You may have noticed how dark it is in the morning when you get up lately. We're going to fix that, as Daylight Saving Time ends and we go back to Standard Time. Set your clocks back one hour before you go to bed tonight, or at 2AM Sunday. Enjoy that extra hour of sleep you missed back in the spring, but be aware that sunset will be much earlier after the time change.
We are proud to introduce an entirely new website called Homes and Hues! Alex rolled out the welcome mat while the rest of us were busy with Halloween costumes and the like. At Homes and Hues, you'll find wonderful ways to make your home the perfect place to call your own. Some of the featured articles already there are 10 Staircases That Really Take It To The Next Level and 18 Gorgeous Steampunk Machine Age Lamps, but there's plenty more to see at Homes and Hues. Tell your friends about it and don't forget to add the site to your social circles on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and G+! Meanwhile, let's look at some of what Neatorama had this past week that you don't want to miss out on.
We had an excerpt from cartoonist Stephen McCranie's new graphic novel Brick by Brick in Fun Gets Stuff Done.
Another book excerpt was Death Warmed Over: Funeral Food, Rituals, and Customs From Around the World, from Lisa Rogak.
Jill Harness showed us 13 Great Pieces of Haunted Mansion Fan Art.
Eddie Deezen told us about The Death of Harry Houdini.
The Legend of Lincoln's Ghost was from Uncle John's Bathroom Reader.
The Annals of Improbable Research gave us Highly Efficient and Effective Removal of Fat from Fried Chicken via Centrifugation.
10 Celebrities Who Spied on the Side came from mental_floss magazine.
On the Spotlight blog, we got to see the Pop Surrealist Intervention Art of Robert Brandenburg and Microscopic Things or Space Aliens? Enjoy the photographs in a bigger, easier-to-see format.
Our Great Pics of The Week column was themed Let's Just Be Cool Here.
We got to see all of Your Most Memorable Halloween Costumes that readers submitted. That was a lot of fun! Thanks to everyone who sent in a picture. We also had lots of readers sent in pictures of their pets in Halloween costumes, which you can see on the blog Lifestyles of the Cute and Cuddly.
Did you solve the Pzzlr this week? It was titled Brother and Sister.
The Conceptis puzzle was Color Link-a-Pix.
Hy Conrad's Whodunit this week was appropriately called A Halloween Homicide.
In the What Is It? game, the pictured item is a J. M. Fox Iron Works valve grinder, used to ensure that automotive valves are properly seated. A perfectly respectable task, but we were looking for more imaginative uses for this object. Death Dodgers wins a t-shirt for his explanation:
A prototype Newton Meter - you know, the weight meters that you put an object on, and it drags it down a certain number of Newtons?
First, you take off the (removable) side sticking out, and put the thing you're measuring on a rope/string that is hooked in, replacing the part you took off to clamp it in place. Then, you drag the wheel like part to the zipper-end, and grab the zipper, and lift it up, so that gravity pulls down the wheel a certain number of grooves. That's the weight.
That's going around the world just to say it's a scale! The other winner is Zarf, who declared it to be "an 1873 Zip tie. bit of a bugger to get the end back through the eye but dammit men were men in those days." That's worth a t-shirt, too!
Jill had a down-and-dirty quick t-shirt giveaway at the Neatoramanauts Facebook page. Congratulations to Josh Scotto, who will be receiving a free Supersized shirt in no time.
The (non-giveaway) post with the most comments this week was American Ethnic Foods Section, with US States as Labeled by an Australian Who Knew Nothing of Its Geography second.
The comment of the week was from C.J. Casey, who told us his story of learning to sew:
When I was 12 and in Boy Scouts, my Mom taught me to hand-sew so I could sew on my patches. I hated it, with a passion I now reserve for grammatical errors and Star Wars sequels. It didn't help that my Mom was a perfectionist and she would rip out my work if it was just a little bit crooked. But I persevered and got my patches on my uniform. 9 years later, I made about $500 in a week or so sewing patches on my fellow sailor's uniforms before a huge inspection, a requirement for us to go on liberty. Once I went on liberty myself, I bought my Mom a really nice present.
(Oh, and I still do some sewing but I now help run a knitting shop. Yay threadwork.)
The most popular post by far was US States as Labeled by an Australian Who Knew Nothing of Its Geography. That was followed by The Street Art of Mark Jenkins and Death Warmed Over: Funeral Food, Rituals, and Customs From Around the World in third place.
The post that people ♥ed most was Heroic Bus Driver Saves Woman from Jumping off Bridge, with Kidney Transplant Patient Marries His Organ Donor in second place, and Pope Francis and the Little Child tied with Sea Lion Snatches Fish out Fisherman's Hands for third.
The most emailed post was the great travel video Adventure Is Calling.
Our biggest post of the week on Facebook was US States as Labeled by an Australian Who Knew Nothing of Its Geography (A Suspended Bicycle Roundabout over a Highway did well, too).
The post that was shared most on Google+ was 8 Easy Last-Minute Halloween Decorations. It was also the most Tweeted post.
The Scariest Jack-o-Lantern of Them All was the most pinned post this week on Pinterest.
Thanks to everyone who shared our stuff on social media! Consider yourself part of the team that keeps Neatorama going. We have our own social media sites, too: the Neatoramanauts Facebook page, our Twitter feed, our Pinterest boards, and a G+ site, too! There's extra goodies on those sites that you won't find here on the main page.
Now that Halloween is over, you can save big on Halloween costumes, accessories, and decorations from the NeatoShop. Stock up for next year with our clearance sale items. After all, we gotta make room for new Christmas goodies!
Have a great week, and don't forget to set your clocks back tonight!