July 28, 2009 • 24 mins
Tinnovators are folks who come up with new and innovative ways to use old Altoids mint tins. Learn about some of these "tinnovators" and their art in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you should know
from house Stuff Works dot com. Hey, welcome to the podcast.
I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles Bryant, who is with me
is always. I don't know what I'd do without each
(00:21):
other man. Seriously, it'd be like having um a conjoined twins, separated,
one that has its head into still alive. You were
being mean to me seconds before he went on, and
then he butter me up right when in front of people.
In front of people, you have hundreds of thousands of people.
I'm secretly very abusive to you behind closed doors, aren't Yeah,
so chuck, Yes, my fellow ian f er. Oh yeah,
(00:45):
we took the Myers Briggs personality tests. Pretty cool. We
are again like conjoined twins, except for the distinction of
the P and the J. I'm a perceiver, you're a judger, right,
and I think we compliment each other well in that regard.
I agree. I'd actually like to do a podcast on
that test. Let's do it. I think we should do.
We haven't do you know if we have an article
on that? Oh, we'll just make stuff up. Yeah, yeah,
(01:06):
I totally want to do it though. I found it
really fascinating and I did not think I would, and
I was. I was into it. So maybe we can
work swimming with whale sharks into that somehow too. Who're
just doing podcasts now based on personal experiences around the
office Tomorrow is going to be called ham and Eggs
for breakfast. So, speaking of around the office, Chuckers, as
you know, we have a bunch of new, kind of
(01:29):
cool articles about um al toys on the site. Who
to thunk It? Yeah, the curiously strong mint. She took
my line, I'll kill you. So yeah, We've got a
whole suite of articles. We have like a sub channel
in the science channel that's dedicated to Altoy's really yeah,
have you been on you haven't been on it? Now?
(01:49):
I wrote a few of them now. The final products
look pretty good though, all right, I think so. The focus,
as you know, since you have written some, was on
this stre range little group of people called tent evaders. Right, yes, well,
let's talk about them a minute. First, let's discuss candy. Okay, yeah,
it sounds good talk about al twits, Chuckers. Do you
(02:12):
have candy in your mouth now like you did during
the Twinkies show. I know, let's let's address that show.
We Yeah, we got a few letters that came in
that said, what was Josh eating during the twinkiespot? Even worse,
why was Josh eating? Yeah? It sounded like he had
a Werther's in his mouth or something, or candy and yeah,
one guy guess whethers are Jolly ranchers. Not true, Josh
didn't have anything in his mouth, and we've surmised that
(02:32):
because we're talking about twinkies. He was just frothy, and uh,
it's weird. I went back and listened to it, and
I definitely sound like I'm chewing on something. But no,
I think I just really wanted a twinkie. I guess
you were too cheap to pick them up, weren't you. Right. Yeah, So,
just to let people know we're slightly more professional than
to suck on candy while we're trying to podcast despite
(02:52):
our illustrious surroundings. Rightly, although we do have jolly, we
have candy on our desk, and we we avoid it
during I think Jerry would literally murder us if we
just started eating candy during a podcast. Yeah, so um, yes,
I think I might salivate again. Okay, alright, So Chuck,
did you know that altoids, these these little mints date
(03:14):
back to the reign of King George the Third, who
is the mad king who drove the colonists to revolt
seventeen eighty. Dude, people have been sucking on these mints. Also,
did you know that King George may have had a perphyria?
And what is that? It's um, it's what's it called.
There's acute intermittent perfyria, which is I think when they
(03:36):
think King George had it's a congenital disease where porphyrins.
I can't remember what they do. I think they get
rid of waste build up in your blood stream, in
your system, and uh, it can get kind of bad.
It can have um effects on the nervous system. You
can have psychological effects, which is why they think King
George was mad. Um. And the stomach cramping is unpara level.
(04:00):
It's really horrible stuff. But the prefer you might be
most acquainted with. I can't remember what it's called, but um,
it's it's where your photo sensitive. You can't go out
into sunlight, you can't be exposed it's sunlight. It was
featured in the others you ever see that one? Um.
And also that's where they think the vampire legend, or
that aspect of the vampire legend came from, was from
people who had I thought you're gonna say, given bad
(04:23):
breath or something. That's why they created Altoid. And I
think that was consumption, yeah, which was pretty big around
seventeen eighty, which is when they were first created, right, Yeah,
and that's always by the way, we mentioned the curiously
strong man. That was their slogan from day one. Yeah,
because they use real peppermint oil and lots of copious
amounts of it's hardcore stuff. Oh yeah, as anyone who's
(04:45):
ever had an Altoid knows. Yeah, it does a trick though. Yeah. So, um,
in America, we in America, we love uh to attach
weird pop stuff to candy to food, like he's kool Aid, which,
by the way, we should probably make that correction to
while we're at it. It wasn't kool Aid at Jonestown.
(05:06):
It turns out it was flavor Aid. I've done some terrible,
terrible things in my life. I don't I've never felt
more ashamed than I do for missing that really Yeah, well,
you know, like I told the hundreds of people that
wrote in and corrected us on that, sure it was
flavor Aid, but unfortunately for kool Aid. What matters is
what people think of and remember and don't drink, and
(05:28):
the kool Aid is what people remember. I don't even
know if unfortunately is the right word. It could be fortunate.
I'm not sure about it. How's Flavoride's market share doing
since jonestown exactly? And and so basically in America, we
don't just eat things like we eat things and then
turn them into cultural phenomena but icons, right exactly. So
altoids isn't any different. Um, And it's not necessarily the mint,
(05:50):
although I agreed they are curiously strong. Um, it's the
tin that seems to like really get people's juices going,
you know. I mean, who out there hasn't had altois
at some point and saved the tin and kept you know,
paper clips or spare buttons or rubber bands or something
in them. I don't know who. I at my house, Fuller,
(06:13):
Jimmy Fuller at home right now, I have a couple
of altoys tins on my desk with assorted, Uh, little knickknacks. Yeah, yeah,
because it's you know, it's it's perfect size, it is convenient,
snap shut, and I think that's what led this whole
tentovation thing. Well yeah, technically that makes you a tinovator
is exactly what I was gonna say. But a tinovator nonetheless,
(06:35):
which I guess we should define this a tentovator um
as we've turned up through our research as somebody who
um finds new and novel uses for old altoits tins.
It's as simple as that, and it can be as
simple as throwing rubber bands in an old tin. But
some people have come up with much more advanced projects
(06:56):
of them that that that involved an nodes and electrodes
and weird stuff that I would electrocute myself trying. So
should we talk about ten evators? I don't see why
should we talk about these people? Yeah? Who you want
to talk about first? Because we did? I have to say, Chuck,
this could have gone either way, this assignment writing these articles.
But the but the people that we ran across, at
(07:18):
least the ones I wrote on, we're generally really interesting.
They were interesting people and the stuff they came up
with was very interesting, very creative, which I was very
thankful for. Let's start with Jake von Slat. Yes, let's
steam punk steampunk guy. Um. For those of you who
don't know what steampunk is, it's kind of this um
subculture movement that's based out of this sub genre, like
(07:41):
sub sub of speculative fiction that centers around the Victorian
era and all like the fantastic contraptions that like Jules
Verne and H. G. Wells came up with, right, so,
like throwback stuff that's in fact kind of futuristic, right so. Um.
Jake von Slat came up with one of the most
recognizable steampunk relics at her, which is the steampunk desktop computer. Ude.
(08:03):
Have you ever seen it? It's wicked cool. Have you
read the article that Jay strick wrote Jonathan Strickland, our
writer called the Stamfellow Podcaster. We have a cool, cool
article that's just on steampunk on the site. I think
it's pretty cool. I would never get caught up in
something like that because any any movement where you're dressing
up and going to events, it's not really up my alley.
(08:25):
But I like to look at them when they walk
by me on the way to their convention. Sure yeah, um,
I'm more into first suiting, but I can see how
somebody would, you know, uh, get into steampunk. It's it's
interesting even looking from the outside in. But Jake fon
Slat is kind of the a de facto godfather steampunk.
But it also happens to be a tent evator too, right, right,
(08:49):
so he makes a little steampunk tens. Now that he
sells the too right, I don't know if he sells him.
I think it's he's there's there's kind of um. One
of the things that goes along with Altoyd's almost like
almost across the board is that, um it's open source.
So like Jake von Slat like puts instructions on how
(09:12):
to do his projects up for free on his website,
which I think is called steampunk workshop dot com, which
is really cool if you ever ever tooled around on it.
Um and also some of the other people will talk about,
especially to do it yourself electronic electronic folks. There's kind
of this sentiment like I created this project and I
want to share it with the world, and here's how
(09:32):
you can do it step by step, which is really
big about sharing it seem like sort of a community,
and there a couple of the guys I interviewed had
um guys and gals had gotten in touch with other tentivators,
and I'm kind of surprised they don't have a little,
uh a little mini convention at some point. Oh yeah,
just wait for it. It'll happen. We'll go. Yeah, well,
(09:52):
just as a chipmunk and a rabbit and go to
the convention. Yeah. So, do you want to explain how
how he does this or do you just want to
kind of give you what what? Von Slack came up,
but this is just one of his projects. He has
other altoyds Um projects too. Um. Since he steampunk, he's
being into Victorian stuff. So he shows an etching, a
copper plated etching, and um, I was on his site
(10:15):
just kind of getting the gist of it so I
could explain it in the article on him. It's called
how to make a Steampunk altoids tin um, and he
goes through all these really elaborate um techniques to copper
plate an altoids tin pretty advanced and somewhat dangerous. It is,
it's very dangerous. He's using acids and chemicals and like hardcore.
(10:38):
Um a POxy removers electricity and water together, yeah, which
is always a little fun. Yeah. I actually when I
when I wrote it, I copied and pasted the couple
of paragraphs describing that part and send it to him
to see. Like I said, I don't want any of
our readers to be electrocuted. Because he told me if
this is accurate, and he wrote back he's like, here's
(10:58):
a here's a much simpler way to do it. So basically,
through trial and error he came up with the simplest method,
which was good for me because I could comprehend it
and wrote about it. So basically what he does was
he takes um what is it? He calls it blue vitriol,
which is the Victorian era word for or phrase term
for copper sulfate. Right, so he uses the terminology to
(11:22):
the lang. Yeah. Yeah, actually he's steampunk to the core,
buddy um. But anyway, he takes us and and just
with a with a Q tip, he dips it in
um the copper sulfate, rubs it on the back of
an Altoy's ten that's been stripped of its paint and
buffed and everything um, and it turns copper and copper
plates it like that. It looks really cool. Yeah it does.
(11:44):
But that's not the end of it, right, So he
takes like a Victorian etching, like well a digital image
of digital like just something off the internet exactly, and
then he prints it out on like a transfer paper
like pressing peel or something. What do they call pressing
peel in Victorian era? You know? Know? So not that though, buddy, Yeah,
maybe was that my Victorian era lady? Was it? Really? Yeah?
(12:07):
I thought that was Eleanor Roosevelt. I think it was. Um.
So he'll take the transfer paper, put it onto the
back of the newly copper plated altoy's tin, and and yeah,
here's where it gets very dangerous. Right, here's where electricity
comes into play. So he gets a twelve L one
amp d C wall mounted transformer, right, pulls one out
(12:29):
of his pocket. It's it's probably steam powered, um, And
he he clips the positive side to the altoy tin
he wants to etch. He clips the negative side to
like a dummy altoy tin to throw away one. And
then yeah, he drops it into a salt water solution.
He said, one teaspoon of salt for every quart of
(12:49):
water and I got the impression he wanted at least
a gallon enough to to submerge the altoys. Tin throws
it in there, turns on the power weights ten to
twenty minutes, turns off the power this is very important,
reaches in right, and then removes it. And also I
saw a picture of it's cool like the the water
starts bubbling. In terms of dark. Yeah, it's pretty cool looking.
(13:11):
So he turns the power off and then takes it
out and he uh, he scuffs off the transfer paper
and it's been etched into the metal, so into this
copperplated metal. He buts it, adds some rouge buffs, it
brings it to a high shine. There you go, such
a cool product. It is really cool. And I mean
again in the article, just from what I wrote, you
(13:31):
can do it. Uh. In all the articles we included
how to make your own of what these people made,
because like it's open source. Um. But yeah, if you
if you really want like detailed instructions, you can go
into his site too. Well. I think the fact that
they with all of these I noticed it was the
fact that it was an altoid sin is what got attention.
(13:54):
Basically because I did one on this kid, Nick Brand
who makes a little mini flashlights from the little small
I think it's the m tin and he sells these
kids online and kind of like your guy Aaron Dunlap
to who does the USB charger and Nick brnn with
a flashlight. The fact, the mere fact that it was
an Altoids tin made people go, oh, man, I gotta
have one of those, because it's really nothing more than
(14:15):
a little small, tiny flashlight you can put in your pocket,
like the little plastic once you can get at the
gas station checkout line for nine nine cents. But it's
an outoid stin so it's cool. Yeah, yeah, that's Dunlap
said that, uh what he created his USB charger UM
just out of necessity he wanted he wanted. Uh. It
uses a nine volt battery like a dollar apiece UM,
(14:38):
and he added the USB charger in the connector and
all that stuff and he just he connects his smartphone
to it and it gives it like sixty minutes of
talking time or four hours of standby just from one
nine volt battery, which is cool. He also makes kits
and sells them, and he said he had some left
over UM from his first project. That's why he put
(14:58):
kids together to sell them. Um and he said that
had he chosen just a plain old office sheelf metal enclosure,
he suspects he'd still be trying to sell the first
twenty five, but instead he sold thousands and actually founded
a company called the Electroids Company just to handle the order.
He got picked up on like dig and Boing boying,
and he said it was the it was the allure
(15:20):
of the altoys, did it? Yeah? What is it about
the tin? Well? I think Well, I interviewed Nick Brand
and this other guy, Matthew Poech She does uh, he
does a speaker like you can plug your iPod into
this Altoids tin and play your music out loud because
he's drilled little holes like a speaker grill on the
top of what's it called the Minty Boost? No, no, no no,
that's it's called speaker Okay, Because there is an altoys project.
(15:43):
It's a legendary altoy project by um Leemore Freed, who
I haven't met her interview, but he he seems to
be kind of like this d I y Altoid's electronics guru.
Um and he came up with the Minty Boost, a
lot of people tip their hats to him or I
think I think you're steampunk guy kind of takes it
to the next level personally. Well, when you're etching a
(16:04):
Victorian era stuff, that's pretty cool. Yeah, he's a he's
a sub subgenre guy or a sub subculture guy. He's
a steampunk altoys tent evator, which it doesn't get more
niche than that. I don't think I had another actually
one of my guys too. A lot of there's kind
of two camps. You can either be artistic and like
we've seen some cool like shadow boxes and I know
one of your uh the ladies you wrote about that
(16:27):
a zen garden, which is kind of cool, and then
the other side of the coin is people that do
um a more useful thing like flashlight speakers, USB chargers,
that kind of thing. Right, Yeah, there's there's an artistic
side and then there's like a technical side. But the
artistic side, dude, I've got the man who I wrote,
(16:48):
David's Alban He actually does fine art and makes big
dough so what's album does. He actually uses the tens
as his canvas, so he will mount tens, you know,
pressed against one another. I'd buy side and at whatever
a four ft by four ft frame and actually paint
over them all. So what you have is as a
complete finished painting in small little blocks, almost like a mosaic. Yeah.
(17:11):
I haven't seen this stuff. Yeah, he's based out of Miami.
And the articles up on the site yet. Uh my
speaker article is, and the flashlight article is, and the
fine art article is cool, and the shadow box article.
We'll check it out. Man. Lots of tentivators, I know,
I wrote at least ten, I think really. Yeah. So
there's a bunch of stuff about tentivators and how to
(17:31):
undertake their projects and if it was too involved, we
just kind of kicked it to a site like instructibles
dot com. Yeah that's a great site. Oh yeah yeah,
very in depth detail stuff. So you can buy some
of these kids too, if you're too lazy to do
it yourself, yeah yeah, or the kit you kind of
have to put together yourself. So that's fun, good projects
for kids. Yeah. And when there was another guy named
(17:52):
Matthew Pogue who came up with the Swiss AVR knife. Well,
and he's a saying guy that as a speaker. No,
he he made his speaker based on Lemore Freeds Minty Boost.
So he's like he was just training himself in the
art of UM do it yourself electronics based on other projects.
But he's also a tent invator as well, and he
came up with the Swiss AVR knife, which uses an
(18:14):
a VR chip. It's like, uh, I think eight bit
processor something like that, UM, and you can program and
it's reprogrammable because it uses onboard flash memory. But UM
using a little sound output device and some little LED lights.
It goes through all these different UM mechanisms like the
mini menorah, so like all the LED lights light up
(18:36):
or um there's the uh, what's it called this noisemaker
and it just makes all these different digitized sounds that
fans of craft work would really appreciate that one. UM.
But there's a lot of people are putting a lot
of thought into altoids tunes. It makes I feel like
I'm wasting my life, you know. Well, let's go get
(18:58):
some altoids and empty them out and start painting on
them or something. Let's do that, Chuck. Let's do some
folk art. Okay, yeah, it's the easiest kind of art
I believe, so yes, well, Chuck, that's tinovators. If you
want to read more about tinivation. Uh. As we said,
we have a ton of articles on the site. You
can find those just by typing altoys I imagine into
(19:18):
the handy search bar and how stuff works dot com.
Since I just said that, that means it's time for
listener mail. Yes, Josh, we gotta listener mail. I'm just
gonna call America's Funny Some Videos. Oh, I like this one.
They took a bit of ribbing from us for me
specifically in this are Stupid People Happier? Because I put
that show at the very bottom of the food chain
(19:39):
comedy wise. Getting kicked in the groin? Yeah, what's funnier?
So this comes from Jason. Jason says, I just listened
to your podcast Stupid People Happier, and I loved it,
especially the part about the America's Funny Some Videos. I
thought you might be interested to know something that most
people don't know about laughter. The following excerpt about how
(20:00):
jokes work applies equally well to the a f V videos.
And this is from the Definitive Book of Body Language.
That's what he quoted. The basis of most jokes is
that at the punch line, something disastrous or painful happens
to someone. In effect, the unexpected ending frightens our brain
and we laugh with sounds similar to a chimp warning
(20:21):
others of imminent dancture. Even though we consciously know that
the joke is not a real event, our laugh releases
endorphins for self anesthesis as if the joke the word event. No,
that's a real word. If it is a real event,
we may go into crying mode, and the body would
also release endorphins. Crying is often an extension of laughing
(20:42):
about a laughing about, and is why in a serious
emotional crisis, such as hearing about a death, a person
who cannot mentally accept the death may begin laughing. Yeah,
it's interesting, it's right on the money. When the reality hits,
the laughter turns into crying. So there you have it.
To be a dude get kicked in the groin and
(21:02):
it's funny. That explains it all. Yeah, so I guess
I am the stupid person. Yeah, the joke is on me, Chuck.
You're pretty far from stupid. And I think the only
way to end this is for you to keep me
in the groin. I I will do that. Come here.
Only way to come stand right here? No way right? Well,
I feel like plugging a few things. Look at you? Okay, So, Chuck,
(21:23):
We've got two pages on our face on Facebook. There's
one that for Josh Clark and Charles Bryant. That's us
or Chuck Brian. I think it is. Uh, there's the
Stuff you Should Know fan page on Facebook every Wednesday
at one pm. Little known fact except for like thirty
people every Wednesday at one pm. On the blogs at
(21:43):
how stuff Works dot com. Your blog, Chuck post one
every week called live webcast watch it here right now,
something along those lines. We do a live webcast via
you stream right. It's like twenty two minutes long. It's awful,
but it's getting pretty I think you think. So. Yeah,
it's a little different. We do like news items and
(22:04):
current pop culture things, and it's I think it's kind
of fun. I'm proud that there's very little crossover between
the podcast and the webcast. We're really working. We're like
James Brown here, Um, so we got the we have
Facebook pages, we've got the webcast. Um, we have blogs.
We have a Stuff you Should Know blog on how
Stuff Works dot com. And what else anything dude, we
(22:26):
have our second celebrity fan. Now, oh yeah, you want
to give a shout out? Yeah, well we should give
a shout out to our first celebrity fan, who was
Will Wheaton. Hey, Will Wheaton star Trek Series and stand
By Me. He'll always be famous for stand by Me.
I was never any guy in our age generation. Stand
By Me is like one of the quintessential films. Yeah,
(22:47):
a great, great movie. Yeah, The Dead Kid. Yeah, so
Ray Brower Boom, that was his name. Holy cow, I
just pulled that out of my head, so lou bloated.
We want to say thank you for your support because
he actually mentioned us on his blog is very popular blog.
And um, we just found out that Aisha Tyler is
(23:08):
a big fan. Yes, the lovely, fetching, intelligent, smart, funny
Aisha Tyler comedian. Yeah, former talk soup hostess. And that
she was on Friends. Yeah, season's nine and ten, Ross
and Joe Ross and Joey. Yeah. I think she's probably
the only person to date both Ross and Joey's. She
had done Chandler, it would have been a trifecta. Yeah. Um,
(23:32):
and let's see what else I think you mean? Data's
Chandler right, Okay, Um, yeah, so we're we're we're accumulating
to celebrity fans and I couldn't be that we know of.
And actually, let's just go ahead and cut to the chase.
Barack Obama, if you listen to these podcasts, send us
an email, will you? We've always wondered. We love you. Yeah. Um.
If you want to send us an email, whether you're
(23:54):
Barack Obama or not, please don't send an email as
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you can send that email to Stuff podcast at how
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(24:15):
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you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you should know
from house Stuff Works dot com. Hey, welcome to the podcast.
I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles Bryant, who is with me
is always. I don't know what I'd do without each
(00:21):
other man. Seriously, it'd be like having um a conjoined twins, separated,
one that has its head into still alive. You were
being mean to me seconds before he went on, and
then he butter me up right when in front of people.
In front of people, you have hundreds of thousands of people.
I'm secretly very abusive to you behind closed doors, aren't Yeah,
so chuck, Yes, my fellow ian f er. Oh yeah,
(00:45):
we took the Myers Briggs personality tests. Pretty cool. We
are again like conjoined twins, except for the distinction of
the P and the J. I'm a perceiver, you're a judger, right,
and I think we compliment each other well in that regard.
I agree. I'd actually like to do a podcast on
that test. Let's do it. I think we should do.
We haven't do you know if we have an article
on that? Oh, we'll just make stuff up. Yeah, yeah,
(01:06):
I totally want to do it though. I found it
really fascinating and I did not think I would, and
I was. I was into it. So maybe we can
work swimming with whale sharks into that somehow too. Who're
just doing podcasts now based on personal experiences around the
office Tomorrow is going to be called ham and Eggs
for breakfast. So, speaking of around the office, Chuckers, as
you know, we have a bunch of new, kind of
(01:29):
cool articles about um al toys on the site. Who
to thunk It? Yeah, the curiously strong mint. She took
my line, I'll kill you. So yeah, We've got a
whole suite of articles. We have like a sub channel
in the science channel that's dedicated to Altoy's really yeah,
have you been on you haven't been on it? Now?
(01:49):
I wrote a few of them now. The final products
look pretty good though, all right, I think so. The focus,
as you know, since you have written some, was on
this stre range little group of people called tent evaders. Right, yes, well,
let's talk about them a minute. First, let's discuss candy. Okay, yeah,
it sounds good talk about al twits, Chuckers. Do you
(02:12):
have candy in your mouth now like you did during
the Twinkies show. I know, let's let's address that show.
We Yeah, we got a few letters that came in
that said, what was Josh eating during the twinkiespot? Even worse,
why was Josh eating? Yeah? It sounded like he had
a Werther's in his mouth or something, or candy and yeah,
one guy guess whethers are Jolly ranchers. Not true, Josh
didn't have anything in his mouth, and we've surmised that
(02:32):
because we're talking about twinkies. He was just frothy, and uh,
it's weird. I went back and listened to it, and
I definitely sound like I'm chewing on something. But no,
I think I just really wanted a twinkie. I guess
you were too cheap to pick them up, weren't you. Right. Yeah, So,
just to let people know we're slightly more professional than
to suck on candy while we're trying to podcast despite
(02:52):
our illustrious surroundings. Rightly, although we do have jolly, we
have candy on our desk, and we we avoid it
during I think Jerry would literally murder us if we
just started eating candy during a podcast. Yeah, so um, yes,
I think I might salivate again. Okay, alright, So Chuck,
did you know that altoids, these these little mints date
(03:14):
back to the reign of King George the Third, who
is the mad king who drove the colonists to revolt
seventeen eighty. Dude, people have been sucking on these mints. Also,
did you know that King George may have had a perphyria?
And what is that? It's um, it's what's it called.
There's acute intermittent perfyria, which is I think when they
(03:36):
think King George had it's a congenital disease where porphyrins.
I can't remember what they do. I think they get
rid of waste build up in your blood stream, in
your system, and uh, it can get kind of bad.
It can have um effects on the nervous system. You
can have psychological effects, which is why they think King
George was mad. Um. And the stomach cramping is unpara level.
(04:00):
It's really horrible stuff. But the prefer you might be
most acquainted with. I can't remember what it's called, but um,
it's it's where your photo sensitive. You can't go out
into sunlight, you can't be exposed it's sunlight. It was
featured in the others you ever see that one? Um.
And also that's where they think the vampire legend, or
that aspect of the vampire legend came from, was from
people who had I thought you're gonna say, given bad
(04:23):
breath or something. That's why they created Altoid. And I
think that was consumption, yeah, which was pretty big around
seventeen eighty, which is when they were first created, right, Yeah,
and that's always by the way, we mentioned the curiously
strong man. That was their slogan from day one. Yeah,
because they use real peppermint oil and lots of copious
amounts of it's hardcore stuff. Oh yeah, as anyone who's
(04:45):
ever had an Altoid knows. Yeah, it does a trick though. Yeah. So, um,
in America, we in America, we love uh to attach
weird pop stuff to candy to food, like he's kool Aid, which,
by the way, we should probably make that correction to
while we're at it. It wasn't kool Aid at Jonestown.
(05:06):
It turns out it was flavor Aid. I've done some terrible,
terrible things in my life. I don't I've never felt
more ashamed than I do for missing that really Yeah, well,
you know, like I told the hundreds of people that
wrote in and corrected us on that, sure it was
flavor Aid, but unfortunately for kool Aid. What matters is
what people think of and remember and don't drink, and
(05:28):
the kool Aid is what people remember. I don't even
know if unfortunately is the right word. It could be fortunate.
I'm not sure about it. How's Flavoride's market share doing
since jonestown exactly? And and so basically in America, we
don't just eat things like we eat things and then
turn them into cultural phenomena but icons, right exactly. So
altoids isn't any different. Um, And it's not necessarily the mint,
(05:50):
although I agreed they are curiously strong. Um, it's the
tin that seems to like really get people's juices going,
you know. I mean, who out there hasn't had altois
at some point and saved the tin and kept you know,
paper clips or spare buttons or rubber bands or something
in them. I don't know who. I at my house, Fuller,
(06:13):
Jimmy Fuller at home right now, I have a couple
of altoys tins on my desk with assorted, Uh, little knickknacks. Yeah, yeah,
because it's you know, it's it's perfect size, it is convenient,
snap shut, and I think that's what led this whole
tentovation thing. Well yeah, technically that makes you a tinovator
is exactly what I was gonna say. But a tinovator nonetheless,
(06:35):
which I guess we should define this a tentovator um
as we've turned up through our research as somebody who
um finds new and novel uses for old altoits tins.
It's as simple as that, and it can be as
simple as throwing rubber bands in an old tin. But
some people have come up with much more advanced projects
(06:56):
of them that that that involved an nodes and electrodes
and weird stuff that I would electrocute myself trying. So
should we talk about ten evators? I don't see why
should we talk about these people? Yeah? Who you want
to talk about first? Because we did? I have to say, Chuck,
this could have gone either way, this assignment writing these articles.
But the but the people that we ran across, at
(07:18):
least the ones I wrote on, we're generally really interesting.
They were interesting people and the stuff they came up
with was very interesting, very creative, which I was very
thankful for. Let's start with Jake von Slat. Yes, let's
steam punk steampunk guy. Um. For those of you who
don't know what steampunk is, it's kind of this um
subculture movement that's based out of this sub genre, like
(07:41):
sub sub of speculative fiction that centers around the Victorian
era and all like the fantastic contraptions that like Jules
Verne and H. G. Wells came up with, right, so,
like throwback stuff that's in fact kind of futuristic, right so. Um.
Jake von Slat came up with one of the most
recognizable steampunk relics at her, which is the steampunk desktop computer. Ude.
(08:03):
Have you ever seen it? It's wicked cool. Have you
read the article that Jay strick wrote Jonathan Strickland, our
writer called the Stamfellow Podcaster. We have a cool, cool
article that's just on steampunk on the site. I think
it's pretty cool. I would never get caught up in
something like that because any any movement where you're dressing
up and going to events, it's not really up my alley.
(08:25):
But I like to look at them when they walk
by me on the way to their convention. Sure yeah, um,
I'm more into first suiting, but I can see how
somebody would, you know, uh, get into steampunk. It's it's
interesting even looking from the outside in. But Jake fon
Slat is kind of the a de facto godfather steampunk.
But it also happens to be a tent evator too, right, right,
(08:49):
so he makes a little steampunk tens. Now that he
sells the too right, I don't know if he sells him.
I think it's he's there's there's kind of um. One
of the things that goes along with Altoyd's almost like
almost across the board is that, um it's open source.
So like Jake von Slat like puts instructions on how
(09:12):
to do his projects up for free on his website,
which I think is called steampunk workshop dot com, which
is really cool if you ever ever tooled around on it.
Um and also some of the other people will talk about,
especially to do it yourself electronic electronic folks. There's kind
of this sentiment like I created this project and I
want to share it with the world, and here's how
(09:32):
you can do it step by step, which is really
big about sharing it seem like sort of a community,
and there a couple of the guys I interviewed had
um guys and gals had gotten in touch with other tentivators,
and I'm kind of surprised they don't have a little,
uh a little mini convention at some point. Oh yeah,
just wait for it. It'll happen. We'll go. Yeah, well,
(09:52):
just as a chipmunk and a rabbit and go to
the convention. Yeah. So, do you want to explain how
how he does this or do you just want to
kind of give you what what? Von Slack came up,
but this is just one of his projects. He has
other altoyds Um projects too. Um. Since he steampunk, he's
being into Victorian stuff. So he shows an etching, a
copper plated etching, and um, I was on his site
(10:15):
just kind of getting the gist of it so I
could explain it in the article on him. It's called
how to make a Steampunk altoids tin um, and he
goes through all these really elaborate um techniques to copper
plate an altoids tin pretty advanced and somewhat dangerous. It is,
it's very dangerous. He's using acids and chemicals and like hardcore.
(10:38):
Um a POxy removers electricity and water together, yeah, which
is always a little fun. Yeah. I actually when I
when I wrote it, I copied and pasted the couple
of paragraphs describing that part and send it to him
to see. Like I said, I don't want any of
our readers to be electrocuted. Because he told me if
this is accurate, and he wrote back he's like, here's
(10:58):
a here's a much simpler way to do it. So basically,
through trial and error he came up with the simplest method,
which was good for me because I could comprehend it
and wrote about it. So basically what he does was
he takes um what is it? He calls it blue vitriol,
which is the Victorian era word for or phrase term
for copper sulfate. Right, so he uses the terminology to
(11:22):
the lang. Yeah. Yeah, actually he's steampunk to the core,
buddy um. But anyway, he takes us and and just
with a with a Q tip, he dips it in
um the copper sulfate, rubs it on the back of
an Altoy's ten that's been stripped of its paint and
buffed and everything um, and it turns copper and copper
plates it like that. It looks really cool. Yeah it does.
(11:44):
But that's not the end of it, right, So he
takes like a Victorian etching, like well a digital image
of digital like just something off the internet exactly, and
then he prints it out on like a transfer paper
like pressing peel or something. What do they call pressing
peel in Victorian era? You know? Know? So not that though, buddy, Yeah,
maybe was that my Victorian era lady? Was it? Really? Yeah?
(12:07):
I thought that was Eleanor Roosevelt. I think it was. Um.
So he'll take the transfer paper, put it onto the
back of the newly copper plated altoy's tin, and and yeah,
here's where it gets very dangerous. Right, here's where electricity
comes into play. So he gets a twelve L one
amp d C wall mounted transformer, right, pulls one out
(12:29):
of his pocket. It's it's probably steam powered, um, And
he he clips the positive side to the altoy tin
he wants to etch. He clips the negative side to
like a dummy altoy tin to throw away one. And
then yeah, he drops it into a salt water solution.
He said, one teaspoon of salt for every quart of
(12:49):
water and I got the impression he wanted at least
a gallon enough to to submerge the altoys. Tin throws
it in there, turns on the power weights ten to
twenty minutes, turns off the power this is very important,
reaches in right, and then removes it. And also I
saw a picture of it's cool like the the water
starts bubbling. In terms of dark. Yeah, it's pretty cool looking.
(13:11):
So he turns the power off and then takes it
out and he uh, he scuffs off the transfer paper
and it's been etched into the metal, so into this
copperplated metal. He buts it, adds some rouge buffs, it
brings it to a high shine. There you go, such
a cool product. It is really cool. And I mean
again in the article, just from what I wrote, you
(13:31):
can do it. Uh. In all the articles we included
how to make your own of what these people made,
because like it's open source. Um. But yeah, if you
if you really want like detailed instructions, you can go
into his site too. Well. I think the fact that
they with all of these I noticed it was the
fact that it was an altoid sin is what got attention.
(13:54):
Basically because I did one on this kid, Nick Brand
who makes a little mini flashlights from the little small
I think it's the m tin and he sells these
kids online and kind of like your guy Aaron Dunlap
to who does the USB charger and Nick brnn with
a flashlight. The fact, the mere fact that it was
an Altoids tin made people go, oh, man, I gotta
have one of those, because it's really nothing more than
(14:15):
a little small, tiny flashlight you can put in your pocket,
like the little plastic once you can get at the
gas station checkout line for nine nine cents. But it's
an outoid stin so it's cool. Yeah, yeah, that's Dunlap
said that, uh what he created his USB charger UM
just out of necessity he wanted he wanted. Uh. It
uses a nine volt battery like a dollar apiece UM,
(14:38):
and he added the USB charger in the connector and
all that stuff and he just he connects his smartphone
to it and it gives it like sixty minutes of
talking time or four hours of standby just from one
nine volt battery, which is cool. He also makes kits
and sells them, and he said he had some left
over UM from his first project. That's why he put
(14:58):
kids together to sell them. Um and he said that
had he chosen just a plain old office sheelf metal enclosure,
he suspects he'd still be trying to sell the first
twenty five, but instead he sold thousands and actually founded
a company called the Electroids Company just to handle the order.
He got picked up on like dig and Boing boying,
and he said it was the it was the allure
(15:20):
of the altoys, did it? Yeah? What is it about
the tin? Well? I think Well, I interviewed Nick Brand
and this other guy, Matthew Poech She does uh, he
does a speaker like you can plug your iPod into
this Altoids tin and play your music out loud because
he's drilled little holes like a speaker grill on the
top of what's it called the Minty Boost? No, no, no no,
that's it's called speaker Okay, Because there is an altoys project.
(15:43):
It's a legendary altoy project by um Leemore Freed, who
I haven't met her interview, but he he seems to
be kind of like this d I y Altoid's electronics guru.
Um and he came up with the Minty Boost, a
lot of people tip their hats to him or I
think I think you're steampunk guy kind of takes it
to the next level personally. Well, when you're etching a
(16:04):
Victorian era stuff, that's pretty cool. Yeah, he's a he's
a sub subgenre guy or a sub subculture guy. He's
a steampunk altoys tent evator, which it doesn't get more
niche than that. I don't think I had another actually
one of my guys too. A lot of there's kind
of two camps. You can either be artistic and like
we've seen some cool like shadow boxes and I know
one of your uh the ladies you wrote about that
(16:27):
a zen garden, which is kind of cool, and then
the other side of the coin is people that do
um a more useful thing like flashlight speakers, USB chargers,
that kind of thing. Right, Yeah, there's there's an artistic
side and then there's like a technical side. But the
artistic side, dude, I've got the man who I wrote,
(16:48):
David's Alban He actually does fine art and makes big
dough so what's album does. He actually uses the tens
as his canvas, so he will mount tens, you know,
pressed against one another. I'd buy side and at whatever
a four ft by four ft frame and actually paint
over them all. So what you have is as a
complete finished painting in small little blocks, almost like a mosaic. Yeah.
(17:11):
I haven't seen this stuff. Yeah, he's based out of Miami.
And the articles up on the site yet. Uh my
speaker article is, and the flashlight article is, and the
fine art article is cool, and the shadow box article.
We'll check it out. Man. Lots of tentivators, I know,
I wrote at least ten, I think really. Yeah. So
there's a bunch of stuff about tentivators and how to
(17:31):
undertake their projects and if it was too involved, we
just kind of kicked it to a site like instructibles
dot com. Yeah that's a great site. Oh yeah yeah,
very in depth detail stuff. So you can buy some
of these kids too, if you're too lazy to do
it yourself, yeah yeah, or the kit you kind of
have to put together yourself. So that's fun, good projects
for kids. Yeah. And when there was another guy named
(17:52):
Matthew Pogue who came up with the Swiss AVR knife. Well,
and he's a saying guy that as a speaker. No,
he he made his speaker based on Lemore Freeds Minty Boost.
So he's like he was just training himself in the
art of UM do it yourself electronics based on other projects.
But he's also a tent invator as well, and he
came up with the Swiss AVR knife, which uses an
(18:14):
a VR chip. It's like, uh, I think eight bit
processor something like that, UM, and you can program and
it's reprogrammable because it uses onboard flash memory. But UM
using a little sound output device and some little LED lights.
It goes through all these different UM mechanisms like the
mini menorah, so like all the LED lights light up
(18:36):
or um there's the uh, what's it called this noisemaker
and it just makes all these different digitized sounds that
fans of craft work would really appreciate that one. UM.
But there's a lot of people are putting a lot
of thought into altoids tunes. It makes I feel like
I'm wasting my life, you know. Well, let's go get
(18:58):
some altoids and empty them out and start painting on
them or something. Let's do that, Chuck. Let's do some
folk art. Okay, yeah, it's the easiest kind of art
I believe, so yes, well, Chuck, that's tinovators. If you
want to read more about tinivation. Uh. As we said,
we have a ton of articles on the site. You
can find those just by typing altoys I imagine into
(19:18):
the handy search bar and how stuff works dot com.
Since I just said that, that means it's time for
listener mail. Yes, Josh, we gotta listener mail. I'm just
gonna call America's Funny Some Videos. Oh, I like this one.
They took a bit of ribbing from us for me
specifically in this are Stupid People Happier? Because I put
that show at the very bottom of the food chain
(19:39):
comedy wise. Getting kicked in the groin? Yeah, what's funnier?
So this comes from Jason. Jason says, I just listened
to your podcast Stupid People Happier, and I loved it,
especially the part about the America's Funny Some Videos. I
thought you might be interested to know something that most
people don't know about laughter. The following excerpt about how
(20:00):
jokes work applies equally well to the a f V videos.
And this is from the Definitive Book of Body Language.
That's what he quoted. The basis of most jokes is
that at the punch line, something disastrous or painful happens
to someone. In effect, the unexpected ending frightens our brain
and we laugh with sounds similar to a chimp warning
(20:21):
others of imminent dancture. Even though we consciously know that
the joke is not a real event, our laugh releases
endorphins for self anesthesis as if the joke the word event. No,
that's a real word. If it is a real event,
we may go into crying mode, and the body would
also release endorphins. Crying is often an extension of laughing
(20:42):
about a laughing about, and is why in a serious
emotional crisis, such as hearing about a death, a person
who cannot mentally accept the death may begin laughing. Yeah,
it's interesting, it's right on the money. When the reality hits,
the laughter turns into crying. So there you have it.
To be a dude get kicked in the groin and
(21:02):
it's funny. That explains it all. Yeah, so I guess
I am the stupid person. Yeah, the joke is on me, Chuck.
You're pretty far from stupid. And I think the only
way to end this is for you to keep me
in the groin. I I will do that. Come here.
Only way to come stand right here? No way right? Well,
I feel like plugging a few things. Look at you? Okay, So, Chuck,
(21:23):
We've got two pages on our face on Facebook. There's
one that for Josh Clark and Charles Bryant. That's us
or Chuck Brian. I think it is. Uh, there's the
Stuff you Should Know fan page on Facebook every Wednesday
at one pm. Little known fact except for like thirty
people every Wednesday at one pm. On the blogs at
(21:43):
how stuff Works dot com. Your blog, Chuck post one
every week called live webcast watch it here right now,
something along those lines. We do a live webcast via
you stream right. It's like twenty two minutes long. It's awful,
but it's getting pretty I think you think. So. Yeah,
it's a little different. We do like news items and
(22:04):
current pop culture things, and it's I think it's kind
of fun. I'm proud that there's very little crossover between
the podcast and the webcast. We're really working. We're like
James Brown here, Um, so we got the we have
Facebook pages, we've got the webcast. Um, we have blogs.
We have a Stuff you Should Know blog on how
Stuff Works dot com. And what else anything dude, we
(22:26):
have our second celebrity fan. Now, oh yeah, you want
to give a shout out? Yeah, well we should give
a shout out to our first celebrity fan, who was
Will Wheaton. Hey, Will Wheaton star Trek Series and stand
By Me. He'll always be famous for stand by Me.
I was never any guy in our age generation. Stand
By Me is like one of the quintessential films. Yeah,
(22:47):
a great, great movie. Yeah, The Dead Kid. Yeah, so
Ray Brower Boom, that was his name. Holy cow, I
just pulled that out of my head, so lou bloated.
We want to say thank you for your support because
he actually mentioned us on his blog is very popular blog.
And um, we just found out that Aisha Tyler is
(23:08):
a big fan. Yes, the lovely, fetching, intelligent, smart, funny
Aisha Tyler comedian. Yeah, former talk soup hostess. And that
she was on Friends. Yeah, season's nine and ten, Ross
and Joe Ross and Joey. Yeah. I think she's probably
the only person to date both Ross and Joey's. She
had done Chandler, it would have been a trifecta. Yeah. Um,
(23:32):
and let's see what else I think you mean? Data's
Chandler right, Okay, Um, yeah, so we're we're we're accumulating
to celebrity fans and I couldn't be that we know of.
And actually, let's just go ahead and cut to the chase.
Barack Obama, if you listen to these podcasts, send us
an email, will you? We've always wondered. We love you. Yeah. Um.
If you want to send us an email, whether you're
(23:54):
Barack Obama or not, please don't send an email as
Barack Obama. If you're not Barack Obama about we know
you can send that email to Stuff podcast at how
stuff works dot com. For more on this and thousands
of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com. Want
(24:15):
more how stuff works, check out our blogs on the
how stuff works dot com home page. Brought to you
by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are
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