Pencil-powered pets

How the HELL did Tom get KRYTEN on the show?!

I thought it was Tech Moan in the thumbnail 😂

From the thumbnail I mistook Robert Llewellyn for Atomic Shrimp, I do think Atomic Shrimp would be good on this show if he's up for it.

Tom just doesn't look right without a red t-shirt.

Oh oh oh i know this! It's called Cheat C on Digimon Pendulum Original device by the community, I still have one modded with this exact step!

This looks so wrong... Tom without a red shirt? Have I fallen through the cracks into another dimension?

The beard and the darker heir rally suit Tom, looks sharp. But who is that guy in the white shirt and the Jacket?

Lol, got the idea straight away, just the wrong name 😁

I was probably too young for a Digimon, but I do ever so slightly remember the television show. Or at least, I remember the theme tune

Wow! Tom looks like Freddy Mercury if he had been a science communicator🤩.

Why does Tom look like an ai generated weird tom? I am not sure if I like the new look....

You could do something similar with AMD CPUs in the early 00s. On the top were some contacts pads, and you could draw a line with a pencil connecting them to trick the processor into clocking higher than it ordinarily would. It was basically free performance if you didn't mind the risk of a little bit of instability

Welp the other tom the taxi driver might've wore red this time, who knows

I never knew Digimon were something other than a TV show

What happened to your webcam top? Did the red channel just take a break?

Sorry, might be joining a bandwagon but do miss the red shirt. It was/is such a brilliant online personality branding look. It sounds like Tom, but doesn't look like one now.
Is this because of the awesome all red shirt tribute? Hope not since that was great and demonstrates just how cool the whole thing is.

Was hoping Dani & Bill would make a reappearance after they were briefly mentioned in last week's episode. Happy to see them again!

Is this a quiet rebrand‽
No red top? Hair cut? Embracing the silver fox aesthetic?

I love it!

Happy new hair day Tom 👍

I'm just young enough that I didn't know Digimon existed outside the video games lol

nice tom looks.

Tom with some phenomenal style.

Back in the day (probably 2000-2001) AMD's Athlon processors could be unlocked for overclocking by bridging a couple of traces on the top of the... not sure what you call it, the substrate that has the pins and the chip itself is bonded to it. Anyway, it was a trace that got laser-cut at the factory but you could bridge it by running a pencil over it and then covering it with a piece of tape to protect it.

Tom Scott fashion era has begun

Oh neat, we unlocked pallette-swapped Tom Scott!

Your new look absolutely fits you Tom.

Someone wanna be James Hoffman

AHHH CHANGE IT'S SCARY

I'm like a minute in and I suspect it's a Tamagotchi reset port thing...

Looking great Tom!

New haircut and new top? I can't deal with all these changes... 🤣

My first thought was Tamigochi and when Bill started going off on Sea Monkeys I knew it would take a while to get back on course. And then when they started on the graphite and Tom brought up the screwdriver, but they ignored his hint I realized, the pressure of being on the show has to make this so much harder.

Meanwhile I was the only person in my school seemingly into Digimon...

Not seeing Tom in a red shirt is like seeing your primary teacher in the supermarket. My brain cannot compute.... Looks good on you, mate!

Initial thoughts: either tamagotchi or chia "pets", or some derivative fads; possibly using the action of sharpening the pencil to improve/trigger/fill its quality of life?

Perhaps having a living pet, like a rodent, that would make good use of the wood shavings (e.g. for lining its environment)?

Could also be a therapeutic or helper "pet" that's linked to the use of a personal journal; or to encourage writing, drawing, creating, or maybe recording dreams/habits/schedule?

Some video games involving "pets" in a larger sense could even use a pencil type input device, like a Nintendo stylus and such.

Then there is using the pencil as a timing device, like fuses or candles were, to remind the user to perform some tasks helping your pet.

Also, "pet project", "pet peeve", "petting" given to your pet, "your pet" in a ** way... Or using "renewable and eco-friendly" wood instead of dangerous/toxic plastic/ink...

Looking nice and confident, Tom, despite the change from the classic visual branding. Keep these episodes coming out to challenge my abilities to think Laterally.

In 2009 I temporarily borked my mediocre graphics card with a pencil traces so parents would buy me a new, more powerful one. Terrible idea but it worked.

Did no one else here overclock their AMD Athlon (Thunderbird or XP) CPU back in the early 2000s, using a very similar pencil trick? It unlocked the multiplier, IIRC, and in that 32-bit, single-core, ~1- to 2-GHz clock era, we appreciated virtually any speed boost we could get.

TOM WHAT THE HELL wait it's discussed extensively in the comments. I immediately thought "he decided to go for the style of 1990s Annie Lennox of the Eurythmics"

I got this instantly despite being too young to remember the 90s

Bill seems to have stolen Tom's t-shirt

WHAT IS TOM WEARING
WHAT IS HAPPENING

We've witnessed the end of an era of the internet: no more red shirt Tom :(

Oh. So this is why everyone wore the red shirt. They knew it would be their last chance.

Pencil overclocking is not a unheard of thing. The early AMD Athlon CPU's had tiny jumpers on them that were laser cut to set the speed of them, which could be filled in with pencil to run them at a higher speed. Ive also heard of pencil being used to short out safety interlock components, or to adjust motor speed controllers to make them run faster.

I remember in the 2000s it was also a thing in overclocking CPUs to bridge certain contacts on the CPU casing with a pencil and it'd think "oh, i'm a faster CPU"

Because the chips themselves were the same, the casings would have different connections on them for it to identify what had been tested at the factory to be able to handle a certain speed

Breaking: Sea monkeys and all electronics are just magic

Apologies for Tom's video feed skipping frames. We're still getting used to a new studio set-up. It will be fixed for the next recording batch, but we hope you enjoy this highlight nonetheless.