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DIY: Prototyping fundamentals from MIT’s AI Lab

2010-01-04T04:16:40Z

MIT’s Tech TV has a great series of videos demonstrating the tools and equipment used in their Artificial Inteligence Lab’s machine shop. The video below is 40 minutes long, but they have hours more where this came from.

DIY: Make Presents Electronic Components

2010-01-03T22:39:53Z

If you watched the NASA soldering videos that I posted earlier and you’re now wondering what sort of things a person should be soldering, check out the Make Presents video series. Make contributor Collin Cunningham’s geeky explanation and exploration of various electronic components is both entertaining and educational.

Here is a Youtube playlist with all the Make Presents videos.

DIY: Solder like an astronaut

2010-01-03T22:40:55Z

NASA has a series of 6 very short videos explaining and demonstrating basic soldering techniques on their Radio Jove site. Well worth checking out if you need to solder electronics but have no clue what you’re doing.

Kick-Ass Teaser Trailer

2009-12-27T17:10:05Z

I saw this posted over at BoingBoing and after making my coworkers sit through it 4 times in 10 minutes decided I had to repost. The red band “mature audiences only” is for violence and a 12 year old girl using foul language. You have been warned.

Crystal Head Vodka

2009-12-22T17:02:16Z

Check out this video of Dan Aykroyd promoting Crystal Head Vodka. This unique spirit is quadruple distilled, triple filtered and then “filtered” through Herkimer diamonds. It comes in a crystal skull shaped bottle, which Dan describes in greater detail in the video. The sales pitch is 8 minutes long, but at 5 minutes in they start focusing on vodka rather then ghosts and mystery.

If you’re interested in how good the vodka is, see John Hodgman’s video review after the jump.

Driving in Boston: A visual guide

2009-06-19T16:06:03Z

I think this map sums up getting from point A to point B in Boston:

View Larger Map

In case the map or directions change in the future, here’s a screenshot of what the above map looked like on June 19th, 2009:

Swords and Soldiers for WiiWare

2009-06-16T03:40:30Z

I’ve been playing Swords and Soldiers on Nintendo WiiWare for the past week so. It’s billed as a “Sidescrolling, 2D Realtime Strategy game”, where the player takes control of one of 3 different factions: the Aztecs, the Vikings, or the Chinese. The generalization of real world races comes across as slightly racist at times, but Romino Games wasn’t going for accuracy. According to their February 8th press release:

“We’ve done plenty of research into the historic background of the three factions. And then we threw all of it out of the window, but made up some entertaining bits which seemed sort of more fun. Finally, we added some other totally irrelevant funny bits about hot sauce and bolted them on for maximum absurdity.”

And therein lies the first element of the game’s charm. It’s goofy and offbeat humor are less offensive then the cartoons I grew up with 20 years ago. The game’s lingo speaks to a younger generation of internet uses without alienating other games. There are achievements names like “4 the Horde!”, “RickRolled” and Viking’s saying “nom nom” as they eat barbecued meat.

The second element is the seemingly limited control you have over the on screen action. The player has 3 methods of interacting with the game:

Building Units
Casting Spells
Choosing Paths – certain levels only

When you build a unit, it immediately starts marching towards the enemy base. You can’t make it wait for more units, and you can’t have it speed up or slow down to keep pace with other unit types. This necessitates building just the right unit at just the right time, especially when resources are limited. For most of the spells you can cast, you’ll have to to choose a target. On certain levels you click an arrow to direct your troops to take either the high road or the low road. Often this doesn’t matter at all, but it can be used strategically to bypass the opponent’s forces, so it’s something to keep an eye on.

Initially such limited controls seems like they would make the game boring. Indeed, a player can button-mash their way through the Viking campaign as they get used to creating different types of units, upgrading, and casting spells. The Aztec campaign, which I have yet to complete, offers much more challenge, with many stages requiring well-timed spells and units and I imagine that the Chinese campaign will only offer more varied and exciting game play.

My bottom line: For the hours of fun an varied gameplay Swords & Soldiers offers, it’s well worth the $10.

Garfunkel and Oates

2009-05-18T20:34:47Z

Garfunkel and Oates. I don’t remember what I was reading when I first saw the name, but I’m hooked like velcro. Before I go on, here’s a video of them playing one of my favorites, Me, You and Steve (warning: contains some curse words):

The duo consists of Kate Micucci, who you may have seen on Scrubs and Riki Lindolme who you had a brief role on Buffy: The Vampire Slayer among other things. I’m not sure how to describe them… nerd-folk? As I write this, they have 9 songs available for download on their website, all of which I’ve downloaded and listened to repeatedly. Being nerdy, I value wit above all other virtues, and Garfunkel And Oates’ lyrics do not disappoint. I’m hopeful for an album that I can give them money for and a tour that includes the east coast. In the mean time, give them some folkonomic love; download their songs, and watch their videos

If you’re like me and find yourself frothing for more, Riki made a short that uses 3 of Garfunkel and Oates’ songs called Imaginary Larry which I adore and also put some of her own songs on her website. Kate has her own songs on CD Baby, mySpace and iTunes. You can follow Kate or the band on Twitter.

Let’s Pizza

2009-03-30T02:26:20Z

Unilever developed a pizza vending machine that bakes fresh made pies in under 3 minutes. While I’m sure it’s not as good as going to a pizzeria, I’d love to the option of having pizza right now.

Youtube Music Video Mashup

2009-03-14T17:36:30Z

This video is hot. Essentially, this guy Kutiman grabbed youtube clips of people playing instruments and mixed them together. If you haven’t already, press the play button. If you aren’t digging it right away, wait until about 45 seconds in, when it really takes off. Who knew youtube could be a platform for jam band music videos?

At the moment he’s got seven videos in all, plus a “making of” video, all of which are worth watching and can be seen at Thru-You [via Gizmodo]

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