This week: wonderful videos from smaller channels, and a lot of VHS tapes.

• Mika and Jesse from the maigomika channel (and their dog Pancake) prepare for a typhoon in their Japanese countryside home. This is an expertly edited, day-in-the-life video: it's calm and slow despite the topic, and takes its time with music and environment shots. If you're looking for as much information as possible, this isn't for you; if you'd like a ten minute rest from the onslaught of hyper-compressed infodump-filled shorts, then I'd recommend it.
   
• In a video that's both chaotic and charming, saveitforparts makes phone calls with a 1973 rotary telephone handset, a 1990s DTMF dialler, and a ground terminal from 2009 with the top removed so you can see it rotating to track satellites. In his words: "this is worse than a dialup connection in the 90s, but I still want to try it, because it goes to space, and space is cool".
   
• Thanks to Hugh for sending over Nate Scovill's wonderfully ridiculous "I made an umbrella that rains". This is a gem of a video from a channel with under 500 subscribers, at times shot with an almost dreamlike quality: narrow depth of field and a choice to colour-balance towards yellows and oranges. That's a great stylistic choice that sets the video's visuals apart — and is also a sign of just how high the barrier to entry for YouTube channels can be these days, at least for channels that aim for this professional style. (There's also a joke about mayonnaise that made me laugh out loud, and a second joke about mayonnaise that almost made me gag, so well done to Nate on both of those.)
  
  Side note: Nate's challenge to invent useless things reminded me of chindogu, Kenji Kawakami's idea of 'weird tools' or 'almost-useful inventions' that became a worldwide phenomenon through traditional media in the 90s, before the mass adoption of the web. Perhaps it's time chindogu had a revival.

• A live map of every mainline passenger train in the UK. This is fascinating: it's a demonstration by a data company who use a combination of schedules and live data from (hopefully opted-in...?) users' phones to provide realtime rail network data. The more yellow and red you see, the more delays there are. If you're colourblind: well, good luck, there should really be a setting to help with that.
   
• Height Hunt is "a quest to find and visit every possible height restriction sign in the UK". It's worth reading the FAQ to find out how there can be so many seemingly contradictory combinations.
   
• James O'Malley has 2,000 old VHS tapes in his garage and he doesn't know what to do with them.
   

And finally, an incredible cover of Radiohead's Creep (strong language). Is there context to this? Probably, but after ten minutes of falling into a Korean comedy wikihole, I figured it's probably better without.

All the best,

— Tom