"Duct tape is like the force. It has a light side and a dark side, and it binds the universe together."
I think everyone has heard of duct tape dummies, where you wrap a person in duct tape and then cut it away to create a full-size duplicate of the person (or you can just leave them in it and you have a realistic corpse after a few days).
In fact I have used duct tape for some Halloween related stuff myself. My son needed some red boots for his Iron Man costume last year. I was able to find colored duct tape that exactly matched the red color of his costume. I just covered his shoes in plastic wrap, then taped over the shoes. Then I cut away the plastic from around the bottom of the soles (they weren't going to be covered). I ended up securing the shoe covers with a piece of tape under the arch of the sole. You can see them in the picture below:
So check out the different colors of duct tape available at your local big-box stores, and add it to your bag of tricks this Halloween!
I just got a DroidX smartphone, and I've been playing around with it. One thing I've discovered is a cool little app that reads barcodes and qcodes with the phones camera, and then gives you information about the product, or takes you to a web page.
Then I found a web page lets you create a qcode for any url you want. So I created one for my Hauntspace webpage. If you have a smartphone with a barcode reader app, try it out below:
I know that some of you advertise your haunt. So you might want to try printing a qcode on your advertisements that points to your Hauntspace page or web site. As more people get smartphones, they will use this technology to quickly get to places on the web without typing in URLs.
I blogged about this last year. Check out this link at Shipyard Brewery for more information and to see if there is a distributor near you! Unfortunately, there are none in Texas, so I'll have to have my mom ship a six-pack from Massachusetts.
Check out the article, with an interview, from the Make Magazine blog. Dr. Frybrain will be on site at the Maker Faire Detroit next weekend (July 31 and August 1). And they have a great picture of Dr Frybrain's hearse (I'm jealous).
At the 2010 Comic Con, Guillermo Del Toro announced that he has joined with Disney to make a 3-D Haunted Mansion movie.
This logo for The Haunted Mansion gave the Comic-Con crowd its first hint about Guillermo Del Toro's development announcement. Image courtesy Disney (Via the Wired news story)
Hopefully this will erase any memory of the disappointing previous movie of the same name, starring Eddie Murphy (Disney, don't think you get off the hook here. Eddie did his best. You guys created the stupid thing!).
What's promising about this (to me anyway) is that they will be following the backstory of the mansion, and reintroducing the character of the "Hatbox Ghost", which hasn't been seen on the ride since it first opened in 1969.
The idea is pretty basic, just attach various items to the top of corks. But the pictures give you some ideas of what unconvetional items can make interesting bottle stoppers.
It's a new application of "Pepper's Ghost" of course. While not exactly '3D', it does suggest a way to view an image from multiple angles. I imagine it would work well for sci-fi haunts, perhaps for a 'Madam Leota' type display, with a evil AI image warning you to stay out of the futuristic lab (think of the Red Queen from 'Resident Evil').
In the 1500's, Hungarian Countess Elizabeth Báthory gained notoriety as the "Blood Countess". She was accused of killing hundreds of young women, and bathing in their blood in an attempt to maintain her youth.
