Ryan's Currently Unnamed Blog

Ok, I finally found some time to write up my Fourth of July activities. Well, some of them... Still going to post about Summerfest... need to go through some pics and figure that out....

I spent my Fourth of July with my parents, leaving to catch my local fireworks display. We ended up walking there, and even though its a two minute drive, srcwe discovered that there are no sidewalks for most of the way and we were walking through constuction zones! Oh, and it was about a 2 mile walk, and it took us about 45 minutes... haha.. oh well, we DID get to see the neighboring towns fireworks, and ours started about 5 minutes before we got there. Was kinda surreal walking towards the fireworks, with a few other people also wandering towards them. Then afterward, there was a HUGE exodus which made me wonder what percentage of people came out for them, and how many homes were empty at that moment. Anyway.. holy tangent! My local fireworks display was really kinda cool, since there's a good sized lake with an island in the middle where they launch the fireworks from. So, there's a lot of places that make for great viewing angles. There's a large festival area that was far too crowded. I can't stand being stuck in a crowd, so we walked to the other side of the lake, plenty of room for us to lay down, watch the fireworks and see them reflected in the water. Definately cool and gave me a chance to use the 'fireworks' setting on my camera which worked far better then I expected.

Anyway, at my parents, we dug into our supply of old fireworks. Its been a few years since we've done anything destructive, and we could have planned it out better, but we had some fun and, of course, we caught it all on video! All the standard disclaimers apply... we know what we are doing and you shouldn't try to do this unless you too know what you are doing and I'm not responsible if by reading or watching this you get some crazy ideas yourself and get in trouble or hurt someone.

With that out of the way, picked out a Silver Salute and a Cherry Bomb... and decided to pit these two forces against some household items. A roll of toilet paper, and a feeble Coke Can. I wish we had put the roll of TP on something hard and had a more sturdy 'lid' then the flimsy aluminum pan. Not to save the grass from getting a hole burned into it, but rather to allow less of the explosive force to escape from the side of the roll. Anyway, thanks to my new membership with YouTube, you can watch the video here if you have flash, or you can download it too (5.29MB, 1:25, Windows Media).

Wheeee! Make sure you watch to the end to see the slow motion part!

Next up was the Cherry Bomb. We got a little smarter and used a brick to put the can on. After enlarging the mouth of the can to get the cherry bomb into it, we were able to set it off. Again with slow motion and zoom and the end, and you can download this one too (4.32MB 1:09, Windows Media).

Not much left at all of the can! haha... well... We had our fun! On a completely different note.. i need to see if Sony Vegas 6 can produce video in some more open format.