Bend your brain with Perspective

The students of the DigiPen Institute of Technology have a knack for turning out amazing, challenging games. Valve Software's a fan - they hired the creators of Narbacular Drop to turn their game into Portal, and pulled in the makers of Tag to join the dev team for Portal 2... What's more, when students release their projects, DigiPen makes them available as full, free and legal downloads.


Well, browsing through TheCHIVE resulted in coming across Perspective, a mind-blowing puzzler which combines 2D and 3D action. Like The Fourth Wall, another project by DigiPen students*, a click of a button changes the game mechanics. In The Fourth Wall, the screen is frozen to stop the level from scrolling and change it to a wrap-around system... if you don't get my drift, download the game for free and see for yourself. Anyway, in Perspective, a click changes the world from 3D to 2D, and back again...


Can't make a jump across a long pit of lava? Move in 3D until the pit looks small, change to 2D, and just jump across... Here, look, just watch this video and see what I'm blathering about:





As yet, the game isn't available for download, but for goodness' sake, bookmark the game page for when it is! The site presently says Fall 2012, so keep an eye out.


(Thanks to TheCHIVE for highlighting this one!)


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* Both projects, incidentally, have a common link: Logan Fieth.

An unusual way to survive the Zombie Apocalypse...

What with increased talk of the Zombie Apocalypse, we were very amused by Doghouse Diaries' take on how to stay safe:

At the very least, there's a video game in this...

The small size of the toilet aperture is a little unnerving, though... Maybe I'm over-thinking this.


Source: Doghouse Diaries
Found at: Nerd Approved

Guinness' novel way to present a QR code

Guinness' advertising bods came up with an interesting way of getting their product talked about: pint glasses specially printed with a QR code...

When the glass is empty, the code's unreadable:

... and even if you fill it with (for example) beer, the code still can't be read:

But if you were to fill it with a dark fluid - Hey! What about filling it with GUINNESS? - then all becomes clear:

Then, provided you're still able to hold your smartphone up to the thing without bobbing and weaving all over the place, having the phone scan the QR code apparently results in status updates on Twitter, 4square, and Facebook - as well as downloading coupons, inviting your friends to join you, and even downloading exclusive Guinness content.

Of course, if you're having a sly one (or three) during your lunch hour, the last thing you'd want is for your drink to snitch on you...

Picture source: The Dieline

Where we found out about it: Boing Boing

3D printed chocolate brain... yummy!

Inition, a 3D-printing company based in the Shoreditch district of London, England, recently decided to have a little play with the MRI scan of a colleague's brain: They used the resulting data to create a chocolate replica!

Mmmmm.... brains.

What's more, they even went to the trouble of providing a how-to on the process, over at Instructables, together with a Creative Commons-released copy of the MRI scan in question, which is rather nice of them.

The Zombie Apocalypse probably just became more delicious.

(Side note: I was going to use "Brains are quite rich in cholesterol" as a headline, quoting Laura Shigihara's lyrics from the game Plants vs. Zombies, but it turns out that even milk chocolate doesn't actually have that much "bad" cholesterol, so that made a mess out of that idea.)

Thanks to Boing Boing for pointing out this awesomeness!

A functioning Portal turret gun!

A student at Penn State University decided, for the finals of his Advanced Mechatronics class, to build a fully-functioning turret gun from Portal - though this one only fires NERF bullets (not sure whether to be unhappy or relieved about that). He does say, in the video below, that he's still to create the proper shell for it, which is why it looks a little odd.

There's only one logical step up from this: GLaDOS. Just make sure to use NERF Neurotoxin, okay?

Thanks to Geeks Are Sexy for bringing this one to our attention!

Doctor Who on floppy drives

Delia Derbyshire, the woman who made the iconic arrangement of Ron Grainger's theme tune to Doctor Who, would have been 75 this week. Her arrangement was the first work to be made with entirely electronic means, so it's perhaps appropriate that this tribute is also entirely electronic... albeit on floppy drives...

The Flavorwire article about Delia - one of many online articles which featured the above video - also linked to a short video showing Delia's creative process. Watch that clip, embedded below, and tell me she wasn't a badass at what she did:

Delia Derbyshire, we salute you!

TARDIS for sale or rent...

It's inevitable, when you have a talent contest, especially something like Britain's Got Talent, that there are going to be... unusual acts. For example, why haven't they buzzed off that snarky so-and-so who sits at the end of the panel each week?


Well, this is definitely unusual: Martyn Crofts appeared on BGT with a saucepan on his head, and - without any electronic wizardry - proceeded to parody "King of the Road" as a Dalek.

And, sure enough, that nasty man on the right-hand end of the desk still needs buzzing off...


Thanks to BoingBoing for sourcing that little nugget!

Post-apocalyptic bowling for charity!

There are many skills that you need in order to survive the Zombie Apocalypse: a strategic mindset; being handy with a shotgun; ten-pin bowling... Wut? Well, I guess it makes sense: You could knock down a few zombies and slow them down for a bit - plus those bowling balls are pretty damn heavy!


Anyway, in the latest round of The Nerdist's Celebrity All-Star Bowling, Chris Hardwick and his team of avid nerds take on the survivors of The Walking Dead's zombie horde: Lauren Cohan (Maggie), Scott Wilson (Hershel), Steven Yeun (Glenn), and Robert Kirkman (series creator and Executive Producer). The Nerdist team, in its various incarnations (the line-up changes weekly, except for Mr Hardwick), is undefeated - but will The Walking Dead's team put a stop to that?


Without wanting to give out any spoilers, I can tell you that the trash-talking, which is pretty rife in each show once the alcohol starts flowing, reaches new heights (or lows) in this particular episode...

If you like what you see, check out the other CASB videos at The Nerdist's YouTube channel... And next week, Geek & Sundry takes on The Nerdist! Oh no, talk about divided loyalties!

One simply must catch them all, what?

Our lovely friend Siobhan has quite the talent for drawing, and she's done an impressively dapper Pikachu:

That said, one is inclined to wonder just what happens to Pikachu when he's had too many glasses of bubbly, what?

Build Your Own Large Hadron Collider!

Why should those boffins over at CERN have all the fun in searching for the Higgs-Boson particle? Here are some IKEA-style instructions for making your own Large Hadron Collider!

As Maggie Koerth-Baker explains over at BoingBoing, this is (of course) a joke, and was plastered on one of the walls at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Oh, well... back to the drawing board...

Set brain to stunned!

Thanks to the nice folks over at BoingBoing (one of my regular daily stops on the Interwebs), I saw this delightful creation: a working Star Trek phaser...

I think no more needs to be said, here... aside from I WANTS ONE.

War. War Never Changes.

I love the Fallout series, and courtesy of The CHIVE, here is your perfect desktop background!

Open your Vault Dweller's Survival Guide to page 1, please.

Can't you just feel yourself in the Vault right now, in your classroom ready to take the G.O.A.T.?  For the desktop appropriate size, and more excellent wallpapers, hit THIS.

LEGO Star Wars Organ

This is possibly one of the most amazing LEGO creations I've ever seen - and I've seen a few. As part of a German promotion for the 3D version of The Phantom Menace, a couple of professional LEGO builders (Builders of Sound) created a huge rotating drum featuring scenes from the movie. Oh, and that drum also happens to be linked to levers which play the Star Wars theme on an organ!

Of course, you can't get an idea of how it all works without a video, so here you go:

Thanks to Nerd Approved for bringing this to everyone's attention!