Walt-O-Matic Podcast FAQ

Here's where I answer your mail! What would you like to know?

What is the Walt-O-Matic?

The Walt-O-Matic is a technology and humor dumping ground from the mind of Walt Stoneburner.

Are you still making videos?

Nope. Uncle Danny moved away, Alex grew up, as did all the kids shown from Episode 12 and prior. Other interests took over for a while, but someday ...maybe.

Why are some episodes labeled explicit?

These are marked because some people might take offense to brief cartoon nudity, holy wars, mixing deadly substances, and toilet humor. For some reason, directly subscribing to the feed marks the episodes correctly. Apple's iTune store has, for some unknown reason, marks everything as explicit.

Who is Uncle Danny, and why is he addressing Alex?

That is Danny Adams. He moved to Northern Virginia for a short time, and while up here wanted videos to send back to his neice, Alex, so she'd remember his face and voice. I used to film his video letters, but once he started letting me direct, things got out of control.

Did Uncle Danny Really Mix Those Chemicals?

Uncle Danny is alive and quite well, which would mean no, he did not. While those were the real containers, filled with the real substances, they never, ever came in contact with one another nor were opened at the same time.

Why did these videos disappear for a number of years?

Actually, they didn't. The original videos were meant for a standard television set, which was 320x240 pixels, recorded on a camcorder. Apple had a Podcast service to watch videos and it required using "HTML objects" to run QuickTime to decode them, since the codec was pretty new, too. Over the next two decades (has it been that long?!?) web technologies changed, and while desktop environments and backwards compatibility still worked, though tiny with today's 4K+ resolution, mobile devices, even those of with Apple's iOS, no longer supported the old web standards. When we found these pages in our archives, we made the 100% Google Ad free and converted them to use the HTML5 video tag, which solved the problem; some of the original HTML4 page formatting still exists.

Walt-O-Matic Podcast Trivia

Episode 1: Self Defense actually won a sizeable award, taking first place in a video competition, allow us to buy a better camera for future shows.
The dates on the videos are rough approximations of when they were shot. The times are inside jokes, for instance, while I was writing the XML for Episode 9, a friend showed up and I encoded his birthday in the time stamp.
The fastest I've ever produced a video, from concept to rolling out the final footage was just a smidge under an hour for Episode 6: I Told You So.
The fire in Episode 8: Optics and Magnification is not a digital effect. Just off camera are a number of people with fire extinguishers at the ready.
The reason we never see Uncle Danny cut the egg in Episode 2: Green Egg is because the knife really did slip and cut his finger. Several times. He refused to attempt it any more and we had to stop production while I sawed it in half.
At the end of Episode 10: Lemon Perfume, the last puff of smoke from the bowl was totally unexpected; watch for it as the credits finish rolling.
While getting ready to film the opening sequence for SuperBaby, the episode that never aired, the stereo was turned up too high by accident and really did startle the child. As such, we cut to the interview, which was a mess in its own right. The skit was canceled due to lack of cooperation due to distractions.
In the outtakes from Episode 11: Baby Sitting Frog, a cat accidently enters the scene on the viewer's left; all you see is the tail. The camera crew noticed it before the puppeteer, and the attack was improv'd before cut was called.

Walt-O-Matic Podcast Goofs

In Episode 1: Self Defense Gone Wrong, one of the off camera crew can be seen in the mirror as Uncle Danny comes back from his break.
The spelling of Merf, in Episode 3: The Etymology of Merf, was suppose to be Mrrf, named after the database file extension it really came from.
In Episode 9: Salt and Pepper the spoon is really blown out of Uncle Danny's hand, furthermore the explosion was so loud it startled an off-camera crew member, who said something so profane the scene had to be cut shorter than desired during editing.
In Episode 11: Baby Sitting Frog, just before the frog offers a beer, you can see three cans of compressed air on the table in the background; these were used to make the visible frog burp moments before.