Stuck With Hackett

Cafe Society
21

May I be the first to go ::squeeeee!!!:: to find out that Hackett is a Doper?

Yes??

::Squeeeee!!!::

I very much enjoy the show, and the science you impart during the show. The things you do just make so much darn sense – once I see what you’ve done. Like your previous show regarding making the heating/cooling systems, it just seems like a very common-sense tactic to do things, again, once you’ve seen it be done.

And there’s NO way in hell I’d have spent the night in that hospital without a good number of Kleig lights, armed guards, and sharks with frickin’ lasers on their heads.

22

For a truly scientific answer, you’ll need to define “black” and “white”.

23

Hmmm. I meant as in the social construct we all live with. To most he’d be black. To some he isn’t really black, he’s Caribbean. Someone, before he was told the real deal, called him a black ginger.

24

And as if to punish me for calling Stuck With Hackett boring, The Science Channel offers up Dark Matter: Twisted But True.

Whatever you do, Hackett, do not have a woman shriek at you, “It’s the brain or me!” and then drive off in a hoovercraft made from old reefer truck parts with a brain in a mayo jar at your side. However, it wouldn’t hurt to have Walter/Denethor as your narrator.

25

Hoovercraft? A post-apocalyptic vehicle made from vacuum cleaners?

26

It sucks instead of blows.

27

I just wish it were an twice as long, and gave more detailed info… like how many run caps to put in series to make an AC generator, and how many watts it actually puts out. I LIKE this show! I find it really interesting. Anyone into self sufficiency will. Need to silver solder something and don’t have a torch? Ask Hackett how…

28

Started watching this show “on demand” last night. Hackett has what you need for a TV show these days, an over the top personality. At times, like in the hospital show it seemed too much for me, but then the show needs a theme for the episode and it was a fun one, if a little overwrought. The quicklime and hydrogen torch were worth the price of admission without doubt. Fact: I always wanted to know how to make quicklime without a blast furnace, call me strange.

The jet train episode was mind blowing, though I would never step within a quarter mile of that tribute in metal to the Hindenburg. The V-8 washer-drier was the most ridiculously inefficient device I have seen since I put away my rube goldberg comics (and thus amusing if not directly useful) but the guts of the show was really the makeshift welder (a concept that was pure gold, by the way) and the power-spork which was a great idea with multiple applications and provided a moment of pure unfiltered levity as Hackett asked rhetorically “What is a power-spork you ask? Does such a thing exist? (Pause-deadpan answer) Yes. It does exist.”

I am really enjoying this show, and strangely, perhaps, so does my girlfriend. Chalk it up to Hackett’s eccentric character and willingness to build insanely dangerous contraptions from found materials with genuine engineering problem solving. My only request is some form of comprehensive companion piece in print (preferably) as to the science and engineering involved with these projects. This would, of course, also instruct on safety protocols, i would assume. There must be a lawyer in the house somewhere, right.

29

Hey Hackett! Boyfriend loves your show. He was reading this thread over my shoulder and he wanted to suggest you come up with some sort of post-2012 apocalypse survival kit. What would you put in it?

30

I saw this week’s ep about building the Hackett-Grid, and really enjoyed it. About the only critique I’d make is to lay off the “suburbia sucks” stuff some; a large part of the audience probably lives in one sort of suburb or another, and alienating them directly isn’t the way to build up the audience.

Otherwise, it was great. I didn’t realize that you could rig up some capacitors to an AC motor to power the coils and turn it into a generator! (did know about DC motors though).

31

I watched the latest episode over the weekend - the one about generating electrical power off the grid. The concept of the show was interesting, and I enjoyed how Hackett demolished & repurposed so many household items. However, I found the character personally annoying as hell. He seemed to not want to be there, and often complained about what he was doing. The constant insults against us wasteful and thoughtless surburbanites got old as well. Frankly, when he mentioned that if a strong wind came up the windmill would slice him into bits (which would have been easily preventable with a bit of obtainium holding the rotors immobile while he mounted it), I was rooting for the wind.

I’ll give one more episode a try, but if the host is just as grating, I’m done.

32

Thanks to all of you who like the show. Even if you do not like it watch it, or DVR it then delete it right away. It lives or dies on the ratings. A problem with the format is that everything is rushed, and I personally, take issue with science and process and explanation being cut to allow quips and teh funny, but that is the nature of the thing. A show is twenty-one minutes of life support for commercials, and the show (like all shows, really) is chopped and cut towards that end. Also, as this and other posts indicate, I tend to run on.
Someone mentioned a text guide/annotations/something to explain the concepts in detail, and I think this is a fine idea. You can Google most of the concepts and find some instructions, but a huge problem I have always had with that is the overwhelming amount of piss-poor info out there. The info is crappy in different ways: often, a lot of the info on will be people conjecturing, people with a knowledge of the theory, people who read a thing once, posting an answer and stating a claim that they have never, personally proven. Bad info gets cut-and-paste propagated, even if it is blatantly wrong to anyone with even a tiny bit of knowledge.
For example: I am interested in making alcohol from scratch (I do not drink, but obtainium-brand high-octane booze is good for a host of things, in punch at a party or as fuel after the oil runs out, and the drunker you are, the cuter I get) . I know a bunch of theory, and knew that you need sugars to feed the yeast to make the wine to feed the still. So what is up with potato vodka? How is that made? Google google google, and the top bunch of results are re-hashes of some totally ignorant, totally impossible how-to involving boiling potatoes and the juice magically turning into vodka. Not only is it wrong, it is everywhere, and that leads to the second issue- propagation of incorrect memes, spread, I assume, by keyboard warriors who think googling and cutting and pasting is the same thing as knowing. One bad source, and the internet makes it true.
Another issue is that people will occasionally try a thing and post a video or instructable, showing how easy it is for them to be awesome. There is a whole lot of valuable stuff out there, but it is easy to forget that people do not put their failures or learning curve on YouTube, and often leave out small but crucial steps. They did it, but on the 256th try, and if you are trying to learn and do not know this you will prob quit before 254 failures. Also, theory is helpful, but rarely found in the video.

So: Solution. I mean to write up as much of the theory and practice of the things I do on the show, in a way that outlines the pitfalls, and tries to give as much good info as possible, info backed by experiments, not what some guy said. The best place I have found to do this is on Make Magazine’s web site (I like them, they like me, and no one reads my blog). I already wrote up the car battery welding rig ( Make: Projects ) and intend to do other as I get to them. Eventually, these and other things will go into book form- I see a need for a post-apocalyptic survival/just don’t have any money how-to book. Most of the stuff out there is either glorified shopping lists, move-to-middle-of-nowhere-right-now-and-start-digging-holes tinfoil-hatty tomes, or funny shit about zombies. Stuck with Hackett, the obtainium cookbook, coming out as soon as I get to writing it.

Follow me on twitter (@stuckwhackett) if you want to know when things get posted/published. I till try and pop in here when I can.

Oh- I think someone wanted info on making generators from ac motors(was that here?). I cannot find the link, but look around at Ham Radio websites. Those guys are deep, deep nerds, full of good info, always in need of cheap, clean AC power, and that is where I got the good, solid data on building induction generators.

33

I’ve only seen one complete episode so far, the one in the abandoned hospital, and I enjoyed it. I didn’t see anything boring.

34

I have to say that I had never heard of your show before, but this post was so damn charming I read it aloud to my husband and added it to the DVR queue. It looks like really interesting stuff.

35

Whoa, seriously?

Man, I have to stop recording those shitty, guilty pleasure shows… :smack:

36

Hackett … if you ever showcase the “crucial barbecue” concepts from LHS on the show, be sure to let me know, so I can finally figure out what part of the banana peel was important.

~Phelan