My 2017 – The Good Bits
I’ve been able to do some ridiculous things this year, and most of them wouldn’t have happened if it wasn't for you lovely people watching the videos Tom and I make, so thank you very much! I’ve written this up mainly to help me to remember what I got up to.
Los Angeles
NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
We were invited to visit NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and went there in February. We looked round the Deep Space Network Mission Control Center, met Paolo Bellutta a Mars rover operator who has driven further on Mars than anyone else, and we got to see Maggie, the twin of the Curiosity Mars Rover!
Vasquez Rocks
While we were staying in LA, we also visited Vasquez rocks – used as an “alien planet” film set in Star Trek, Bill and Ted, and many other things.
Puerto Rico
We visited in March, six months before Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico, and Virgin Islands amongst others in its path. I was struck by how beautiful the island was, and unfortunately it looks like it will be a long recovery process for its infrastructure and residents.
Arecibo Observatory
We were invited to visit the Arecibo Observatory, one of the world’s largest radio telescopes, with a dish over 300 metres across. I already knew what it was going to look like thanks to its appearance in the James Bond film GoldenEye, but was very happy when they took us onto the structure to see how it worked on the inside!
Matt And Tom
We've been making weekly videos on the Matt and Tom channel for over two years now, and 2017 has had some of the most ridiculous yet! Dr Irving Finkel taught us cuneiform, we travelled to a corn field in the US to watch the solar eclipse, and were ferried to an invisible island by sea scouts.
We Shred Your Comments: LIVE
A live stream, in which its comments were immediately printed out by a dot-matrix printer. This was fed straight out and into a shredder in one continuous stream.
The plan, before, and after.
Citation Needed
After the success of last year's Citation Needed Live Show, we filmed series 6 and 7 in front of a live audience. We took over Studio 1 at YouTube Space London to record twelve episodes over three Saturdays.
Setting up the studio, In the green room, goofing around in the lobby, and filming mid-show.
