Once again I've been too busy to write the post I planned. Instead, I thought I'd share my current go-to YouTube channels. This is hardly an exhaustive list, but somewhere to look if you want something to watch, and feel you might share some of my interests.
The Makers
What is probably an obvious one to begin with,
Colin Furze is the archetypal mad inventor. Though his builds might not always need the most technical proficiency, they more than make up for it with creativity. I also have some appreciation for his views on safety, which make a change from the (perfectly understandable) corporate views I'm now used to - in short, as long as he's wearing his "safety tie", everything will be alright, and he hasn't proved himself wrong yet.
His videos are usually around 10 minutes for a build and 4 for a demo of said build. His videos are generally family friendly, though definitely fall into the don't try this at home category. He uploads of "Furzeday", every few weeks.
There are many videos that could be chosen as a "classic example", but I felt my
first would be the best. I followed a link to this video many years ago, and haven't missed a video since.
For something a little more machinery,
This Old Tony has an unmatched production quality. Not only is he a skilled hobbiest-machinist, but he really goes the distance in making his videos
different. His signature move is cutting stock to length in ways that seem impossible and yet, through judicious use of After Effects, happen on the screen right in front of you.
20 minutes is a good guess for video length, which I find makes them easily fit in between other things I'm doing. He's super-clean, unlike
The Breakers below, and it's rare not to learn something from his videos. Uploads aren't regular, but tend to be early weekend.
The example video I've chosen is on thread-cutting, and shows the efforts he goes to.
The Breakers
AvE is a Canadian who lets you into his 'shop for some messing around. This can involve making something on the clappered out Bridgeport milling machine, or, more often, taking a power tool apart in a "BOLTR" video. The BOLTR concept is great - being Bored Of Lame Tool Reviews where the guys basically just say it's good, he'll buy the tool himself and take it apart to see how well it's built.
Most of his videos are close to the half-hour mark, but are worth the time, especially if you don't have your own 'shop to play in. His language is colourful at best, unashamedly so - this is just a couple of guys dicking around in the 'shop after all, and between expletive-ridden rants he uses a lot of his own vocabulary which it's hard not to start picking up. This can make the first few videos hard to understand at times, but is worth the effort. He'll upload a video most weeks, sometimes more, usually at the weekend.
The example is two impact drivers going against one another, with a teardown of the SnapOn one.
For a more electronics-focussed teardown,
bigclivedotcom is great. He buys really cheap Chinese tat on eBay, and then figures out how it works, often drawing out the circuit diagram whilst he reverse-engineers it. He's Scottish, and his sing-sing voice is quite nice toward the end of the day.
Videos run at 10-15 minutes, but vary quite a lot. His
massive back-catalogue of videos, combined with this range of durations make him good for fitting in the last few minutes before leaving for work. He uploads videos whenever he feels like it, usually several in a week.
The sample video is a look at some socket testers, and how several makes stack up w.r.t. shocking you.
The Nerds
Tom Scott is an old-school YouTuber, who knows what he does well, and keeps doing it. His videos are mostly factual such as "Things You Might Not Know", "Built for Science" and "Amazing Places". However, he also has made a few interesting new quiz shows and, highlight of the channel, in my view,
"Citation Needed", which is his uni mates trying to guess facts from a mystery Wikipedia Article. The humour is very similar to my own, which I think is what makes the show work so well - they feel just like one of
those conversations you have down the pub.
Videos are usually under 5 minutes long. He's very clued-up on broadcast law, so is one of the safer channels for family viewing. Regular uploads are every Monday, with the longer uploads coming on different days, of he has other programming running.
Pretty much any video would make a good example, but this one I've quoted on many occasions.
Matt Parker is a stand-up mathematician who's channel,
standupmaths takes a more zany look at interesting bits of maths than the well-known
Numberphile might. I think he aims his channel at a slightly younger audience than me, but not to the point where he's not interesting to watch.
Videos are around 15 minutes long, suitable for the whole family (and explained well enough to suit kids in secondary school and above) and uploaded far too infrequently for my liking.
Example video is explaining how there is only one parabola - classic!
The Talks
To end, a few channels for high-quality talks on computing-type things. These tend to be the best part of an hour, but some can be closer to 30 minutes.
- Black Hat Talk from security professionals on security things. They tend to be very in-depth, and leave you questioning much around you.
- Defcon Similar subject matter to Black Hat, but much less professional, aimed at more of a hobbiest crowd. Videos are still in depth, but tend to be more light-hearted in their approach.
- Google Developers Talks from many of Google's developer conferences. They tend to have a fairly low bar to entry, so are easy to jump into. The downside of this is that after a few years of watching, a 40 minute video might only have 10 minutes of fresh content, if that. Chrome Developers takes the web-specific content, and has some great developer advocates who make for very amusing viewing.
As an example this time, a fascinating talk from Defcon on lifts, and their security (or lack thereof).
