Rube Goldberg machine FTW!

This has got to be one of the coolest Rube Goldberg machines ever. Created in Garry's Mod, something I've been playing around with lately, this video is one huge contraption to do a very simple task (not spoiling it, watch the video).

Also, the theme from Indiana Jones plays in the background, which is just plain awesome. Now if we could only create a Rube Goldberg machine to thwart Nazi's and have Sean Connery as a father, I could die a happy man.

Watch more Garry's Mod Videos

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TF2 Comic: Spontaneous Cranium Inflation

I was playing around in Garry's mod once again. It sure is a pain in the but working with the TF2 ragdolls, but it seems like every time I do it I learn something new. This time I had some fun with the inflator tool. Check it out:

Click for a higher resolution.

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Andrew WK for president

Ladies and Gentlemen, I hereby nominate a new candidate for the presidency. A man with strong convictions. A man of the people. A man who is not afraid to tackle the big issues and has a plan to do so. I nominate, as the presidential candidate of the just-formed PARTY Party, Andrew WK:

America's been sucking pretty hard lately, and Andrew realizes that many Americans are suffering. Wars oversees, the current state of the economy, health care, failing education system, aging infrastructure, and lack of partying are all issues that we as Americans need to address. The American people need a change.

Take a look at his credentials. Andrew WK's singles include:

• Party Hard
• It's Time to Party
• Party Till You Puke
• Long Live the Party
• Make Sex

This is a man who knows how to party. Andrew pledges to turn America into one great big party. How will partying help, you ask? In several ways.

For one, America will be a huge party, which will raise our standing on the global stage. We'll gain the reputation for being the cool country. Also, we'll be reaching out more often to other countries - asking for their RSVPs. Everyone will want to be invited, as it'll be the bitchingest party ever.

Also, we can charge a cover to other countries, to pay for the cost of the party and fix the economy. We're thinking, like, $10 bucks for a keg cup at the door. Heck, if only China shows up, our economy will be solved! Of course, we're secretly hoping Sweden shows up so we can make out with her. And failing Sweden, her roommate Ireland will do.

War in Iraq? More like party in Iraq. Heck, I bet even Osama bin Laden (if he's still alive) would travel from Afghanistan to show up to that event. Boom, war's over.

So when you go to vote this November, vote for change. Vote for Sweden make-outs. Vote for Andrew WK.

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Photoshop Flailing: How to stay in business after the meltdown

Decided to partake in the weekly reader photo submissions at Cracked.com. They've asked people to come up with ways companies can stay in business after the financial meltdown, and I've been more than happy to oblige.

The way I see it, you can either substitute cheaper goods, thus reducing the cost of your product...

I bet no one will even know the difference.
Offer less services for the same amount of money...

This freaking thing would still cost $500 and be sold out on launch day.
Or make your product even that much more irresistible.

Great, now it's even MORE addictive.

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Samba de Hell - Sega hates you

WHY?!?It pains me that I've come to this conclusion, but after a few days now with Samba de Amigo I'm left with no alternate explanation: Sega hates you.

Let me explain myself first. Since the 16-bit era, I've been a Sega fanboy. But it seems like once Sega killed the Dreamcast, and Sega turned into a software company, their products took a turn for the worse. No game has since wowed me, and with the exception of Super Monkey Ball (and its sequels), and maybe the Sonic Rushes for the DS, I can't think of any Sega game that has even been worth my time.

Throughout these troubled times, my fanboyism kept thinking of excuses on how this could be. Sega's games were sub-par, but they were at least trying to move things in a new direction, right? Surely, you can't fault them for failing at tinkering with winning formulas in hopes that they becomes winning-er formulas.

Enter Samba de Amigo for the Wii. This was a game that I was really looking forward to as it was one of my favorite games on the Dreamcast. I've put in about 3 hours into it, which is approximately 2 more than any sane human should. It's not that it's completely terrible - it isn't. It's obvious some of the old monkey-maraca magic is there, and I've had fleeting moments of ecstasy playing it.

But the problem lies in the controls. Anything difficulty over Medium is mind-bogglingly asinine. You can't accurately control what's a high-, medium-, or low-shake of the maracas when the beats come at you quickly. You simply can't control your maracas.

It got so bad I had to put the game down because the urge to strangle myself with the wiimote-nunchuck cord was overwhelming.

Seriously, Sega, 1 hour of play testing would have told you this was horrible. Not mediocre, horrible. 1 hour of play testing would have told you that this game should not have been released. Maybe it's a limitation with the controllers, I don't know... but there is no reason this game should have ever been released unless you truly hate your customers.

Which I now suspect you do.

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MST3K, RiffTrax and you

Mystery Science Theater 3000 was an supremely awesome show. A couple of wise cracking robots and a guy are stuck in space watching the worst movies ever. Of course, they're not content just watching it, and add their own really funny commentary to it. Sounds kinda hokey on paper, but it was truly brilliant.

If you haven't seen it, you need to. There's a lot of episodes hosted right now out on Google Video. Seriously, go watch it now.

And when you're done with that take a gander at RiffTrax, something a friend of mine had alerted me to. It's made by the same people that did MST3K (as well as others), where they have created commentary tracks for current and popular movies. You purchase the mp3s and play them at the same time you'd start the movie.

I've literally just spent about 30 minutes watching their free sample videos. If they're any indication of the quality of the whole 70+ riffs they have out there, I'm definitely going to have to try it out in the not too distant future. I mean, they riff on Raiders of the Lost Ark for crying out loud!

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Kids need more moral fiber to keep their morals regular

A hot-button issue for me in this coming presidential campaign is the decline in morals and virtues among children these days. The news is rife with school shootings, teen pregnancy, and drug abuse. The news scares me, and I want someone make the bad stories disappear. So far, neither candidate has proposed anything in their platforms that will do that.

What I want to see is one of the candidates make sweeping reforms of the schools. Specifically, I want a Wheel of Morality installed in every school:

That way, kids would be dispensed random life lessons necessary for proper moral development. I'm talking lessons like:

• People in glass houses should get dressed with the lights out.
• Do not back up. Severe tire damage.
• If you can't say something nice you're probably at the Ice Capades.
• Never ask what hot dogs are made of.

I'm not going to explain why, because it's pretty self-explanatory, but this is exactly what kids need and I believe will help get America back on track. If any candidate can promise me a Wheel of Morality in every public school, they will have my vote.

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Greetings from the LHC!

So the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is something that I'm simultaneously excited for, and soiling-myself scared about. Sure, it promises to advance our very fundamental understanding of the universe and could possibly bring a lot of benefits to any number of world industries.

But there's also the chance we're going to wipe out all of humanities existence. After all, we're trying to create a mini big bang here, folks. This is something mankind hasn't witnessed and really doesn't know what to expect. While we've survived a dry run (yay!) on 9/10, we actually start the potential doomsday causing particle colliding sometime in Spring 2009, due to planned winter shutdown and now an equipment malfunction.

Wikipedia, as usual, does a better job of explaining the LHC than I do. Granted many leading scientists claim that the chance of is tolerably low (on the 1 in 50 million order of magnitude), I really would hate to win the unlucky lottery here.

So I whipped out photoshop and made a postcard from the LHC. Enjoy!

Click on the postcard for a higher-resolution version
The joke stems from something that made the reddit rounds, about a guy who was harassing the fleshlight customer service chat function saying he "accidentally a fleshlight". It was frigging hysterical, but I can't seem to find the images anywhere (they seem to be taken down).

FYI: don't look up either fleshlight or "accidentally a fleshlight" while you're at work.

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Choose your own update adventure!

Feck I had a lot to do today, so I never really got around to posting anything tonight as originally planned. Instead, you can choose one or both of the following for your reading/viewing pleasure:

1) A hilariously bad 80's Wendy's rap about burgers and grills:



2) My Toastmaster's speech that I spent a good chunk of this evening writing. It's a persuasive speech meant to convince people that the Paulson $700 billion dollar bailout is a bad idea (hint: It is). You can find it, if you're interested, after the break.

I’m not one to debate politics, but there is one issue right now facing lawmakers that I feel demands our attention. Show of hands, how many people are aware that right now, in light of all that is going on in the credit and mortgage crises, that there is a proposed 700 billion dollar bailout planned? By the end of this speech I hope you’ll agree with me that the current proposed bailout is the wrong way to fix the economy’s woes.


Before we talk about the remedy, let’s take a quick look at the ailment: a lot of expensive mortgages that people couldn’t afford were being written on the assumption they could refinance when their houses went up in value. When the housing bubble this was all predicated on burst, suddenly people are stuck with mortgages they can’t afford and default on them. What were finding out now is that a lot of major financial institutions (which thankfully ING is not among) were highly leveraged with these bad mortgages and it’s causing all sorts of serious liquidity issues in the market as all of this bad debt has to be written off. There’s some additional naked short selling of stocks exacerbating the issue, but that’s it in a nutshell.

So if there’s a credit crunch, a logical step would be to inject liquidity into the market right? On the surface, that sounds like a sound approach. And on the surface, it is. However, it’s the execution of this idea that makes the proposed bailout a bad idea.


The current proposed bailout plan calls for the Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson to use $700 billion dollars of taxpayer money to fix the economy. That comes out to about $2,300 dollars per person - $2,300 of my money, $2,300 of your money, and your money and your money. And with this money of ours, his only directives are to:

“1) providing stability or preventing disruption to the financial markets or banking system and 2) protecting the taxpayer”

These are vague and overreaching goals, with absolutely no definition of what success is for these directives. What are we to measure against? How do we know we used the $700 billion correctly? Especially since it’s my money (yours too) that is being thrown around, I’d like to know how it was used and why it was good it was used that way.


And the oversight on this is negligible: the only requirement Paulson has to report to anyone is a report to Congress 3 months after the act in enacted and semiannually after that. The format and nature of these reports are not even defined in this piece of legislation. Paulson gets to set his own price for the assets that he’ll be purchasing on our behalf, even if we’re purchasing at a premium. And the absolute kicker is, and I’m quoting from the proposed legislation:

“Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.”

Basically Secretary Paulson gets a free pass on whatever he does. He’s not going to be held responsible for any of his actions in the bailout. This is something I’m not comfortable with.


And let’s not forget what kind of message this bailout sends. Without any oversight, and without any accountability in the execution of the bailout, basically we’re saying to corporations “hey, you can screw up, and if you screw up on a large enough scale, we the taxpayers will bail you out”. What incentive does the market have to succeed if the US Government is just going to help it out?


We are in unprecedented times, and I wish I knew the right way out of it. I don’t. But I do know this proposed bailout is not it and I urge you to get involved. Write your congressmen and women and ask them to look into alternatives. At the very least demand accountability. Demand transparency. Demand they not to allow this plan to be enacted. It’s your money – make sure it gets used wisely.

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Samba de Amigo

I have to admit, I'm a sucker for rhythm based video games. There's just something about the genre, that when you get into it - I mean, really into it - it's almost like the controller in your hands dissolves away and you're just outputting pure rhythm. When that happens, the part of my brain that controls pure joy is activated to unhealthy levels.

This is why I'm super excited for Samba de Amigo coming out for the Wii on Tuesday. Samba de Amigo was a game that, back in the Dreamcast's heyday, I couldn't get enough of. It's infectious blend of songs and light-heartedness belied a very addictive game with a lot of depth and replayability. The whole premise was that you would shake maracas in time with songs. Lacking the maraca controllers (like I did), even hitting the right combinations of buttons on the Dreamcast controller was a blast.

Gearbox Software, who are not the original Sonic Team that made the Dreamcast game, hope to recreate and improve upon the Dreamcast version, using the Wii's remove and nunchuck as maracas. Couple that with additional downloadable songs, an online leaderboard and a songlist that is over twice what the Dreamcast game was... well, I'm pretty excited.

I just hope they can pull it off. So far, the early reviews of the game say that there are problems with the controls at higher difficulties. I guess I'll find out for myself on Tuesday.

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The internet on hard mode

This will help.The below is a link to really screw with your browser. It starts you off at Google's homepage, but your screen is shaking it left and right constantly. Browse like you would normally... it renders most everything perfectly, though I do know it can't handle flash video and doesn't play nice with YouTube.

http://thedisagreeinginternet.com/

Get ready for headaches and eyestrain! Well, more headaches and eyestrain than usual, at least. This is the internet on hard mode.

From a technical perspective, I'm really curious how this was created. I have no idea how to get the browser to shake like that, and I wonder if you could get it to do any other tricks. Like move in random directions, or map it to mouse movement (how cool would that be?).

Also, the browser's url and titles are hijacked and never change. Yet every page I visit acts like it would (except for the flash video/youtube issue mentioned above)... even when I go to look at the source code of some really simple pages like has the large hadron collider destroyed the world yet show that the title of the page shouldn't be "the disagreeing internet".

Looking at the page source code and spending about 15 minutes of searching online haven't yielded any insight. Anyone out there have an idea?

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TF2 Comic: Based on a true story

Using Garry's mod, I decided to make a TF2 comic based on something that actually happened to me this past weekend.

Apologies if there are any brightness/lighting issues... this was waaayyy more time consuming than I had originally thought it would have been, and I'm certainly still no expert at Garry's Mod. After many tries, and being more nit-picky than I had ever thought I could be, I settled on the below. I have a new found respect for people who can create comics (drawing them or otherwise) on a regular basis.

Click the image for the high-res version.

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John McCain gets Barackroll'd

Ahh, the lighter side of politics... you know, the side that people completely fabricate.

Ok, the side that people completely fabricate and actually make you laugh.

OK, OK, the side that people completely fabricate and actually make you laugh on purpose.

Listen, just watch this video:

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Shotgun blast of content 3: This time, it's personal

Every so often I have a bunch of little odd ends and thoughts I can't otherwise flesh out into a post. So, to fit several square pegs into a round hole...

• Looking over the site's statistics when I had my 100th post, I took note of what keywords were directing people to my site. A certain fair-haired forensics boss from the Miami police department is far away the biggest draw to this site, followed by queries of The Unwind.
  
  For those of you who got here by some odd query (like "philosophical questions like 'if a tree falls in a forest does it make a sound?'"), let me welcome you to The Unwind... We're always here to disappoint!



• I think I want to see what other odd keywords I can get to attract hapless individuals valued readers. When I can get people to come to The Unwind for extreme underwater basket weaving, I know I've got it made!



• That last bullet point contained a reference to one of my favorite web comics out there, Wasted Talent. Penned by Angela Melick, it's a very random outlook on events as seen through the eyes of a Canadian female engineer. Yes, Canadian female engineers are real, and they're pretty darn funny too.
  
  You may need to have been swimming in the deep end of these here internets to fully appreciate it, but I highly recommend you check it out.



• There's going to be a new animated Space Balls series on G4 later this month. I'm... surprisingly speechless.



• SOMEONE KILLED COOKIE MONSTER!

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TF2 Achievement Generator

Thanks to 1Fort, I came across a TF2 achievement generator. You too can create your own achievements to pretend you'll mindlessly farm unlock. It's pretty comprehensive... you can create locked, unlocked, and progress achievements; you can use logos right from the game, or import your own. It's pretty cool, and definitely worth a look see.

http://teamfortress2.fr/achievements_eng.php

Here are a few I whipped up:

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