Fun with Fog Generators 223
BoomZilla writes "Only
10 or so shopping days to Halloween. If you're at a loss for a project
this weekend check out gotfog.com for
a full set of detailed instructions on the construction of a Fog
chiller. "What's a fog chiller?" you may ask. And rightly so.
Let me explain. A fog machine dumps fog juice on a heating plate to
produce oodles of the white, floaty stuff. Problem is that it doesn't
hug the ground like you see in the movies. An alternative that is employed
to create the ground-hugging variety of fog is a dry ice machine (which
heats up dry ice and disperses the resultant cloud of fog). The problem is
that dry ice is (a) expensive and (b) not always that easy to get. Enter
the fog chiller. The chiller can be built very inexpensively (major cost
is the sacrifice of a largish cooler) and works with a regular fog machine
that consumes low-cost fog juice. Go on, give it a try. You know you want
to. And just imagine the look on the faces of your little ghouls and
ghosts come the 31st when your house looks like boot hill on steroids."
Dry Ice (Score:5, Funny)
(c) could get you put on a list of suspected pot growers faster than a subscription to High Times.
Do they work on servers too? (Score:4, Funny)
Fog in dorms.... (Score:5, Funny)
Possible applications (Score:0, Funny)
oh? (Score:5, Funny)
Or you could just use mustard gas instead of some silly fog, that'll teach the little buggers right enough and betcha they wont come around bothering you the next year anymore.
Another problem with dry ice... (Score:5, Funny)
RMN
~~~
Next in the scene? (Score:5, Funny)
And gosh, come to think of it, who'd ever have thought that smoke coming out of your case was an indication of a successful mod?
Re:Dry Ice (Score:4, Funny)
Back in the day... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Dry Ice (Score:2, Funny)
A dream of mine.... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Fog in dorms.... (Score:2, Funny)
He got a misdimeanor from the fire dept. When they knocked on the door, he tried to play it off like he was in the bathroom and didn't know what had happened.
Oh, one thing: these things leave oily residue all over *everything*....
Shopping! (Score:3, Funny)
Liquid Nitrogen? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Possible applications (Score:1, Funny)
Re:Fog in dorms.... (Score:5, Funny)
I was doing some work for a laser light show company last year in Las Vegas. We were going to try some air effects in the huge conference room in the Paris Hotel. I was told to fill the room with fog, but no one told me how much it would take. (Apparently it takes so little that you can't even see it...)
So I ended up filling a football field sized room with fog so thick you couldn't see the walls and setting off the fire alarm in the Paris Hotel at about 2 AM.
Luckily I was just a pitiful underling, and we did have permission to use fog...
Another technique (Score:5, Funny)
My father used to (jokingly) complain about neighborhood kids on our lawn. (There never were, which was part of the joke.) Then he would confide that he knew the perfect way to keep them off the lawn.
Land mines.
"Tough on that first kid, but they learn quickly," he'd add.
Chainsaws, Fog Machines and Stage Lighting (Score:5, Funny)
In only a few hours, I will be helping in the construction of one of these! We already have all of the materials.
A fog chiller like this will work almost as well as a professional one. The professional fog coolers essentially blow the fog through an refrigerator evaporator.
Halloween of 1994, I had the police at my house 6 times, each time with them begging me to stop doing what I was doing... he so badly wanted a reason to arrest me, but could think of none.
Picture it: The doorbell was connected through an optocoupler to my computer's keyboard. Everytime the doorbell rang, there was a pause (as the stereo audio file loaded) then a loud scream played from a speaker (left) hidden in the trunk of one of the cars in the driveway. The right channel had a nasty kind of chewing sound, and it was played through a speaker hidden in the engine compartment of another car which was parked close to the door.
My roommate and I were car nuts, and we had a junked Toyota that we were waiting for the scrapyard to haul off. With the chain hoist, we put it on its side in the front yard, with a mannequin's arm sticking out from underneath. We hooked its electrical system up to a car battery charger and left some of the parking lights on, with a turnblinker flashing and the AM radio playing quietly inside.
I was working in the professional sound and lighting business then, so I borrowed a fog machine, fog chiller and 6,000 watts of Leko stagelighting.
The fog machine and the chiller from work went outside to provide a ground mist, but not too much. I needed for the kids to see, by the light of the flashing signal, the arm sticking out from under the Toyota.
The Lekos and my own fog machine were set up inside. The Leko dimmer pack was powered off the 40 amp 240V service to the stove outlet, and all 6 lights, at 1000W apiece, were pointed and focused to a point 1 foot outside of my front door.
And then there was the chainsaw. Beg, borrow, steal or rent a chainsaw. Take off the chain and protect the kids from the potentially sharp edge of the chain guide with a rubber edging like people use around the outlines of their car doors.
The Spectacle:
Mom or Dad would stand at the end of the driveway as Little Tommy would walk past the Toyota with the flashing lights and the arm poking out of the ground mist.
Little Tommy, dressed in his finest Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles costume would press the doorbell. He'd hear the ring of the bell, then a couple of seconds later, the scream from the trunk of one of the cars he'd just passed. Gradually, he'd become aware of a wet chewing sound right behind him.
If Little Tommy was still standing at the door by the time I got downstairs, he'd be greeted to the sound of the door opening, and a wall of fog in front of him; invisible foggy blackness.
Of course, wearing black and a black ski mask, I'd be standing there watching the look of fear on the kid's face as it flashed on and off in time with the doomed Toyota's right turn. And then, just when we thought Tommy was getting ready to leave, Mike would kick the foot-pedal that turned on all 6kW of stagelights, focused right at the kid's face.
Blinded and disoriented, Little Tommy would start to retreat as I started up the chainsaw. And his first sight of me would be the silhouette, through the fog, of a black shadow with a running gas chainsaw.
Frozen, the kid would stand there, a deer caught in the headlights, as the chainsaw-wielding black shadow pressed the blade of the saw to his neck and revved the motor.
Of course at this point, the parent, standing at the end of the driveway, would feel that Little Tommy was in mortal danger, scream, drop the bag of candy, and attempt to rescue him from the chainsaw which would have already taken off the kid's head if it still had a chain.
The next morning, I had 4 broken windows, hate messages spray-painted onto the side of my roommate's car, the smell of two-cycle oil in my living room, and a hell of a lot of toilet paper and broken eggs to clean up. But I only had to give out 1/2 bag of candies, so I think I did okay.
Linux isn't ready for the desktop yet. [glowingplate.com]
Re:Another problem with dry ice... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Another technique (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Dry Ice (Score:2, Funny)
Dude, that is sooo pre-9/11! Now it would get you on a list of suspected terrorists. Why? Because, uh... only terrorists would buy something off-the-wall like dry ice!
Re:Chainsaws, Fog Machines and Stage Lighting (Score:5, Funny)
Paint job to cover hate messages spray-painted onto the side of your roommate's car, $1800
Carpet cleaning to remove the smell of two-cycle oil from the living room, $85.00
Being known to your neighbors as "that Damned Nutcase at the end of the street" and forming a first-name relationship with the police... Priceless!
Re:Chainsaws, Fog Machines and Stage Lighting (Score:5, Funny)
OK, I HAVE to ask. How many kids braved the whole thing and actually claimed that half bag of candy that was given out?
Well, the 1/2 bag of candy that I gave out was mostly to bribe the three who were still screaming after I shut off the chainsaw. And the father who wet himself.
Most of the others were gone by the time they heard the chewing noise from under the hood of the car. Lots didn't even come down the driveway, because seeing a car on its side with an arm poking out from underneath is a little too intense for most 4 to 10-year-olds.
The kids who stayed for the chainsaw were all older (12-15 range) and were psyching each other up, afraid of their friends seein their fear. But there's something about the sound of a gasoline engine running inside a house that makes people decide that they're not going to stick around to see what's coming.
Re:Another problem with dry ice... (Score:3, Funny)
There are organized networks that specialize in stealing left socks out of the dryer (while drying). They tend to favor laundromats. Who knows what they'd do when they were to encounter ice.
Re:Dry Ice (Score:2, Funny)