone have some suggestions, ideas we could build, effects that worked well in your parties? Anything from heart-beating books to special lightning to mad science devices is welcome!"
When you could look like this!
This is not the greatest
But you could setup a computer running Windows and hook it up to the Internet.
Blue screen of death !! What can be more scary ?
A nerd party.
Just undress and let your own bodies do the trick? ;-)
A method free as in beer, showing what's full of beer. Yay!
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Everything looks cooler when lit with EL Wire from Benny at Cool Neon! -Chris
-- This sig is only a test. If this were a real sig it would say something witty. --
if you have a multichannel setup (4+ speakers) you can always try and produce some creepy 3D audio, making it seem like it's from a moving source.
Want your party to be a cut above your average geek party? Get some real live girls to come. Bonus if they're geeks!
Ooh, a third thought: How about a real geek - i.e. someone who bites the heads off live chickens???
Everybody's a libertarian 'till their neighbour's becomes a crack house.
Use your computer to... wait for it... buy some alcohol!! In fact lots and lots, saves you using your small geeky muscles to try and carry a couple of cans. You probably don't realise this but I swear to you, it will make the party the most fun!
You are too old to suckle from your mothers breast
and you are too old for halloween. Please leave it for the little kids to enjoy.
I'm having a major fight with temptation about the Singing Buck, which K-mart has for $120 and is supposed to go on sale for $100 even. I had them get the Mr Microphone part out and held it up to my pda. It was nice getting to see the buck read Andromeda Strain to me in the middle of K-mart.
Thankfully, I was able to get 200 Ubuntu 5.10 "Breezy Badger" LiveCD+Installer CDs well before Halloween, so in addition to the delicious cheezy treats that I'll be handing out, I'll also be giving out the gift of open source. Is anyone else doing this?
-- @T4C
getting some girls there, but since you posted this on slashdot...
Visit Parallax EFX. They now have a line of controllers made especially for Halloween special effects.
using a Roland U20 keyboard, whenever a kid knocks on the door. With the keyboard hooked up to an amplifier with a 12" speaker pointed directly at the front door, about 4 ft away, it sounds like an earthquake is taking place if you have the right keyboard sample playing.
The younger kids (3 years or less) usually run at full speed away from the front door before I can open the door. The older kids usually say, "Holy $h!t, what was that?" Saves on candy inventory loss if nothing else...
Just google a bit to get plenty of other ideas. Liquid latex is also a very nice thing to make fake body parts, that you can stick between a door or something.
dress up as Ballmer or Ellison !!
A lifesize Jack Thompson complete with fangs!
Head in a Jar anyone?
libguestfs - tools for accessing and modifying virtual machine disk images
You're going to need a carved pumpkin with a lit candle in it, a hose of some sort, and some flour. Boar a hole in the back base of the pumpkin just big enough for your hose. Stick a small amount of flour in one end of the hose and insert the end into the hole of the pumpkin. Now stand back and blow into the other end of the hose and witness the fireball. Experiment with things to get maximum plumage. The hose can be pretty long, so you can really freak out kids while in the cover of stealth.
The modern stuff is not as easy to hack in this way because its hard to talk directly to the hardware -- too many drivers, libraries, and embedded smarts between the CPU and the printer's motors.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Hook up a projector to your computer, and fire up some winamp visualizations in fullscreen mode. Choose some scary stuff to play(such as silent hill maybe?) and choose darkish vis presets.
Oh, and throw in a fog machine to make the effect even nicer. 3
But you could setup a computer running Windows and hook it up to the Internet.
Every Hallowe'en party needs a zombie.
you could dress as a RIAA lawyer.
Windows ME and AOL 9.0 Super-Dee-Duper Turbocharged Dialup-on-Steroids!!1!eleven
Guaranteed to scare the most seasoned geek:
You: "How are you, Grandmother?"
Your Grandma: "Why do all these nekked women keep popping up? Could I have a phish? 'Cause I read that Bill Gates tries to get everyone sick by adaware-ing that clickety-click-thing."
You: <begin shaking in terror>
Your Grandma: "Oh, and how come my computer doesn't fax? You said it could send faxes, so I jammed what I wanted to fax into the cup holder thingy. Then that little box - ya' know, the one on the ground, connected to the computer? - started making some funny sounds. So I just unplugged it from the wall. Then, the strangest thing happened. My computer went blank! So anyways, I want you to come over here tomorrow and fix that little box thing. Seems I need it for my computer to work."
You: <sobbing>
a theremin? a custom built one could work very well...
I bought a cheap smoke machine for $15. It comes with a switch on 6 Ft of cable. Press the button, you get smoke. So fine if your going to sit beside it all night but a not very useful otherwise. You can get a timer for $25, It will trun the smoke machine on and off for a set time ever so often.
But I came up with a much better idea. A montion sensor switch to trigger the smoke machine when someone approches.
I picked a "tomb stone" for $6 that has has a montion sensor. When the sensor is tripped it makes a sreaming noise and flashes some LED's. Open it up and disconnect the LED's, wire in a 5v reed relay, from Radio shack, in place of the LED's. Then wire the relay to the switch that came with the smoke machine (or use a separate cable).
Now when the sensor is activated the screams come on for 3 or 4 seconds and a the same time the smoke is on. Great to put just out side your door.
For the complete cheesey mad scientist effect build a Jacobs Ladder.
Cut your design in the pumpkin backwards, and set the pumpkin facing the wall. Insert a lit candle, and the silhouette is projected.
Kind of low tech, but cool nonetheless.
The only surefire protection against Microsoft infections is abstinence. - The Onion
Get a strobe onto some dripping milk. When the strobe is flicking at the same frequency as the driping it looks like the drops are suspended in time. Adjust the strobe frequency and you can watch the splashes form back into droplets and move back up into the spout they came from. I built something like this at a party once, in a darkened room, it was a big hit. Called it a "time machine".
Simon.
There are all kinds of electric devices you can make that look like they are straight out of an old horror movie. Jacob's ladders are quite simple to build. You can find all the parts on ebay. If you are more ambitious, you might want to try a tesla coil.
------ Take away the right to say fuck and you take away the right to say fuck the government.
Would you run anything from a CD you received on "trick-or-treat" night?
You don't need gadgets for this. Dress up as Steve Ballmer and do these things:
1. Monkey dance and sweat!
2. Say "Developers, developers, developers, etc.
3. Cuss and throw chairs.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
I have Steve Ballmer's PocketPC, and I'm prepared to use it. It is authentically coated in layers of mid-level executive blood. Mmmmm .... bludgeony.
... and then they built the supercollider.
Why not just put on some quantum dots and go as a white LED?
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
Wow. Get a life.
Scary? You want scary? I've got scary. . .present yourself as idiots who can't use google, that's pretty damn scary! Sheesh, I've been reading Halloween haunting sites for years, all of which I found from google. . .
So, to *actually* help you, here's an idea: go use google.
** Martin
Let me guess, you're 80 years old AND off your meds?
Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be on iTunes.
-ccm
Too much Law; not enough Order.
I've used my Green Laser for Halloween.
It would be cool to use a beam expander for a light sabre type effect, but then the beam would be too weak to see unless it was pitch black.
Also, I've walked around with a handheld Tesla coil powered by a 12v 7.2Ah SLA battery and a 75 Watt inverter.
I fried my 800 W inverter with the tesla coil last year, but the 75 W was ok, I guess it was so cheaply made, there wasn't anything that could get damaged too easily. The 300 W had a microprocessor.
Watch some movies through Mythtv or something or other... THen, at some random point in the movie, overlay a dripping blood effect over the movie... Or random "redrum redrum" inserted in to the audio..............
Never tried it, but it sure would be cool......
Slashdot is like Playboy: I read it for the articles
http://cockeyed.com/incredible/incredible.html
Especially check out the "papparazzi" costume
Come on, where's your sense of tradition? This be hallowe'en, mon!
Now here's some costume ideas that will scare the shit out of everyone, not just your inner geek:
- Insurance salesman
- Jehovah's Witness
- Lawyer
- Tom Cruise
Feel free to add to the list here - we need more ideas.I am thinking of dressing up as a chair, and having a cardboard cutout of Steve Ballmer drag behind me. I will lunge at people, and when the cord connecting the cutout to me pulls, it will automatically play "I'm gonna fucking bury you! I have done it before and I will do it again!"
Alternatively, if it detects music it begins jumping up and down screaming "YEAAAH!"
It also doubles as a L'il John costume.
I've done a mad scientist costume a couple years, and my favorite prop starts with one rubber chicken.
Add fake eyeballs with LEDs wired through them. Flashing LEDs or wiring up a bread board to make them flash is extra points. A knife switch wired to turn the eyes on and off is a delicious addition. Resistors may need to be placed in series with the LEDs depending on the batteries used. Batteries are of course placed inside the body of the chicken.
Decorate liberally with old serial/parallel ports from old computers, scraps of wire, resistors and other interesting looking electronics equipment. I've even had a serial cable running from the chicken to an old defunct laptop.
Electronic gizmos, such as a cheap box from Radio Shack or similar which can record a couple seconds of sound and playback always add to the fun.
I have rigged the chicken with coathangers and fishing line so I could move the head around puppet-like.
Frankenstein bolts in the neck are easy to accomplish... a bolt can easilly be held on with a nut inside the neck and one outside the neck.
Stitch the whole thing up coarsely with thick black thread, possibly leaving a hole to be able to get to the battery/make spot repairs.
Best accompanied with a labcoat, miss-buttoned white or light blue shirt, rubber chicken tie poorly tied. Brown dress pants or curdoroys, one leg tucked into the socks. Bright yellow chuck taylor's make good shoes, although clunky dress shoes work too. A pair of welding goggles (don't have to be worn on eyes... up on forehead is good enough) is good. Having poofy hair which can be costume painted white/gray is great, although a white wig from a costume shop does the trick too (better if gray/bluish highlights are added with costume paint.) And of course, an Erlenmeyer flask or graduated cylinder to drink from (Red Bull works well, with or without liquor.) Pocket protector, comically large syringe (preferably real 60cc syringe with no needle) stethescope, doctor's head reflector, and other medical trinkets always a plus. Black facepaint/ash to simulate explosion leaving clean goggle lines is good for effect, but seems to be counterproductive in actually talking to people.
I'll never make that mistake again, reading the experts' opinions. - Feynman
http://www.epemag.wimborne.co.uk/projects.html
"October 2005 Halloween Howler - sound/ lights FX units for your pumpkin!"
Mike.
Open Source Drum Kit, LPLC deve board - mjhdesigns.com
I don't have any myself, but I typically rig up various moving things from assorted bits I have laying around the house.
... if you're looking for a durable fog machine, you might want to look at a music store -- they're intended to be lugged about, etc, as opposed to the cheap ones that show up in Target and the like at this time of year.
A quick search pulls up books like Animatronics: Guide to Holiday Displays, which seems to be right on target.
The problem is, you don't even have two weekends left to get stuff done -- if you need to look for odd parts, or mail order something, it's really, really, late to be planning anything big. (yes, we typically do a conversion the day of halloween, so no one sees it too far in advance, as it's outside, but we've been doing it for years, and already have the stuff, and plenty of people to help.)
Oh
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
Hallowe'en is now the second-largest holiday cash generator for businesses, right behind Christmas.
People spend hundreds of bucks each on parties for ADULTS. Or go to any bar on Hallowe'en and try to say there isn't some serious coin being raked in.
It's #2 in terms of revenue, but its #1 in terms of profitability, because you don't see the wild discounting like you do weeks before Christmas.
You can always find something to buy on Christmas Eve - just TRY to find a costume the day before Hallowe'en - you'll be stuck wearing a "costume" you made from a roll of aluminium foil you scrounged from the pantry and some duct tape.
Disclaimer: I've only heard about this one so I have a vague description at best.
Take a big sheet of plexiglass and put it at a 45 degree angle behind a garage window. Mask off the area behind it with dark cloth. Put a tv with spooky images facing up at the plexiglass and put fake bats/spiders/etc behind the plexi. Apparently what it looks like is a bunch of floating images moving around right behind the window, depending on the video that you put on.
I'm feeling lazy so I'll let someone else search and post links.
- "Nobody came out that night, not one was ever seen. But Old Man Stauf is waiting there, crazy sick and mean!"
Hook it up on a projector and you're definately there!
http://www.scary-terry.com/rockchair/rockchair.ht
A guy has wired up the pcb to this contraption. As you walk past, the skeleton starts snoring
Mike.
Open Source Drum Kit, LPLC deve board - mjhdesigns.com
...they had an article devoted to this. They basically built a controller to synchronize lights with music and activate various halloween devices. Worth a look for sure. Also partly available online at the MAKE website.
Your anti-social attitude is probably going to cause more problems for society than the "'carte blanc' brigades' little angels" TP'ing your volkswagon and egging your Mom's house.
Kids do dumb shit, deal with it. Any kid that is not running around at night jacking cars or robbing liquor stores is f'n fine with me.
I honestly believe you are about 2 traumatic social experiences shy of a major phsychotic break.
I am become Troll, destroyer of threads
Worst. Idea. Ever.
I can understand Christmas, and while stretching it a bit Thanksgiving could also make sense, but Halloween?!?! Oh, I get it now. The candy is the treat and the CD is the trick.
I have a good friend who is a geek and at times a bit of a bastard who is always comming up with things like this (not just for halloween) mostly because they live in a really creepy house anyway- but here are some ideas mostly from him.
Get a Y shaped fiberoptic cable and place it out of the way in a dark corner with two of the ends pointing away from the corner. Set up a red LED at the other end of a timer...instant glowing red eyes from the darkened corner.
You can set up a ghostly appirition by taking a box with a 1-way mirror facing into the box, fill it with some smoke from a fog machine, and have a projector shining in from the back. The image bounces off the mirror and hits the back of the box and the smoke gives an interesting halo effect to the whole image.
Edit a video file to include random static and ghostly images and burn to DVD or stream from your computer- pretend like it's just a regular movie (The original Night of the Living Dead is available as public domain from Archive.org if you don't want to worry about copyright infringement and was a good scary movie). This can work even better if you record a movie off the TV with commercials and all so that it may be less obvious what you are doing.
Set the Air Conditioner on a timer so certain rooms can develop "cold spots".
A lot of digital video camers will pick up Infra Red light from things like TV remotes- this is a good way to create fake "orbs" in photos or videos to spook out your guests.
A good, edible fake blood can be made with corn syrup, corn starch (to thicken it and make it less transparent) and red food coloring.
A few more general notes, remember that things are often a lot more freaksom if there is less of a setup, include some really hokey and poorly done tricks to put your guests at ease, this can make the good stuff more effective. Also remember that panick spreads- so make sure to act freaked out and assure your guests that you had nothing to do with your tricks- this can make the entire thing much more effective. Also try to make sure that things are less predictable, if a spooky noise sounds off every time someone walks down a hallway it can ruin the illusion.
Try to get a couple of other people "in" on the setup before hand- that way you have a pool of people who can set things up so that your guests don't learn to expect something every time you excuse yourself to the kitchen or bathroom.
Above all, keep in mind that the scariest things are generally unseen or heavily veiled, props that are too goesh (grammar nazis, I tried to find the correct spelling of this word to no avail, anyone care to help?) often turn out to be humerous instead of scary.
Famous Last Words: "hmm...wikipedia says it's edible"
"Teenagers are largely minors" Really? Who would have thought?
You need a a geeky, yet scary carved pumpkin!
Also very cost effective, since you only need 1 cheap suit. (and walk around on your knees in the TC version)
For the perfect anti-Unix, write an OS that thinks it knows what you're doing better than you do and let it be wrong.
Introduce them to your date. Everyone will freak out when they realize that you aren't kidding.
A true geek isn't invited to parties. They don't have enough friends.
A true geek doesn't like such silly traditions anyway, so it doesn't matter.
A true geek probably is home on their computer at halloween, avoiding those annoying kids who keep coming to the door begging for candy, disturbing us at a time which could have been well spent hacking.
But, what do I know? I hate halloween.
If you don't want someone to copy something, don't give it to anyone.
The "time tunnel" effect is always a crowd pleaser. Drill a hole in a penny and press it onto the shaft of a small DC motor. (It needs to be almost, but not perfectly, perpendicular to the shaft.) Glue a small mirror (1" square or less) onto the penny. Turn on the motor and bounce the beam off the spinning mirror. Add some fog to the room and dim the lights, and you've got a very cool effect indeed. (Wrap a rubber band around the barrel of the laser pointer to keep it on, and tape it into position near the spinning mirror.)
Or you can build two spinning mirror assemblies and generate lissajous patterns. (Think: Spirograph)
Or use some hot glue to tack a tiny mirror onto your speaker's woofer. Bounce the laser off the mirror while you play loud music, and you'll get all sorts of wierd patterns.
Or lay a CD-ROM on your turntable (you do still have one, right?) with the reflective surface up, and bounce the laser off the disc. (The narrow tracks act like a diffraction grating, splitting a single beam into multiple beams.) Slowly rotate the turntable platter (especially with the disc slightly offset from center) to get more effects.
Have a look at my site for some idea of the types of effects you can produce.
Here are a few other sites that might give you more ideas:
LaserFx.com
Sam's Laser Faq
Look here http://www.dotnetrocks.com/roadtrip/photos/CarlInR aleigh.jpg.
I'm pretty sure the Alive Chimpanzee is this years must have haloween accessory.
Why would I want to find a costume to dress up the night before halloween? Unless you're ten years old or a woman, why would you give a fuck? Kids and girls are attention whores. As a guy, you should have something better to do than dress up like a god damned pirate and get drunk at a party full of fugly chicks dressed as a belly dancer or princess.
"Like many others, my friends and I are going to hold a costumed party for Halloween..."
if you have friends and a social life, i think you maybe posting on the wrong site.
"In Soviet America, Passport Stamps You!"
Bring common road flares to put in a pumpkin, especially right before judging. A single flare makes even the ugliest pumpkin outshine the best carved pumpkins. High tech? Maybe not.. but lots of fun for about 10 minutes...
Use a program to schedule scary things inbetween tv. Maybe you could use a tv-card AND tv-out to do this, so you could make it very real, as in it would interfere with actual news. You'd set up a tv-program to run at fullscreen, with the tv as a screen, and schedule the pc to interrupt at certain time with scary things, or maybe even better, you could override only the sound. Maybe make your favorite anchorman say "Your souls belong to Satan", assuming you plan when the news runs.
you could connect a fogger or hazzer fogger is btter cause its heavier you could have it connected toa pc and than fogg around te front house and make it scary and add some strobes
I'm guessing the moderator didn't read the original post? You know, the one where the guy asked for geeky gadget ideas for halloween. Or is the monkey who modded my post as 'offtopic' saying that EL Wire isn't a geeky gadget? Too mainstream for him?
-Chris
-- This sig is only a test. If this were a real sig it would say something witty. --
Shoot them.
RUPERT! I TOLD YOU TO WATCH THE BAGS! You were looking at the boys again, WEREN'T YOU.
Any of the Penn & Teller books, "How to play with your food", "How to play in traffic", "Cruel tricks for dear friends". I highly recommend the lighting pickle, the bloody heart-cake, the card trick w/ pizza delivery punchline, etc. You'll have more twisted ideas than you can implement in a single week. Try not to get arrested.
Scott Kurtz's idea of a scary gadget
Halloween for me always means the start of the annual Nethack Tournament! So hook it up to your big screen TV and put on your +5 Amulet of Geekiness!
get one cheap dancing santa or something similer yu know those cheap animatroic displays you get MADE IN CHINA written all over them and they are scary to start with?
Place in the garden. Switch it to on mode. as quickly as possible set fire to it. when the face starts melting as its singing jingle bells is f88king incredbley scary.
What is the "party" you speak of?
I'm sure others can add more reasons to go to a Hallowe'en party, and to be in costume.
... with your attitude, you won't have to worry about the "chicks." My guess? You use your personality as your primary method of birth control.I've seen links to plans and videos of props that look professional quality at www.halloweenforum.com. Since you only have a week until Halloween, some of the more detailed stuff won't be possible. There are DVDs out there that are good for a scary background, you could build a Pepper Ghost, or a Flying Crank Ghost (FCG) for the front window. (I plan on making a FCG for next year myself.) There are many mods that can be done to a WalMart blow-mold skeleton (known in the parlance as "Bluckys") to make them look like rotting corpses, zombies etc, and plans to use a lawn sprinkler as a piston and hook it up to compressed air to move it. You can use a simple motion outdoor light detector with a socket plug screwed into one of the lamp sockets to trigger it. Here's a site that has more Halloween prop links than you can shake a femur at: http://www.halloweenmonsterlist.info/ I get into decorating for Halloween more than I do for Christmas. Good luck! ;)
Look here for easy to make props:
N /halloweenfiles/casketjumper/springmillhaunt2005.w mv
http://www.halloweenmonsterlist.info/
And this is a movie of a prop I made:
http://www.grimlabs.com/bluemarble/PAGES/HALLOWEE
Here's my halloween page:
http://www.grimlabs.com/
just show up with his plain face. This should be scary enough.
Hook up a camera to http://effectv.sf.net/ (EffecTV) and play with some of the different effects. Very nifty!
SBC stands for Stupid Bell Company
AT&T stands for All Telephones Tapped
Red and blue and green lights... no white lights anywhere on the house (including inside the refrigerator)
Black light tubes in the hallways...
Tinfoil the entire ceiling of the walkup attic... install a strobe light...
Booze... lots of booze...
Toga/costume - must be naked underneath...
Acid, weed, and did I mention the booze...
Tunes... none of that top 40 bullshit either...
Did I mention that you have to have lots of booze?
(and yes, I did have a bash like this one year... we ended up bolting the speakers to the roof at 4am to play dark side of the moon at "11"... cops showed up, and decided to just play it safe and leave us the fuck alone until the next afternoon... Then we got a noise ticket ($25) - but it was fuckin worth it...
* optional, however desirable
1 pumpkin, carved with evil face and hole at bottom to put light inside
1 Colored Organ - sound input, voltage output, ex. http://www.a1parts.com/newkits/organ/
1-3 Red,yellow,orange colored light bulb (only realy need 1 red)
1* Voice Modulator device ..could use computer
1 Set of old clothes suffed with newspaper to form a body
1* Rope of some sort
1 Microphone, amplifier with speakers...(use computer?)
1* Video camera (just need to see the guests)
Put pumpkin in tree, match the body to the head (use rope or just use if for effect). Light goes inside pumpkin head. Wire the light to the color organ. Setup mic, amplifier, effects modulator etc, wire up camera on the roof or in tree so you can see who's at the dummy. Place speaker out the window. Speak to the guests. When you speak, the light will strobe to your voice. Use effects on your voice to make it a few octives lower and evil sounding.
I put my camera on the roof incase any guests messed with the dummy. At least my camera should be safe. Within 1 hour, word got around and the tricker-treaters were sure to come my way. Even with 20-30 people outside, nobody messed with the dummy...except tried to verbal get inside his head and try to figure out how I could see their movements. You could hook up a mic to hear what guests say to the pumpkin if your too far to hear them. Or, just get close enough to hear.
Fun and cheap to do and can keep the neighbors up all night!
If you have an old tv around (No LCD or flat screens, have to be the old school rounded front). Try Boo Tube DVDs (http://www.frightcatalog.com/Halloween-Special+Ef fects/DVDs/Boo+Tube+DVD+Volume+2-1408002/)
Basically you put your TV on the floor so the screen is pointed straight up. Then you hang a piece of plexiglass at a 45 degree angle above the TV. The image will be projected on the plexiglass and look like a floating head that you can see through.
There was a hack awhile back for using MS write in Windows to edit the flying through space screen saver, using something like smiley faces or frowny faces instead of flags. There is also the ability to get the windows 3.1 driver for a hercules monchrome orange and black screen with adapter and make it run in on Windows 95.
The combinmation of the two will give you a screen saver with orange frowny faces cascading through the black of space. On two phase two.
I actually have sitting on a basement shelf someplace an original 386. This was based on a souped up 286 motherboard, and runs with a glorious maxed out 4 megs of ram at 16 megahurts. Somebody one had Windows 3.1 loaded on the machine, and had upgraded it to 95 because he thought it would run faster with 95. That was a meg-a-hurt.
Combine this with the hercules monochrome setup described above, and you will have one of the slowest machines windows machines on earth with an appropriate orange and black screen saver.
Optionally, you could upgrade the win95 system to a faster system, still with the hercules ega adapter, and see if you could migrate/upgrade to 98, and then to XP, still keeping the ega adapter. Screen shots and photos mandatory if successful.
Perfect for a party!
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
If you can get access to some two-way mirror you're in for an easy, yet awesome, effect. Here's what you'll need:
Wood, paint (grey and black), a single lightbulb and fixture, 12x12" two-way mirror and a 12x12" regular mirror.
Create a cube using the wood with the regular mirror at the bottom of the box. Paint the insides to look like stone and attach the lightbulb on one of the 'stone' sides.
When you put the two-way mirror on top of the box (mirror side facing inside the box), it creates an endless reflection that makes it look like a reaaaaallllyyyy long tunnel (lit all the way by single bulbs)
This effect is really creepy, especially if you add the right sound effects (think: a little girl/boy's voice saying "help me!" and crying alot...)
If I wanted to scare people first thing I'd do is stage things at night and get rid of as much light as possible. Preferably, outside near trees/bushes etc. Getting people alone is good. Then just add some making rustling noises in said foliage. Or have something like the scream mask slowly sticking out the top of one.
If your parties are anything like mine, a bathroom with no lights might be a little scary during the party, but will be absolutely horrifying the next day.
Some see the vessel as half full; others see it as half-empty; We pour it out on the floor and laugh
Just make sure to keep it far enough away from the computers
- "History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of men" -- Blue Oyster Cult, 'Godzilla'
In my old house I hooked up a camera, speakers and a strobe light to my front doorstep. When guests arrive the speakers would blast a scream and the strobe would go off. The camera would take a photo that resulted in a unique souviner that costumers could take home - a photo of themselves scared s**tless!
Title says it all. If you stir liquid nitrogen into a bowl of white russian you can turn it into ice cream. It looks really cool when you do it (similar to dry ice effects) and tastes amazing.
build women with your technology - the natural kind will surely be missing, so you might as well try to bridge the gap.
ôó
Who can't resist checking out their own costume when there's a mirror near by? This creates the best setup situation to scare (at the very LEAST severly startle) our un-suspecting victim. My friends, make a mirror, but not just any mirror... a TWO way mirror! This one makes me laugh just thinking about it from the past years...
Materials:
Some wood to make a good size frame
Some "mirrored mylar" or silvery window tint (enough to cover your frame)
Some thing somewhat scary in general, like a good MASK, or a stuffed dummy
A light source... 100 watt red or green flood lamp?
10' X 25' roll of black plastic ($7 at home depot)
Build a rectangular frame with the wood and some wood screws. 1 X 3 makes a nice solid frame, but if you like 2 X 4's... fine... Stretch and staple the mirrored mylar or silvery window tint around the wooden frame so it is tight enough to create a smooth reflective surface. If you want to go the extra mile, you can put some molding or decorations around the edge of the "mirror" to give it a finished look. Finally, create a small, dark, enclosed area/room BEHIND the mirror from the sheet plastic... an area big enough for a person to stand behind the mirror. It must be completely dark in this area behind the mirror.
How it works:
Place the structure in a relatively dim area with JUST enough light so the unsuspecting victing can walk over and check out his or her costume / mask / bloody scars / etc... What this person doesn't know is that you (or your consort) is on the other side of the mirror hiding (trying not to laugh) in the dark plastic room, as the lack of light in the "dark room" does not allow them to see through the mylar.
Just as the victim moves in REAL CLOSE to the mirror to check out that bloody scab that took them 20 minutes to get JUST RIGHT, you, on the other side of the mirror move in JUST AS CLOSE, so you're virtually FACE to FACE, with only a paper-thin piece of mylar between you.
It is about this time you would want to apply power to the green flood light located near your belly, pointed up at your chin. When the light comes on, the mylar virtually becomes transparent and disappears, allowing the victim to see a hideous ghoul 2 inches from their face.
The reactions are priceless.
-sp
Halloween should mean something. It shouldn't be "Hey let's get drunk amid tired old props that we all know are fake yet find mildly amusing in an ironic way." Halloween should invoke fear, absolute OMFG SMP terror.
First, you need to eliminate all the ideas that people have had before, and all the things that are illegal or could actually result in hurting people. If there are mentally unstable people, they should not be invited to your party or haunted house.
You have to know what fear is, essentially. Fear is of the unknown. To create an unknown situation, you bring people to a location where they haven't been before. You take away at least one of their senses. For example, you take away sight by making it pitch black or foggy or their hearing by filling the room with noise.
You look to science fiction and paranormal crap for what is cutting edge. Right now that is EVP, electronic voice phenomena. This is big with Art Bell. They listen to voices that are carried inside electric cables. It is believed (whatever) that old, dead souls left an imprint, perhaps their souls on this.
You tell your unwary "guests" about this, make it sound real, and tell them you've discovered an EVP inside that you want to share with them. You lead them into a foggy, lit room and start trying to "talk to" or "hear" the voices you heard on the electronic wires. Nothing happens. You tell your guests you're going to give it some extra amps to see if it will "wake it up. Don't worry. It will be okay." You pretend to jolt it out. Then you trigger an electric spark effect so it looks like you are electrocuted. You fall over and "die."
The lights go off, leaving everyone in a pitch black room. Then you crank up the staticky EVP you prerecorded. Something about aborted babies and hooks and snakes and how the guy was murdered years ago and is all pissed now and there is Satan too and it is going to kill everyone and other shit you can think of. At this point you spray everyone with fake blood from a remote-controlled spigot soit splatters everywhere. Then there's a strobe light effect so they can see each other splattered in blood. After a few seconds, you are back to pitch black and silence for a few seconds.
Then you invoke the primitive fear we all have of fire. On cue, a torch just lights up on the other side of the room a strawman you purposefully constructed in a metal and glass case, with the smoke piped outside. Then they run, but the EVP starts up again and they encounter one of the hosts lying there who is dimly lit and splattered with gore and stuck with a fake knife. Four or five slimed up rubber snakes drop on their heads. At this point they all need a change.
That is a haunted house.
... try girls. Sure to scare any true geek out of his socks. :-)
Holograms, baby. Oh yeah. You'd be "King Alpha Geek the Undateable" if you managed to pull that off.
For even more entertainment value, have a chalkboard on hand as well. Grab an audience and try to work through the math of the hologram after a dozen cups of whatever alcoholic elixir is sublimating CO2 in the corner. The drunken kibitzing and candy corns bouncing off the slate next to your head will be among your most treasured memories.
What, are you dissing my "costume" made of metal foil? I'm a board certified metallic foils haberdasherer, god dammit, and I demand respect! (And, sometimes I get a little...)
Another neat little thing you can do is get some kind of laser (brighter is better) and then affix a mirror to the cone or dustcap of a bass speaker (one that you don't particularly care about) so that it projects onto the ceiling. Get spooky patterns with your spooky music as the vibrating mirror projects moving light onto your ceiling or wall.
This sig is certified free of self-referential humour!
It's even funnier when the kids catch fire, I guess. No thanks.
It is. If you didn't know what EL Wire is the posting might look like spam but the links would clear up any confusion (pretty, shiny things). Plus he's got a very low UID and a positive posting record. Mods fucked up on the parent.
You can always find something to buy on Christmas Eve - just TRY to find a costume the day before Hallowe'en - you'll be stuck wearing a "costume" you made from a roll of aluminium foil you scrounged from the pantry and some duct tape.
Gee thanks dick. Now everyone will be wearing MY costume!
I mod down all the "free iPod"-sig losers.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye. 'Nuff said.
you'll be stuck wearing a "costume" you made from a roll of aluminium foil you scrounged from the pantry and some duct tape.
/. That's everyday wear.
It's
When cryptography is outlawed, bayl bhgynjf jvyy unir cevinpl
It's a little costly, and there's probably better ways to do it, but you can make animated hands using a motion sensor, nitinol (titanium/nickle) wire, a little foam latex or something equally flexible, and something solid enough for a skeleton. Nitinol has the added advantage that you can use it as 'tendons' and get away with it on bare-bones skeletal hands for a creepy effect.
For more amusement, blue and red leds mess with peoples heads. Only flash them if you know you don't have any epileptics in the room.
I wouldn't consider the mad hatter mad. Just reality impaired. He sure can make a mean cup of tea.
Oh NO! It's the blue screen... of DEATH!!
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
Great! I need a new tin foil hat to protect me from the effects of watching "Star Wreck - In The Pirkining". What do you recommend, oh great one?
I noticed most of these ideas were pretty... not really scary (e.g., the screensaver), so I came up with my own.
:)
Now, this requires some preparation and some timing... but I'm sure the effects would pay off.
1) The first guests to arrive, make sure there's about two of them or so. Leave the door open and all the lights off inside. Upon entering, someone who was hiding near/behind/around the door (on the outside of the house) slams it shut and holds it there. In the opening room:
a) Paint things like 'HELP ME' or things in latin in big, red, sketchy letters on your wall, or something similar that you can remove easily. When the lights are turned on, this will help to create the effect for our big finale.
---OR---
b) Disconnect the light switches so they can't be turned on since you chose not to paint on your walls.
--THEN--
c) Leave some sort of marker leading them into a hallway that leads to one room (the rest are locked) with (optionally) the the big red letters from above spelling "HELL AWAITS".
2) Then once they enter the room, yet another person hiding (maybe in a pantry locked from the inside using two pegs and a stick or something) will slam that door shut, locking it and holding it shut.
This is where the REAL fun starts.
In that room you'll have a TV. Using the infrared motion detector mentioned earlier, have a TV and a VCR hooked up to the detector. Make sure the VCR is cued to the tape I'll mention in a second. When they enter the room and the door has locked behind them, the VCR will begin playing our tape we will create later. The first bits of the tape will need to be white noise, about 15 seconds of it, before snapping into a video of strange things in black and white. Not necissarily scary by themselves, but downright AWFUL in a house decorated like that with the events that have happened up to that point (think the tape from The Ring).
After the section of the tape has stopped, the remainder of our white noise will continue (lets say... five minutes of it). Someone in the closet of that room, dressed as some awful humanoid monster (like the pyramid head guy from Silent Hill 2) will calmly walk out carrying a blunt long object like a pole, but enough so that if you were to hit someone with it in the stomach, say, it wouldnt hurt too much.
This is where a friend of the group comes into play. He'll have some sort of blood-packet on his chest, on top of a vest preferably so the strike to his chest/stomach doesn't hurt so much. The monster person will stand facing the visitors, and after a few seconds snap into action and hit the friend in the stomach with the spear, we'll call it, causing fake 'blood' to erupt from his chest section.
Proceed to go after the remaining people, who should now be THOROUGHLY scared. Maybe leave a chainsaw in the closet for after the first 'killing'.
I'm an asshole, I know. If someone attempts this, or portions of this, leave a hidden camera SOMEWHERE, PLEASE. Hehe. After the initial scaring, you can open up whatever remaining rooms decorated how you like and have your party
-Eric
P.S.: I think I'm going to make a tape described like above. Who wants in/to help?
-Eric Smith
My brother has a real boar's skull that he had rigged up with LED eyes and a cigar with a red LED in the end to make it look like the skull was taking a drag.
Well, you can always be the hit of the party with the chicks:
With any luck, they'll say "Oh yeah? Prove it!"
Of course, this being Hallowe'en and all, be careful not to hit on the woman dressed as a hooker - that might be me (you know how crazy we denizens of Kanuckistan can be :-)
...the ultimate Halloween strange brew/jungle juice dispenser:
Get a milk crate and a metal vat/trough/recepticle of some sort to stick inside the milk crate.
Next mount a skull dangling over this vat, attached to the top edge of the milk crate, dangling over the top of the vat.
Install a recirculating pump which pulls liquid out of the vat and shoots it out the skull's mouth, back into the vat.
Fill the vat with jungle juice and dry ice.
You now have the ultimate Halloween drink dispenser. People just hold their cups under the skull's mouth, or otherwise it disappears into the frothy whiteness that forms on top from the dry ice.
I got the foil and duct tape, noiw what do I do with it....
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
What happens under the raft, stays under they raft. Works great. Don't ask me how I know this.
Vuja De: That sinking feeling that this is going to happen again. Often occurs in meetings with Product Managers.
What are the best party tricks for the geeks ?
One I remember we did was to swipe (british: steal) loads of flashing roadworks lights and spend a while synchronising them to an in sequence strobe effect along the lnegth of the halway..
Dry ice and liquid nitrogen were good ones with my chem. eng. room-mates but I'm a computer guy.. I don't see too much of that these days.. mh Cray XMP is still in the posr...
Well... you could have a blacklight at the door of one of the back bedrooms so when a chick exit everyone can look and check for "glow in the dark liquids" around around her mouth ;-)
Libertas in infinitum
Get a picture of the goat.cx guy, blow it up nice and big, and duct-tape it to your butt. That will scare ANYBODY.
Find something about the size and shape of a burito and wrap it in the tin foil. When people ask what it is (after seeing Mr. Goat), glance significantly to your rear, and say "its take-out - want some?"
Nobody expects the Spanish inquisition!!!
That one's just great: http://sam.zoy.org/fun/goatse/pumpkin.jpg
You are more than the sum of what you consume. Desire is not an occupation.
You could try and teach your guests to program in machine language or assembly. That stuff always scared the shit out of me.
What idiot marked parent "off topic"? Didn't get the joke eh?
It will certainly frighten away your date:
http://www.tronguy.net/
Table-ized A.I.
> Every Hallowe'en party needs a zombie.
AC, I don't why your post was rated "-1 offtopic". I thought it was funny.
Oh NO! It's the blue screen... of DEATH!!
Get some poster-board, paint it blue, put some hex on it, tie it to your chest, and go to a party as the BSOD.
Table-ized A.I.
nuf sed
Table-ized A.I.
Penn and Teller have a segment in "How to Play With Your Food" - you put electricity thorugh a pickle, and it lights up. It's great fun at parties. It looks quite dangerous, and the more squeamish folks will be convinced that you're going to electrocute yourself. My neighbor, after seeing the initial demonstration years ago, was so impressed that he's built an "improved" model every year. I think we're up to 6th gen now. The newest unit looks like a pickle-sized electric chair, and it works wonderfully.
For reasons I can't explain, *everybody* loves the Pickle-ator.
But you could setup a computer running Windows and hook it up to the Internet.
Downside: side-effect will last at least 'til 4th of July.
Table-ized A.I.
Sure, and after 2-3 minutes you'd have a zombie for the party too! Heck, hook up a network of windows boxes and every couple minutes have them play a track groaning "Brains... Brains...!", each in a slightly unique voice. Someone would get the joke on their own though, which would be sad. :-P
How'd you afford the led light? I know, you got the money from an atm machine!
/budum ching!
This public service announcement has been brought to you by the department of redundancy department.
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
although there are many fancy new high tech stuff, lets start with simple chemistry ... green glowing light sticks and dry-ice to make spooky fog ... an almost MUST have ... the techie pumps, fans, and flow control devices to make it a good show or better show will depend on your budget ... you could go all the way and spend a small fortune on a so called smart house ... with computer controls for everything ... lights, fans, sound system, heating/cooling, auto-open/close doors, special glass windows on inner walls/doors with LCD between two panes (program to alternate between transparent and some sort of spooky image) ... the list goes on ...
A warrior's greatest weapon is wisdom, therefore, keep your mind even sharper than you keep your sword.
We usually go to BSDM play parties for Halloween. Or host them, if we really feel like it.
:)
Kinky and/or goth girls really know how to party.
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
OK, it's not a gadget, or even really geeky, but it is a lot of fun:
About ten years back, a classmate gave a party. I forget the occasion. But she made up an adult pinata. No, it wasn't squicky or exotic or anything. I think it was a pretty ordinary pinata. What was adult was the stuff inside:
Cigars
Dice
Condoms (in gold-coin wrappers)
Bandanas
. . . and so on. You could have a lot of fun finding stuff at the Dollar Store to put in one of these. Beef jerky, cheap "swiss army" knives, etc.
i guess, there are tons of comments that have said this already.
Just in case a jacobs ladder looks frankenstein cool
Flipping through the back pages of SA while at the dentist office, I saw this neat gun the blows fog rings lit up by blue leds. They even have an Airzooka verison.
A couple years ago I built a fog machine based on plans I found somewhere on the web. It was very simple to make and cost under $10. I've always meant to put up my own web page showing how to do it, but you know how that goes. It's not that hard though, especially if you are a true geek. Basically you get a used electric iron and mount it upside down in a shoebox-size box, with a drip mechanism that drips a glycerine and water solution onto the iron, and a computer fan at one end blowing in. Needless to say, you wire the fan and iron to a switch.
For me the hardest part was making the drip mechanism and getting the drip rate right. You want a drip rate of several drops per second but not a running stream. I bought a used aquarium pump but it ran WAY too fast. So I ended up using gravity. I mounted a 2-liter pop bottle upside down on top of the box, with a piece of plastic tubing epoxied through a hole in the cap, extending down into the box. I fused the end of the tubing shut with a candle flame and poked several pinholes in it until it flowed right. Initially the thing stopped dripping after just a few seconds, so I had to poke a hole in the pop bottle's bottom end (which was at the top) to allow air to enter. Then the drip rate was too fast, so I heat-sealed some of the holes in the tubing. It was trial and error, and it ran a little too fast when the bottle was full and too slow when it was low on juice. Some sort of slow pump would work better. But what the hell, the parts were free.
The drops of glycerine instantly boil away to dense white fog when they hit the hot iron, and the fan blows the fog out the other end of the box. Commercial fog juice is a 25% solution of glycerine in water. A 12-oz bottle of glycerine costs about $8 at the drug store. Mix it with 3 parts water and you're there. This quantity will last a couple hours.
The fog machine emits steam, which rises. To make the fog float along the ground you need a chiller, which you can build with an old styrofoam cooler. Cut a 3-inch hole cut in each end, with a tunnel of wire mesh connecting the two holes. You fill the cooler with ice and put the fog machine up against the hole at one end. When the hot fog passes through the chilled tunnel it will stay close to the ground. You don't actually need pieces of plastic pipe or anything, unless you want to duct the fog somewhere.
Instead of using my fog machine to fog up the living room I made a cemetery in the front yard. I had various slabs of styrofoam lying around from who knows what, in thicknesses ranging from 1/2" to 2". If you don't have any just get a 2x8 sheet of rigid foam insulation an inch or two thick. I cut out tombstone shapes with a scroll saw, and for good measure cut a few cracks and other defects into the edges with a serrated kitchen knife. Then I used a soldering iron with a large tip to carve out lettering on each one. The foam melts away at the touch of the iron, and the result has a nice deteriorated look. Then I spray painted the tombstones gray and then sprayed lightly over with black in a haphazard pattern to distress them.
I mounted the stones in the yard using a coat hanger stuck in the bottom of each one and into the ground. Lighting fog from the side looks really good, so I hung a lawn spotlight in a large bush about 15 ft away, downwind of the graveyard, shining through the leaves at the tombstones. The tombstones themselves were standing at an angle to accentuate the shadowing inside the carved letters. It made the lettering really visible. On the upwind side I set up the fog machine and aimed it toward the sidewalk. As the fog came out the slight breeze blew it gently across the yard, through the graveyard and toward the light. My wife hung small stereo speakers in the same bush as the spotlight and we had creepy organ music playing. All in all it was a really cool effect.
When I was a kid, I did this using CoffeeMate. Later, when I got older, I just rigged up some tubing and did it using propane. Much simpler, although you do have to be careful about what valves you use.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Floating Head - you've seen the crystal ball where it's a tv playing a dvd reflected onto a balloon http://www.bigscreamtv.info/bigscreamtv.html - do the same thing except with a web cam with fx on the microphone - personalized floating head.
Ghostly Books
http://www.leproductions.com/shlfplan.html
Fog Chiller - basically chills the fog from a fog machine so it hugs the ground or rolls down stairs
when you've got a real life?
You forgot #7. It was our only rule:
#7. Costume or naked.
We had good parties. GP poster wouldn't have fit in very well. I miss those days.
Ce n'est pas un vrai mouvement de robot!
Going as Gort?
a friend of mine at work rigged up one of those transmitters that businesses have that "beep" when someone passes between them. he hooked it up to his laptop and did some programming magic to have the thing randomly play sound files that fit the halloween mood (howling, witch laugh, wind, lightning, etc.). it was pretty sweet and totally caught me off guard the first time i walked through it.
cowgod Esc:wq
Google above and you will get many props and effects. Flying crankcase ghost Bottomless pit DIY foggers and chillers(to get the ground hugging fog) Above all else is SAFETY in doing haunts.
I'm too tired tonight to really get into this (1am) but maybe tomorrow. I do Halloween stuff professionally, with serious theme park gear. Checkout http://www.rivertoncemetery.com./
One fun party idea if this matches with your theming, is to stack a bunch of TVs in a pile. The older the better, different sizes. It's best if they're all black and white, but it doesn't matter. Stack some sideways, some upside down. Plug them all in, turn them all on, so that they're all playing static. Then I like to take one or two odd random ones (at least turned the correct way) and wire them to the same DVD or VCR, and playback wihtout audio (I assume you have loud tunes at this party) old black and white movies. Some good choices are Frankenstein, Mummy, The Fly, Them, Dracula, Nosferatu (my fav), or something like this. Also Metropolis is ok.
If you can afford to jack up the TVs, paint them jet black (except the screen) with some silver paint dripped down the side of some. Gives it a retro techno post-apocalypse big-brother feel.
Another idea is to run a fine copper wire around each half of the seat of the toilet in the bathroom, and run each side to a terminal of a transformer, and hook that transformer to a 9V battery. When the person is using the toilet, you connect the battery (or push a button) and it momentarily sends a jolt to the person's bare a*s. DISCLAIMER - this can injure people if they are sensitive to elecricity because it F's with your heart, or if the current is too strong. Use with extreme caution and at your own risk, and make sure you use a low enough transformer.
On using fog - if you can make an elongated wooden box with a fan at one end, and put regular ice in a bowl in the box, then hook up a dryer hose to each end of the box, and run your fog machine into one end, this will "chill" the fog to keep it lying low in the house. Otherwise you need a Liquid Nitrogen rig to put out fog that's denser than air and will sink to the floor like dry ice.
Make a giant skull facade over your front door so that people walk through the mouth to enter.
Have a friend sit a styrofoam stylist's head with a scary mask draped over it on his head. Have him put on a big athletic sweatshirt over his head so the hood of the sweatshirt is around the fake head. His actual head is below where the zipper is. Have him stand against the wall with his hands hidden on the wall where people walk by to get to the front door. Have him practice acting like a dummy and standing funny (proped) against the wall. You can add other imbellishments to make it look like a dummy. When people walk by, they think he's a fake dummy, and he can jump at them and scare them. This works will little to no effort (get a mask), but requires a patient and well-propped up guy who practices.
Do NOT use candles outdoors for any reason. Use them indoors only if there is someone to supervise who is sober. I do not recommend them despite their good looks. One note - you can buy broken candles by the pound (cheap) if you ask around (I forget in my old age).
You can make tombstones out of styrofoam covered in plaster of paris (get at Home Depot for cheap, not hobby store). Take pictures of gravestones from old cemeteries or find off of the Net. Do a good job or don't bother.
You can paint light bulbs red, blue, or green, if you don't want to buy the ready made ones at Home Depot. Use High-Temp paint, and test them before using them.
A fun twist at parties is to look up All Hallows Eve or All Saints Day/All Souls Day. Halloween is a traditional Druids Thanksgiving before it was a Christian holiday (what you may find may shock you in the truth of it all). You can also use info from an Irish or British All Hallowees Eve. Tell fortunes by the fire by roasting walnuts. Use a snapapple (Halloween also called SnapApple night). Serve Irish soul-cakes to the guests (they're pretty good to eat and very cool in theme IMHO). Some years I
How about this for a random idea...
The Galatea Project is an open-source toolkit for developing life-like animated agents that talks to users and is easily customized with the face, voice, and dialog. And it claims you can create a new moving head for it from a single photo. So set one up with scary dialog and a head created from an image of a disembodied skull. Or the devil. Or the head of an ancestor (use your imagination!). Set the dialog to have everything responded to with random spooky phrases (you're all going to hell... I'm dead and you will die soon too.. the witching hour approaches... I hear Bill Gates is coming to this party...)
The URL to download it is:
http://hil.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~galatea/
"c'mon billy, won't you trade me one whole tootsie roll for these ten ubuntu CDs that I have, they're reeeeally cool"
"no way sis, i'll trade you the wrapper when i'm done though!"
I just finished up a circuit that runs motors when the lights go out / get dim. This can be used to make things scuttle about when the lights go out, or rustle papers, etc. It's easy to make and fun.
gauche
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
and you can even put them in a smiley shape, so you can head off that question right at the nub
1. Over at archive.org they have some old betty boop cartoons as well as popeye and the like. Convert them to VCD burn em and pass them out to the little kids. OpenCD for the parents.
2. woolite washing liquid (softiner?) will dry clear when "painted" on most any surface and will flourese vividly under UV.
3. Old laptop with Wifi external speakers webcam and VNC can be placed outside in a scarcrow or similar decoration can make for a spooky and interactive display. Geek certified.
4. Old R/C reciever and servos also work well. Once build a severed arm that was placed where parents would stand waiting for kids and could touch there feet. Watchem jump.
How about reviving the style of cyberpunk movies?
Get lots of TVs and monitors. Lots of them. Have them display static, random flickering colors, maybe a few wireframe 3D objects (for that 1980ish feeling). xscreensaver has some modes that are just perfect, for example some of BSOD's modes. Repeatedly compiling something that generates lots of text output might also be a good idea - having three or four monitors next to each other, each one scrolling through lots of technical-looking text (dmesg via Phosphor is great for this) should create a nice effect. Even nicer if you configure your terminal to use #00ff00 green text. Hang lots of tubes, wires etc. from the ceiling, making it look like everything was wired together in a haphazard way. Some loose cables dangling around (but obviously not connected to anything) add to the effect. The light comes from fluorescent lamps hanging between the wires.
That should create a nice cyberpunkish effect for everyone who loves the genre.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
Look here
My web domain.
Bob-the-Bass, the trophy bass plaque that talks and moves has been hacked several times (linux) to say rude things and somes just tail-flip. There was quite an extensive article several years ago. (2 or 3?) Might even be in the G4 archives.
Stop by TextAmerica.com and view the short video I created "Do You Have Insight." You can save this if you would like by selecting the DL link under the video frame. This will run as a WMV in full screen mode on any computer or laptop and can be set to Repeat for looping. http://raffinorgangrind.textamerica.com/?r=3478902
Emjoy,
George
There's always the "man into skeleton" transformation (which you can google for) or the "girl detector" http://home.gwi.net/~jdebell/pe/cj/v20-1.htm from 1964: relies on wardrobe standards from 40 years ago, but it could also be interesting.
Aluminium is always in fashion. I reccomend a full-face covering helmet with thee fins sticking out the back, at least long enough to act as antannae to absorb all the radiation that is the same frequency as your brain waves. Be sure to keep the hat grounded at all times.
And, for extra points, make the input big enough for people to dance on, to make their *own* dance music.
mark
I thought the RIAA brought bad, unethical suits on little children.
I'll be your candy shop of infinite deliciousity if you'll be my discotheque of endless rump-shaking.
The Libet link was quite interesting. I also took a look at the Wikipedia article. But the conclusion seems to not be the simplest explanation. The simplest explanation would seem to be that our consciousness is not immediately self-aware of the decisions that it is making.
Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.
Find a somewhat "sticky", transparent, preferably white glowing fluid (paint) or search for a receipt how to make one (sorry, I don't know any receipts or where/whether you can buy such paint; the people I heard this from were lab workers mixing their own).
The key is that it should be as "invisible" as possible under normal light.
Then paint the bones of your arms and hands on your skin.
This gets some cool effects if you turn to or reach into areas with UV lights..
Every Halloween at the stroke of midnight an imaginary gun goes off, and thousands of people start working on 50,000-word novels, which they try to finish by the end of November -- National Novel-Writing Month. Writers report their progress on the website. Some people post their work online, but it's all on the honor system and is just for fun. Don't have any ideas? No problem! Visit the site and get advice from character development to plotting to excuses for not finishing. You can also find other participants by location. In many cities people meet and party at the end of the month. Good way to jumpstart yourself.
It's been years since I bought some, but there was a time when Baskin Robbins (or maybe other ice cream stores) would have dry ice for sale...
What you need, my friend, is a theremin dressed up as a ghost. Just drape a white sheet over the whole thing (including the two antennae), stick a glow-in-the-dark skull on top of of the vertical antenna, and put a dish of candy near it. (The horizontal antenna will look like a hand pointing when the sheet is draped over it, so you might want to put the dish of candy there.) Also, it looks especially cool if you put a strobe light underneath the sheet (sitting on top of the theremin body).
I did this with my theremin last year. When little kids approach it, of course, it will start wailing and screaming like a banshee. My 6- and 8-year old nieces loved it and it scared the heck out of my 4-year old nephew.
A pre-built fog machine costs about US$20 at most larger stores and is temperature regulated so you don't poison anyone, making it a wiser investment then strapping your clothes iron, a drip mechanism, and a small fan together (quieter and easier to work with too!). Also keep in mind the fine glycerin smoke can trigger asthmatics & other folks with breathing problems, and leaves a thin greasy layer on EVERYTHING if used indoors (walls, ceilings, windows, dishware, flooring, into cabinets & rooms you thought were better sealed...)
While on the not-a-good-ideas theme don't go adding scents, colorings, or other "effects" to the fog. After being scalded on the hot plate and then blown around they never do more then smell nasty, gum up the works, and again, are potentially hazardous to inhale.
From a fella who spent a half hour prepping his for machines this afternoon my advice is outside, in a sheltered area (wind destroys it), and spooky but not pea-soup. The cooler trick is a good one, and a great use of an end-of-season beat up cheapy foam cooler. A chicken-wire tube between two holes, a load of ice, no fan needed, warm rising fog goes jetting in one end and comes out nearly as fast but spookier ground-hugging fog at the other end. You can even use a short bit of dryer hose if you need to 'pipe' the fog. Oh, and a black cloth hides the cooler, but leave the fogger exposed as they get very hot and need to be refilled occ. My favorite places are hemmed in by shrubs, which I hang some more black cloth around the bottoms to help dam in the ground fog. A bit of lighting helps to show up the fog, nothing like a red or purple glow fromn down low to add yet more atmosphere...
Sound also helps immeasurably! I use my collection of old came-with-it computer speakers, hidden up in trees and in shrubs, for effects. I plug them into old tape & CD players, then every hour do a circuit around the property restarting 'em. Mix your own audio, and don't be afraid of long periods of quiet rustling, or even silence, punctuated by loud effects. A surprise sound is scarier then walking up to a cacophony of moaning / creaking / screaming. Never underestimate the terror of a real person either; stationing an accomplice in a closet or bushes to make appropriate sounds is incredibly effective, just make sure they're up for a longish stint at it.
For other effects one of my preferred is the good old black light. You have to be careful however, many of the little purple holiday lights labeled "black light" don't actually emit any UV! Test anything you buy ASAP and bring it back for a refund if nothing glows. The best values are the medium tube lights, around US$15 for a 24" one with fixture. Or get a bunch of the incandescent bulbs for US$1 each and gang them up, stick in corners, behind props, use aluminum foil reflectors to direct their light.
For making stuff glow under black light the classic is any laundry whitener, "Whisk" is one of my favorites. Paint with it, rinse cloth in it, it's a powerful UV reflector (why your clothes look so bright when washed with it!) Many toothpastes are also dosed with strong UV reflectors, for that blinding-white-in-the-mirror effect (that dissipates down your throat within a few minutes).
However my personal favorite is black light hair spray. Found in many party supply shops this time of year it costs around US$2/can and goes on nearly transparent, perfect for applying stencils to surfaces (including windows & mirrors!), clothing, or body parts. Right now I've got garage windows full of cheap black & white 'haunted face' plastic masks sprayed with the stuff ready for the room-of-doom next week. Cost was a US$1 75 watt black light, 6 US$1 masks, and that US$2 can of hair spray. Same for my own hair and outfit this weekend out at adult parties, normal until the black lights go on then covered in
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
In a recent Role-Playing game our resident gadgeteet created something unique for a costume party. The Rockin Sythe.
He crafted a full length sythe that played music, and had a little mirror ball dangling from the business end. And it could produce a heavy bass tone when thumped on the ground. That was a fun party.
Best prices are usually the vendors who sell to icecream trucks. At least in the towns I've lived in, there's been at least one warehouse outlet that stocks the trucks and pushcarts. They'll usually sell you pounds of dry ice for a couple bucks, in large bricks.
some dates. LOL...
Essentially, the software monitors 5 switches fed into the parallel port. When the state of one of those switches is set, the software respons by firing any of 8 relays tied to the parallel port. Scripting is supported.
In our current setup, I use a weird setup of old PC's, relay cards, input boards, etc, to switch 110VAC, 12VDC, and 24VAC. We tie these lines to our air valves, lights, and whatnot. The software can also play audio files, so it is pretty trivial to create Thunder and Lighting effects.
And, along the effect lines, check out the super-easy to make light flicker circuit. Go fetch a standard extension cord, cut one of the sides (as if you were going to install a switch), and install a 4 watt flourscent lamp starter. Plug a low-wattage lamp into the cord, and the cord into the wall. You will get a nice flicker effect.
Things to note:
Have fun, good luck!
-- I
Every self respecting Criminal Mastermind will of course be wearing their patented Radio Active watch.v e-watch.html
http://www.tokyoflash.com/viewwatch75W1radio-acti
Mhu ha ha ha harrrrr
dress your cat up as a ghost and get out your trusty laser pointer to have a remote control ghost