Stuff You Should Know - What are tinnovators?

Episode Date: July 28, 2009

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. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready, are you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles Bryant, who is with me as always. I don't know what I'd do without you, Chuck. Oh, man.

Like, seriously, it'd be like having a conjoined twin separated, one that has its head and is still alive. So you were being mean to me, seconds before we went on, and then you butter me up, right, in front of people. In front of people, yeah. For hundreds of thousands of people. I'm secretly very abusive to you behind closed doors, aren't I? Yes. Yeah. So, Chuck.

Yes. My fellow ENF-er. Oh, yeah, we took the Myers-Briggs personality test. Uh-huh. 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 judge.

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 have an article on that? Oh, we'll just make stuff up.

Yeah, I totally want to do it, though. I found it really fascinating. All right. And I did not think I would, and I was into it. That's it. Maybe we can work swimming with whale sharks into that somehow, too. Right. We're just doing podcasts now based on personal experiences around the office.

Tomorrow is going to be called Ham and Eggs for Breakfast. All right. So speaking of around the office, Chuckers, as you know, we have a bunch of new kind of cool articles about Altoids on the site. Who to Thunk It. Yeah, The Curiously Strong Mint. You took my line. Oh, really?

I'll kill you. Sorry. So, yeah, we've got a whole suite of articles. We have, like, a sub-channel in the Science Channel that's dedicated to Altoids. Really? Yeah. Wow. Have you been on?

You haven't been on it? No, I wrote a few of them, though. And I know you did, as well. The final products look pretty good, though. Right? I think so. The focus, as you know, since you have written some, was on this strange little group of people called Tenevators.

Uh-huh. Right? Yes. Well, let's talk about them in a minute. First, let's discuss Candy. Okay. Yeah. That sounds good.

Talk about Altoids, Chuckers. Do you have Candy in your mouth now, like you did during the Twinkies show? I don't. Let's address that, shall we? Yeah, we got a few letters that came in that said, uh, what was Josh eating during the Twinkies part, yes. Or even worse, why was Josh eating during the Twinkies part? Yeah, it sounded like he had a werthers in his mouth or something, or a candy.

Yeah, one guy guessed werthers or jelly ranchers, right? Yes. Not true. Josh didn't have anything in his mouth. And we've surmised that, because we were talking about Twinkies, he was just frothy and, uh... Well, 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 so. You were too cheap to pick some 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 our illustrious surroundings. Right.

Right, yeah. Although we do have jolly, we have candy on our desk. We avoid it during... I think Jerry would literally murder us if we just started eating candy during a podcast. Right. Yeah. So, um... Okay, Altoids, yes.

I think I might salivate again. Okay. All right, so, uh... Chuck. Did you know that Altoids, these little mints, date back to the reign of King George III? I know. Who is the Mad King. He's crazy.

Who drove the colonists to revolt. 1780, dude. People have been sucking on these mints. Also, did you know that King George may have had a perforia? Really? And what is that exactly? It's, um... It's...

What's it called? There's acute intermittent perforia, which is, I think, what they think King George had. Uh-huh. 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 bloodstream in your system, and it can get kind of bad. It can have effects on the nervous system. It can have psychological effects, which is why I think King George was mad.

Oh, okay. And the stomach cramping is unparalleled. It's really horrible stuff. But the perforia you might be most acquainted with, I can't remember what it's called, but it's where your foot is sensitive, you can't go out into sunlight, you can't be exposed to sunlight, it was featured in the others. You ever see that one? I did.

And also, that's where they think the vampire legend, or that aspect of the vampire legend came from, was from people who had perforia. Wow, look at you. I thought you were going to say it gave them bad breath or something. That's why they created Altoids. You know, I think that was consumption. Oh, okay. Yeah, which was pretty big around 1780, which is when they were first created, right?

Yeah. And that's always, by the way, when we mentioned the curiously strong mint. That was their slogan from day one, because they used real peppermint oil and a lot of it. And lots of it. Copious amounts of it. It's hardcore stuff. Oh, yeah.

Has anyone who's ever had an Altoid nose? Yeah. It does the trick, though. Yeah. So in America, in America, we'd love to attach weird pop stuff to candy, to food, like Twinkies. Sure. Kool-Aid, which, by the way, we should probably make that correction too while we're at it. It wasn't Kool-Aid at Jonestown.

It turns out it was Flavor-Aid. Right. I've done some terrible, terrible things in my life. 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 it and corrected it on that, sure it was Flavor-Aid, but unfortunately for Kool-Aid, what matters is what people

think of and remember, and the Kool-Aid is what people remember. I don't even know if, unfortunately, it's the right word. It could be fortunate. I mean, think about it. It's been Flavor-Aid's market share doing since Jonestown. Yeah, exactly. And so basically, in America, we don't just eat things. Like we eat things and then turn them into cultural phenomena.

Yeah. Right? Right. Exactly. So, Altoids isn't any different. And it's not necessarily the mint, although I agreed they are curiously strong. It's the tin that seems to really get people's juices going, you know? I mean, who out there hasn't had Altoids at some point and saved the tin and kept, you

know, paperclips or spare buttons or rubber bands or something in them? I don't know who. At my house right now. Jimmy Fuller. That too. At home right now, I have a couple of Altoids tins on my desk with assorted little knick-knacks. Yeah? Yeah, because it's, you know, it's perfect size.

It is convenient. It's snap shut. And I think that's what led this whole tinnovation thing. Well, yeah, technically, that makes you a tinnovator. A very lame tinnovator. A lame tinnovator is exactly what I was going to say. But a tinnovator nonetheless, which I guess we should define this, a tinnovator, as we've turned up through our research, is somebody who finds new and novel uses for old Altoids

tins. It's as simple as that. And it can be as simple as throwing rubber bands in an old tin. Right. But some people have come up with much more advanced projects. Oh, yeah. We wrote about a bunch of them. That involved anodes and electrodes and weird stuff that I would electrocute myself trying.

Right. So should we talk about tinnovators? I don't see why not. 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 people that we ran across, at least the ones I wrote on, were generally really interesting. Yeah. They were interesting people and the stuff they came up with was very interesting. Very creative people. Which I was very thankful for. Let's start with Jake Von Slatt. Yes.

Let's... Steampunk. Steampunk guy. For those of you who don't know what steampunk is, it's kind of this subculture movement that's based out of this subgenre, it's sub-sub of speculative fiction that centers around the Victorian era and all the fantastic contraptions that Jules Verne and H.G. Wells came up with. Right? So like throwback stuff that's in fact kind of futuristic.

Right. So Jake Von Slatt came up with one of the most recognizable steampunk relics ever, which is the Steampunk desktop computer. Yeah. Dude, have you ever seen it? Yeah. It's wicked cool. Have you read the article that Jay Strick wrote?

Uh-uh. Jonathan Strickland, our writer, colleague and fellow 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 movement where you're dressing up and going to events is not really at my alley, but I like to look at them when they walk by me on the way to their convention. Sure, yeah.

I'm more into first-suting, but I can see how somebody would get into Steampunk. It's interesting. I think so. Even looking from the outside in. But Jake Von Slatt is kind of the de facto godfather of Steampunk, but it also happens to be a tenivator too. Right. Right?

It's a little Steampunk tins. That is, he sells these too, right? I don't know if he sells them. I think it's, there's kind of one of the things that goes along with Altoids, almost across the board, is that it's open source. So like Jake Von Slatt puts instructions on how to do his projects up for free on his website, which I think is called Steampunkworkshop.com. Which is really cool if you ever tool around on it.

And also some of the other people will talk about, especially the do-it-yourself electronic folks. Yeah. There's kind of this sentiment like, I created this project and I want to share it with the world and here's how you can do it step by step, which is they're really big about sharing information. It seemed like a sort of a community. And a couple of the guys I interviewed had, guys Angals had gotten in touch with other

tenivators and I'm kind of surprised they don't have a little mini convention at some point. Yeah. Just wait for it. It'll happen. We'll go. Should we? Yeah.

We'll dress up as a chipmunk and a rabbit and go to the tenivator convention. It sounds good. Yeah. So do you want to explain how he does this or do you just want to kind of give it a review? What Von Slatt came up with, this is just one of his projects. He has other Altoids projects too. Since he's Steampunk, he's been into Victorian stuff, so he shows an etching, a copper plated etching.

Yeah. Very cool. And I was on his site 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. And he goes through all these really elaborate techniques to copper plate an Altoids tin. I know. Pretty advanced and somewhat dangerous.

It is. It's very dangerous. He's using acids and chemicals and like hardcore epoxy removers and electricity. And water, right? Together. Yeah. Which is always a little fun. Yeah.

He copied and pasted a couple of paragraphs describing that part and sent it to him to see. I said, I don't want any of our readers to be electrocuted because he told me if this is accurate. Right. And he wrote back. He's like, 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. Gotcha. So basically what he does was he takes, 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 the link. Oh yeah. Yeah.

Cool. Yeah. Actually, he's steampunk to the core, buddy. But anyway, he takes this and just with a Q-tip, he dips it in the copper sulfate, rubs it on the back of an Altoids tin that's been stripped of its paint and buffed and everything. And it turns copper. It copper plates it like that.

It looks really cool. Yeah. It does. That's not the end of it, right? No. So he takes like a Victorian etching. Yeah. Well, a digital image.

A digital. Just something off the internet. Exactly. And then he prints it out on like a transfer paper, like press and peel or something. What did they call press and peel in Victorian era? I don't know. So not that though, buddy. Press and peel.

Yeah. Maybe. What was that? My Victorian era lady. Was it really? Yeah. I thought that was Eleanor Roosevelt. You're ready to travel in 2023 and since 1981, Gate One Travel has been providing more of

the world for less. Let Gate One handle the planning for you with affordable escorted tours in European River Cruises. And right now through January 30th, use promo code HEART20 to receive 20% off your tour. That's promo code HEART20 through January 30th. Visit gateonetravel.com for more information or to book your tour. That's gate the number one travel.com. Once again, use promo code HEART20 through January 30th to receive 20% off your 2023

trip. A day of travel brings a basket full of learning in Mississippi with family friendly places like the Mississippi Aquarium, the Hattiesburg Zoo, and Tupelo Buffalo Park. Explore today at visitmississipi.org slash family fun. Mississippi, Wanderers, welcome. So I'll take the transfer paper, put it onto the back of the newly copper plated Altoids tin. And yeah, here's where it gets very dangerous.

Right. Here's where electricity comes into play. It's a 12 volt 1 amp DC wall mounted transformer, right? Pulls one out of his pocket. It's probably steam powered. And he clips the positive side to the Altoid tin. He wants to etch. And he clips the negative side to like a dummy Altoid 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 water. Right. That's the question he wanted, at least a gallon, enough to submerge the Altoids tin. Throws it in there, turns on the power, waits 10 to 20 minutes, turns off the power. This is very important. Yes. Reaches in.

Right. And then removes it. And also I saw a picture of it. It's cool. Like the water starts bubbling. Yeah. It turns all dark. Yeah.

It's pretty cool. So he turns the power off and then takes it out and he scuffs off the transfer paper and it's been etched into the metal, into this copper plated metal. He buffs it, adds some rouge, buffs it, brings it to a high shine, and there you go. It's such a cool product. It is really cool. And I mean, again, in the article, just from what I wrote, you can do it. In all the articles, we included how to make your own of what these people made because

like it's open source. Right. But yeah, if you really want like detailed instructions, you can go on to his site too. Well, I think the fact that they, with all of these, I noticed it was the fact that it was an Altoids tin is what got attention basically because I did one on this kid, Nick Brinn, who makes little mini flashlights from the little small, I think it's the gum tin. And he sells these kits online and kind of like your guy, Aaron Dunlap too, who does the USB charger and Nick Brinn with the flashlight, the mere fact that it was an Altoids tin made

people go, oh man, I got to have one of those because it's really nothing more than a little small, tiny flashlight you could put in your pocket, like the little plastic ones you can get at the gas station checkout line for 99 cents. But it's an Altoids tin, so it's cool. Yeah. Yeah, that's Dunlap said that what he created is USB charger just out of necessity. He wanted, he wanted, it uses a nine volt battery, like a dollar a piece. And he added the USB charger and the connector and all that stuff and he just, he connects

his smartphone to it. And it gives it like 60 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 leftover from his first project. That's why he put kits together to sell them. And he said that had he chosen just a plain old off the shelf metal enclosure, he suspects he'd still be trying to sell the first 25, but instead he sold thousands and actually founded a company called the Electroids Company just to handle the orders.

Pretty cool. It got picked up on like Dig and Boing Boing. Yeah. And he said it was the, it was the allure of the Altoids tin that did it. Yeah. What is it about the tin? Well, I think, well, I interviewed Nick Brann and this other guy, Matthew Poach, who does, he does a speaker, like you can plug your iPod into this Altoids tin and play your music

out loud. Cause he's drilled little holes like a speaker grill on the top of the, what's it called the minty boost? No, no, no. That's the, it's called speaker. Oh, okay. Cause there is an Altoids project. It's a legendary Altoids project by Lee Moore Freed, who I haven't met or interviewed,

but he seems to be kind of like this DIY Altoids electronics guru. And he came up with the minty boost. Right. A lot of people tip their hats to him. Pretty cool. I think, I think your steampunk guy kind of takes it to the next level personally. Well, he, when you're etching a Victorian era stuff, that's pretty cool. Yeah.

He's a sub sub genre guy or a sub sub culture guy. He's a steampunk Altoids tinovator, 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, the ladies you wrote about did a Zen garden, which is kind of cool. Kate Pruitt. Kate Pruitt.

She's very cool. Yeah. And then the other side of the coin is people that do a more useful thing like flashlights, speakers, USB chargers, that kind of thing. Right. Yeah. There's, there's an artistic side and then there's like a technical side. Right.

But the artistic side, dude, I've got the man who I wrote, David Zalbin. He actually does fine art and makes big dough. Nice. So what Zalbin does, he actually uses the 10s as his canvas. So he will mount 10s, you know, pressed against one another side by side and at whatever, a four foot by four foot frame and actually paint over them all. So what you have is a, as a complete finished painting in small little blocks, almost like a mosaic.

Pretty quick. Yeah. I haven't seen his stuff. Yeah. He's based out of Miami and it's awesome, man. Are the articles up on the site yet? 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 innovators. I know. I wrote at least 10, I think. Really? Yeah. So there's a bunch of stuff about innovators and how to undertake their projects.

And if it was too involved, we just kind of kicked it to a site like Instructables.com. Yeah. That's a great site. Oh yeah. Yeah. Very in depth, detailed stuff. Right. So you can buy some of these kits 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. Right. Good projects for kids. Yeah. And when?

There was another guy named Matthew Pogue who came up with Swiss AVR knife. Well, and he's the same guy that does the speaker. No, he made his speaker based on Lee Moore Fried's minty boost, so he was just training himself in the art of do-it-yourself electronics based on other projects. But he's also a innovator as well, and he came up with the Swiss AVR knife, which uses an AVR chip. It's like, I think, an 8-bit processor, something like that. And you can program it.

It's reprogrammable because it uses onboard flash memory. Right. It's using a little sound output device and some little LED lights that goes through all these different mechanisms, like the Mini Minora. Right. So like all the LED lights light up, or there's the, what's it called, this noisemaker. And it just makes all these different digitized sounds. Fans of Kraftwerk would really appreciate that one.

Right. The Germans. But yeah, there's a lot of people are putting a lot of thought into Altoids Tins. I think it's cool. It's pretty creative. I'm wasting my life. I know. You know?

Well, let's go get 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. That's the easiest kind of art. I believe so, yes. Well, Chuck, that's TINnavators.

If you want to read more about TINnavation, as we said, we have a ton of articles on the site. You can find those just by typing Altoids, I imagine, into the handysearchbar on howstuffworks.com. Yes, I just said that, that means it's time for Listener Mail. Yes, Josh, we got a Listener Mail, and I'm just going to call America's Funniest Home Videos. Oh, I like this one. They took a bit of ribbing from us, from me specifically, in our Stupid People Happier,

because I put that show at the very bottom of the food chain comedy-wise. Yeah. Getting kicked in the groin. Yeah, oh yeah. Well, it'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 Funniest Home Videos.

I thought you might be interested to know something that most people don't know about laughter, the following excerpt about how jokes work applies equally well to the AFV videos, and this is from the definitive book of body language. Mm-hmm, that's what he quoted. The basis of most jokes is that at the punchline, something disastrous or painful happens to someone, and, in effect, the unexpected ending frightens our brain, and we laugh with sounds similar to a chimp, warning others of imminent danger. Even though we consciously know that the joke is not a real event, our laugh releases endorphins

for self-anesthesis, as if the joke is a real event. No, that's a real word. Oh, okay. 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 bout, a laughing bout, 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. That's what my dad's always said.

Yeah, it's interesting. It's right on the money. When the reality hits, the laughter turns into crying, so there you have it. You see a dude get kicked in the groin, and it's funny. That explains it all. Yeah. So I guess I am the stupid person. Yes.

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 kick me in the groin. I will do that. That's the only way to do it. Come stand right here. No way. All right.

Well, I feel like plugging a few things. Look at you. Okay. So Chuck, we've got two pages on Facebook. There's one for Josh Clark and Charles Bryant. That's us. Or Chuck Bryant, I think it is. There's the Stuff You Should Know fan page on Facebook.

Every Wednesday at 1 p.m., little known fact, except for like, to 30 people who know this. Every Wednesday at 1 p.m. on the blogs at howstuffworks.com. My blog. Your blog. Chuck posts one every week called Live Webcast. Watch it here, right now. Something along those lines. We do a live webcast via Ustream.

It's like 22 minutes long. It's awful. But it's getting pretty funny, I think. You think so? Yeah. It's a little different. We do like news items and current pop culture things, and I think it's kind of fun. I'm proud that there's very little crossover between the podcast and the webcast.

Yeah, me too. We're really working. We're like James Brown here. So we have Facebook pages. We've got the webcast. We have the blogs. We have a Stuff You Should Know blog on howstuffworks.com. And what else?

Anything? Dude, we 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 is Will Wheaton. Hey, Will Wheaton. He's famous for the Star Trek series and Stand By Me, among other things.

He'll always be famous for Stand By Me. I was never much of a Trekkie. Any guy in our age generation Stand By Me is like one of the quintessential films. Yeah, I agree. 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. Yeah, you did. Blue bloated Ray Brower. Will Wheaton, we want to say thank you for your support because he actually mentioned this on his blog, his very popular blog.

And we just found out that Ayesha Tyler is a big fan. Yes. The lovely, fetching, intelligent, smart, funny Ayesha Tyler. Stand-up comedian. Yeah, former Talksoup hostess, and she was on Friends. Yeah, seasons 9 and 10. She dated Ross and Joey. Yeah, Ross and Joey.

And I think she's probably the only person to date both Ross and Joey. I know. If she had done Chandler, it would have been a trifecta. Right. Yeah. Let's see. What else? I think you mean dated Chandler.

Right. Sure. Sure. Okay. Yeah. So we're accumulating as a celebrity fan. Two celebrity fans. Yeah, that's pretty big.

And I couldn't be more sure. That we know of. And actually, let's just go ahead and catch the chase. Barack Obama, if you listen to these podcasts, send us an email. Will you? We've always wondered. We'd love you. Yeah.

If you want to send us an email, whether you're Barack Obama or not, please don't send an email as Barack Obama if you're not Barack Obama though. We'd know. So let's send that email to StuffPodcast at HowStuffWorks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com. Want more HowStuffWorks? Check out our blogs on the HowStuffWorks.com homepage. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry.

It's ready. Are you? You're ready to travel in 2023. And since 1981, Gait One Travel has been providing more of the world for less. Let Gait One handle the planning for you with affordable escorted tours and European Riffer Cruises. And right now, through January 30th, use promo code HEART20 to receive 20% off your tour.

That's promo code HEART20 through January 30th. Visit GaitOneTravel.com for more information or to book your tour. That's GaitTheNumberOneTravel.com. Once again, use promo code HEART20 through January 30th to receive 20% off your 2023 trip. It's been said that a day of traveling will bring a basket full of learning. Fill your basket to the brim in Mississippi. With family-friendly experiences like the new Mississippi Aquarium, the recently expanded

Hattiesburg Zoo, the Tupelo Buffalo Park & Zoo, and sports and literary attractions too, expand your sense of wander today at visitmississipi.org slash family fun. Mississippi, Wanderers Welcome.