Category Video

Entries 54 Total Description

Forget about 24 frames.

Beaverslide

Jul 25, ’11 1:09 PM

On the way back to Helena from the reunion we stopped at the Grant-Kohrs Ranch in Deer Lodge for Western Heritage Days weekend. There was a lot of sun and mosquitoes to accompany the cowboy talks, chuck wagon and blacksmithing demonstrations. By far, my favorite thing was seeing the beaverslide hay stacker in action. You can see it in the video below.

Fair Warning

This video is boring, but careful observers will notice a front flip and a driver bucked up from his chair.

The main section of the slide is constructed of two green 55-62 feet lodge pole pine poles. The 15-20 foot span between the poles is called the floor and is constructed of 1 x 4 slats roughly 40 feet long, two thirds of the length of the poles. A frame of 24 x 20 foot wood poles is called the backstop, and forms an immense right triangle with the floor and the slide. The spaced slats in between the main poles are easily seen. -Source

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Bell Boy Bannack

Jul 22, ’11 3:46 PM

I’m pretty thrilled to be back in Montana for the weekend for a big Roberts’ family reunion. The family booked 22 rooms here at Fairmont Hot Springs, that includes one tipi.  We’re off with a bang and a ROAR. (Roberts’ Outstandingly Awesome Reunion.)

But best of all is getting to see Bannack grown up and more capable of antics than ever.  Here he is at around ten o’clock last night playing bell boy.

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Climbing in Mali

Jul 19, ’11 9:16 AM

My uncle Dan sent me a link to this terrific video of French freestyle rock climber Catherine Destivelle filmed in 1987 in Bandiagara, Mali.

It is very much worth the whole ten minutes of viewing time. Sure there are some stomach churning hangs and other examples of what looks to be fine climbing. But just wait for the appearance of a trumpet playing Dogon “witch doctor”, a pygmy cliff dwelling, a cave full of skeletons, an idiot in jean shorts shooting a gun and the masked dancing stilt-walkers. Thanks Dan!

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Monkbot

Jul 13, ’11 2:48 PM

This is the “monkbot,” an exquisite 16th century automaton who now resides at the Smithsonian Institution. Photo by the talented Rosamond Purcell. Watch the Monkbot move in the video below.


From the Blackbird journal:

Driven by a key-wound spring, the monk walks in a square, striking his chest with his right arm, raising and lowering a small wooden cross and rosary in his left hand, turning and nodding his head, rolling his eyes, and mouthing silent obsequies. From time to time, he brings the cross to his lips and kisses it. After over 400 years, he remains in good working order. Tradition attributes his manufacture to one Juanelo Turriano, mechanician to Emperor Charles V. The story is told that the emperor’s son King Philip II, praying at the bedside of a dying son of his own, promised a miracle for a miracle, if his child be spared. And when the child did indeed recover, Philip kept his bargain by having Turriano construct a miniature penitent homunculus.

Via Boing Boing

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Here is a Beautiful Thing

Jul 5, ’11 12:01 AM
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