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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!"
But you could setup a computer running Windows and hook it up to the Internet.
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.
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
Almost forgot... Cool Neon sells an audio sensitive EL Wire driver that will let you create responsive designs. I'm using EL Wire to decorate our pumpkin this year and some audio sensitive drivers to make it respond to trick-or-treaters.
-Chris
-- This sig is only a test. If this were a real sig it would say something witty. --
getting some girls there, but since you posted this on slashdot...
Needless to say, that effect has been disabled.
Gnash Gnash Gnash
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.
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.
But you could setup a computer running Windows and hook it up to the Internet.
Every Hallowe'en party needs a zombie.
UV lights are also good. Anything drinkable that glows is very cool, and extra geek points are achieved if you can drink said glowing liquid from a conical flask or a test tube. Even without the UV, Aftershock (preferably green) in a conical flask looks very mad scientisty. The markings on the flask let you see how many shots go in there too.
Dry ice rocks, you can do all kinds of mad scientist effects with that stuff. A cool one is to put some pH indicator in water and then add the dry ice - lots of bubbles, thick white smoke rolling down the sides and the liquid changes colour as it becomes acidic. Lots of flash from a very simple reaction. You might need to do some creative googling to find sources of dry ice, but last time I was looking it was fairly cheap; in the region of £15 for 10kg of pellets.
you could dress as a RIAA lawyer.
Red Bull glows in UV (black lights). :)
-Chris
-- This sig is only a test. If this were a real sig it would say something witty. --
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.
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.
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.
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"
The same thing happened to me this week but with a kernel panic / core dump. I knew the existance of that screensaver and would have laughed if it was a BSOD but the kernel panic was a different story.
Scariest screensaver ever made.
Slashdot anagrams to "Sad Sloth"
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
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.
The scariest thing I can think of (and any experienced tech will agree with me here)
Salesman with a screwdriver.
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.