🎃Horror Time,Smart Glasses ,and Offgrid Towns,

This is Halloween!

Oct 02, 2023

Helllloooooo friends. It’s FINALLY OCTOBER!!!

My favorite month of the year.

Horror movies, cooler weather, and my birthday.

I’ll be 31 on October 8 (Oy Vey!).

Pretty wild week this week - our son David decided to sample the local backyard mushrooms and I made my first-ever call to poison control.

We caught him just as he took a bite, and he spit it out - but - better to be safe than sorry. Straight to the ole’ poison control hotline.

Turns out - Poison control’s approach to mushroom munchin’ is “let’s see if anything happens over the next 24 hours - and we’ll call you a few times over the next 24 hours to check up on your son.”

Wild stuff. Our son is ok - we had a conversation about mushrooms, and not eating them outside of the context of dinner.

I’m amazed that no one has started a “ask a certified Mycologist (mushroom expert) what your child ate” hotline. I don’t know about you, but I’d happily cough up $30 to get an expert opinion.

This Facebook Group for emergency identification is pretty cool.

Let’s dive in, shall we?

Own your very own second at 24 Hour Homepage! This delightful website features a different link/image every second - with MANY links to explore. Own a second, and share a link/pic with the world. (Sponsored Ad)

🎃HORROR TIME

It’s time to get into the horror mindset! Spooky season is here - so the movies must be spooky too. This year - I’m gonna warm you up with a suggested watching schedule.

October week 1

Watch

Dog Soldiers - Action Horror movie - Scottish soldiers encounter werewolves. battles ensue. Unsettling vibes, but not really scary.

The Houses that October Built - Roadtripping friends decide to find the scariest of all the haunted houses. Things go horribly sideways.

Trollhunter - People go looking for real trolls, and encounter way more than they bargained for.

Dead Snow - End the week with some hilarious Nazi Zombie comedy. A movie that balances laughs, horror, and so . . . much . . . gore.

Play

some rounds of Left 4 Dead or Back 4 Blood. Can be scary, but is anything REALLY scary when you have hundreds of rounds against the zombies?

October Week 2

Watch

The Ritual - Friends go hiking - friends find something horrible in the woods. friends get hunted. It all hits the fan.

V/H/S - Group finds a bunch of creepy VHS tapes, each with stories more unsettling than the next. fascinating little short stories - some terrifying, others just creepy.

Event Horizon - Now get scared. Spaceship is deployed to investigate a lost forgotten ship. ABSOLUTELY HORRIBLE THINGS ENSUE. Feel free to skip this movie (tiktok is how I felt) and watch V/H/S 2.

Zombieland - the most hilarious zombie movie ever. Watch it. You’ll need some Twinkies to eat while you watch.

Play

Play some Metro 2033. Unlike Left 4 Dead, you don’t have much ammo, and the monsters are absolutely terrifying.

October Week 3

Watch

Hereditary: SO TERRIFYING. AHHHHHH. Family mourns their matriarch passing away, and everything goes to hell.

What We Do in the Shadows: time for some humor! Documentary crew follows a group of vampires who live in an old home. Not really horror - but hilarious and spooky.

Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon - crew follows the exploits of a up and coming slasher. Think Friday the 13th, but if Jason had a film crew following him. I wouldn’t call it scary

Frankenstein’s Army: Russian soldiers discover Nazi mad scientist and his crew of mad creations. 80’s body horror vibes, but set in WWII.

Play

Time to get scared. Play the first 3-5 hours of The Evil Within.

October Week 4

Watch

Sinister - THIS MOVIE IS WHY YOU ALWAYS RUN A DIED IN HOUSE REPORT WHEN YOU BUY A HOUSE. Terrifying movie.

Hell House LLC - Crew decides to host a “haunted house” in . . . a actually haunted house. Pseudo documentary vibe. Fantastic movie.

Tucker and Dale VS Evil - Two friends buy a cabin in the woods, and dumb college students think they’re serial killers. Horror comedy that will leave you rolling on the floor.

One Cut of the Dead - Let’s end things with a fantastic horror comedy film from Japan. Film crew makes live broadcast zombie move and so many things go wrong.

Play

Doki Doki Literature Club - Anime dating sim that turns into a horrible nightmare. Deeply unsettling. Unlike the other games, this one is completely free!

🕶️ Smart Glasses

I had my doubts when the first pair of Facebook Rayban smart glasses emerged onto the scene.

Why would I need glasses that can take a picture, when I can pull out my phone?

My approach to photos/videos is more of a “memory creation” perspective. Rather than aiming for a crisp artsy image, I focus on quick shots and short videos to create accessible memories - and insights into our day-to-day lives for family.

I love the memories that Google Photos automatically creates - and I try to feed content to Google Photos to keep creating new ones.

That all changed in the past two years.

I gleaned a fresh new perspective on this once my first child became “stroller-free.”

When you’re carrying/holding a child’s hand/watching children - taking photos/video to post to Instagram/Facebook becomes that much more difficult.

I still have loads of fun when out with the kids at a park or festival - but I don’t maintain the mental energy of taking photos/videos anymore. I’m more present in the moment.

“Touching the side of my glasses to take a quick pic or video would be nice” - I’d occasionally think to myself.

The new Facebook Rayban glasses have piqued my curiosity from “interesting” to “I think I want these.”

Here’s a link to the Meta Connect live stream if you want to watch the whole announcement.

Here’s a quick TLDR on what they can do

take photos, videos, and livestreams (IG,FB) (useful) (12 mb camera - which is pretty decent compared to the first model with its piddly 5 mb camera)
Use Meta AI to ask questions + send messages (Meta’s ai models are pretty capable - and llama just keeps getting better with each version)
listen to music / take calls with immersive audio (no more earbuds!)

The addition of Meta AI makes the other two benefits that much more intriguing - can I ask Meta AI to find a lofi playlist on Spotify that features spooky vibes? Can I ask Meta AI to save a video to my phone? Can I ask Meta AI to help me write some sales copy, and post it in a doc for later? Can I ask it to scan a business card and add to my contacts?

Meta’s llama AI model isn’t as good as ChatGPT - but it’s better than asking Google or Alexa for anything.

There’s a lot of potential there . . . Especially for situations where looking at a phone just isn’t possible.

I’m looking forward to watching tech youtubers review it.

Go learn more about the new Meta smart glasses at the link!

Meta Smart Glasses

Raban Smart Glasses Link

🏚️Offgrid Towns

I’ve always been intrigued by the idea of an off-grid home.

Will I ever have one? unlikely, but a man can dream.

I recently learned that some off-grid towns exist!

What? an entire town off the grid?

I read this thread on Twitter (X *sigh*) about a town in Beaver River NY that is entirely disconnected from the road system!

THAT’s CRAZY!

It got me wondering - how many other offgrid towns are there out there?

There’s that wild town in Alaska where all the resident live in a single building. That’s pretty wild.

Typing in “offgrid towns” on Google gets ya a bunch of listicle type articles from Yahoo, NPR, etc.

I said “eh” to that and headed over to metaphor.systems to see what I could find.

Put on Your Explorer’s hat

Not all of these are offgrid, but they are all darn interesting.

A community called Serenbe - it’s on a 20+ acre farm - has homes, shops, miles of trails, and other awesome amenities. It’s not “offgrid” per se - but still really cool. Homes are not cheap - but I’d much rather (if I had such a wild budget) buy a million-dollar home somewhere like this than in a Nashville suburb. Check out the site.
There’s a island in Maine called Matinicus where about 50ish lobstermen/fishermen live year-round. It takes two hours to reach the island by Ferry - so I call that pretty off grid. Here’s an interesting article about it.
There’s 100 or so houseboats living on Latsch island on the Mississippi in a tiny houseboat community. Absolutely wild stuff. Here’s a broad overview article, and here’s a small documentary with tons of pictures. Out of all three things to explore, this one is DEFINITELY the most interesting. Houseboats aren’t that expensive either . . .

I wish I could keep going - because I know I could find more . . . .

Part two coming soon?

🐙The Land of Random

You have adventure in your eyes - I got random links.

EXP TV

A nonstop web channel with obscure media. You can see the schedule of what’s playing too! Good website to stick on a spare monitor for something to stare at when you’re bored.

EXP TV

The River

Quite possibly the wildest endless content stream I’ve ever experiences. A flood of images as you scroll - click on one, and your entire screen becomes images just like the one you clicked on. It’s mesmerizing - definitely a website to save for inspiration.

River