I thought I had seen a lot of amazing golf shots before, but this one by Frank “Fuzzy” Zoeller tops them all.

periodic table of controllers

Originally uploaded by Pixel Fantasy

An epic piece of geekdom, Flickr user Pixel Fantasy has created a periodic table of controllers. Take a look-see and you’re bound to recognize at least one of those genius button layouts.

Last night the director, Tim Smit, of What’s in the Box appeared on television in Holland regarding his viral short film.   He discussed the details of how the film was produced saying that it cost “150 Euro and a pizza.”  He plans to do a 90 minute film in the same style, reporting that he has been approached by Fox and various other studios.

The other major new updates is that the description YouTube video was changed yesterday into an ASCII 6, and earlier today it was changed into a 5.   Something big might be planned for March 29th, but who knows what… hopefully a new video, I want to know what’s really in the box.

Spotted on YouTube a few days ago, by user TimSmit, a video titled, “What’s in the Box? – Test Film 2009,” has many people wondering exactly what it is (video below).  It uses sounds and some assets from Half Life 2, and the music is from Lost.  But this 9-minute short film raises more questions than the average indie flick.  Is this a new viral teaser for Half Life 3?  Or is it just a visual effects test.   Partway through the video, the ticker reads, “largest single collapse in history since Black Mesa,” which is referrering to the incident in the Half Life universe.   Another thing that adds to the confusion, the top corner of a strange ASCII square of the videos information, and a link to whatsinthebox.nl, titled, “Soon the world will find out,” which is only a box with a question mark in it that occasionally flickers and turns red when you mouse over it. Now being a little bit of a detective, I found the following commented in the page source:

Every medium, as its ancestors
Every pro, has his anti’s, now you think about that

This seems to be related to how the page itself is written – as though half of the page is missing.  The background of the flashing cube also has words on it, if you look very closely.  With some photoshop manipulation it seems they’re words to a Tenacious D song.   The flash object, “pro.swf” is stored in a segment called “proPaine”, and further down there is another section called “antiPaine”, but this section is empty.   Maybe this half will be filled in later?  Trying to load anti.swf results in a 404, but trying other common file types leads to this image, which appears to be the mathematical definition of volume of a cube, and the rotation of a hypercube in 4 space.  The m(n)=1/2 n(n^3+1) appears to be some sort of definition for the 2n sides and the .75(sqrt2)=1.06066 is Prince Rupert’s Cube.  Somehow these three parts are all related.  The text behind the cube is taken from an academic paper on solar panels, which can be found here.  The only difference is that the two percents are changed but this text appears to be unimportant as it is only background.

There’s also a discrepancy in the naming of the film — on YouTube it is simply, “What’s in the in Box?” whereas on the website it says, “What is in the Box?”  The copywrite date on the site also says 2007.  So perhaps this is reused material?  Small errors, but every clue might be important at this point.

Others contend that this may simply be a test of visual effects that has pulled assets from Half Life 2.  But if that were the case, wouldn’t the author simply state that? Instead of alluding to a “Mystery of Mysteries?”   Whatever this video is, it is certainly interesting.    Slashfilm is reporting that this was filmed in Nijmegen, Netherlands, which means there’s probably no relation to Valve.  A little bit of YouTube examinations shows that there’s 4 videos on the account’s channel, one of which is the Mythbusters PhoneBook fan video, and some more searching shows that two students from Radboud University in the Netherlands won a contest to get to meet the Mythbusters.  Their names? Tim Smit and Steven Roeters, the two names attributed on the whatsinthebox.nl website.     In the other 3 videos on the account a tilted square with a ? mark in it can be seen in various places.  All hope of a Half Life 3 teaser seems dead now… but wait!

Gamespy is reporting…

Alas, the “What Is In The Box” video is just another project created by members of the rabid Half-Life community. We spoke with Vice President of Marketing Doug Lombardi today, and he went on record about the fact that neither of the videos were made or comissioned by Valve. “The Box video was a cool piece from the community. Two in just a few weeks,” said Lombardi “I hope there’s more on the way.”

Of course, that doesn’t really answer the question that we’re all dying to know: just what is in that box?!?

Damnit! Valve doesn’t even know!   So this is just an awesome fan-made video.  But what is in the goddamn cube?  A user on the uF forums appears to have figured out the relation of the equations.

By seeding a value of 1<n<1.0389, these 3 equations can be used as a finite or infinite loop. At each iteration, the value n (half the side length of the cube) is fed into the growth equation M(n) to produce a larger side length value which will be within the 1:1.06066 ratio of Prince Rupert’s Cube Problem. According to Prince Rupert, this means the new, larger volume cube, can actually pass through the original, smaller volume cube. By repeating this process, a series of sequentially larger volume cubes can be inserted into smaller volume cubes. If this series of equations is meant to be viewed as a related sequence, the answer to the question “What’s in the Box?” may be: a whole bunch of bigger boxes.

So there we have it.  This is a developing story and I will update this post as more information becomes avaliable.

You know those days that everything just feels a bit off, one way or the other.  Well, today I feel like my world is backwards.  It’s 2009 and everything must have dramatically shifted sometime when I was unconscious or something to that effect.  Just a few years ago, the world, much less my world, was a different scene.  I was in high school.  I was living at home (yeehaw!).  Only the huge bulky baseball players were being accused of using steroids.  People were sure Michael Jackson’s career was over.  The U.S. economy was doin’ alright, so I’m told.  I know sometime in the past two years the stocket (stock market) peaked.  The president was white.  The American people didn’t trust or like their government, especially former president George W. Bush.  “Young people” didn’t care too much for national and international affairs aside from P.Diddy telling them to go out and do something.

Today things are just plain opposite.  I’m not in high school anymore.  I live a thousand miles away from home.  Even the overpaid not-that-great baseball player Alex Rodriguez did steroids, and then lied about it.  (Personally, I prefer that all baseball players do steroids, I’d like to see a 1000ft home run sometime.)  And look how great Michael Jackson is doing.  In 2005 his only dates scheduled were court dates, now he has a sold out stint in London, including an extensive contract that we don’t even know how awesome it is.  It really is mindboggeling, but I’m okay with change.  But I’m not so sure about this…

I thought that America would learn…wait, before I continue, I’m going to just explain it.

We all know who won the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign.  He ran an amazingly impressive campaign.  His budget for the campaign was as spectacular as his budget proposal is today.  His national tour seemed to be more of some spectacular event put on by AEG or some other promoter.  Every day I was seeing massive crowds at his rallies on the news.   It was in my former city of Portland that his rally drew a record amount of people, 75000 (still just saw it on the news).  It blew my mind to see that kind of devotion, especially at a time when people were so skeptical of big government.  And the people there were my friends.  People my age.  Even people that couldn’t vote love him.

It’s a far cry from the overwhelming skeptecism from across the board during the last administration, but for all past administrations really.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a mountain of faith placed in a U.S. president before.  “Oh my god, I looooove Obama.”  I hear that all the time, is he the new Tom Cruise or something?  I didn’t realize that political leaders were such statues of fandom.  That’s what’s scary about this change in our world today.

I feel like the fact that Obama was able to use and envigorate his role as celebrity has given him the approval of the American people.  I’m not saying that he’s doing a bad job, because really nobody knows, we have to wait and see.  Like he said, it’s about patience.  But people in America trust celebrities for whatever reason.  And one that can also be taken seriously is the greatest of them all.  America has almost just shunned away a lot of its God given right to question itself and those who run it.  Every day I run myself into some argument with an avid Obama fan about something without trying to.  The people who are so avid that they just skim through as many things about what he’s doing as they can and then regurgitate it to me as their argument.  They thrive on talking about it, I swear, he’s “…bigger than Jesus.” (thanks John Lennon.)

I feel like I need to end this now.  All I’m asking is please, don’t put so much blind trust in somebody.  We as a country have been duped many times, don’t be fooled by your desperate need for just a “change” from George W. Bush.

Goin in,

Cutter

America has always been a giver.  And supposedly what does America have more of than anyone else?  That’s right, money.  We’re the “richest” country in the world.  So why not give some money away.  We give it to everyone in our individual state, everyone in our country and for whatever reason everyone around the world.  There’s nothin’ wrong with helping people out.  And there’s nothin’ wrong with helping worthy causes.  But why not take some for yourselves?

Well, apparently America did concoct something a while ago for individual Americans to give money to so that they could have it later when they wanted/needed, the latter being more appropriate.  It was called Social Security.  Yes, I’m sure some of you have heard of it.  It didn’t really work out all that well, having been drowned out by the federal government and turned into a huge financial massacre.  But let me tell you this, America kept on giving. And now in this pretty fuckin’ crazy state that our economy is in, what do I see?  I see Americans opening up their wallets to the ones who need it most.  The homeless.  The ones who have been so thrashed by our dirty government and pittling economy that they have lost their jobs, houses, probably wives and maybe even children (unless you see them out on the corner with their hard working fathers).  Americans are still providing the hobos and hustlers of this country with steady cash flow, even in the face of this recession.  But how much do they really need it?  I’ve seen a consistent good will towards man attitude from the general populous of America my entire almost twenty year life.  What I’ve seen in the past year in the homeless population has been a little distilling.

I used to be able to go to the mall and come back 5-6 hours later and still see the same literally starving, heartbreaking poor man on the same damn corner.  Now, I walk into a Burger King and what do I see?  A meeting.  A meeting without any Burger King employees.  Without any employees period.  They are the homeless and the jobless, or so they seem.  I believe its more of a 40-60 split of people who really are homeless and starving and people who have cracked the system at these meetings. They tend to have marked territories, or extremely complex mapping grids designed for maximum efficiency.  Several different shifts on several different corners.  For the record, it can be done…living on the streets that is.  The people who have cracked the system are the ones, some of whom I’ve spoken to and have maintained friendships with, who are just like you and me.  They’re the suburbans, they’re the part time babysitters, they’re the bored housewives and they’re overly smart teenagers who have found out how to avoid getting a job.  Some of these teenagers report bringing in cash flow measuring $50-75 per hour.  That’s a better job than most Americans have.   Had.  These rabid teens say its the middle aged women that provide them with the most income. “They don’t even care what its for,” said one of the young schemers.  Its a lucrative business, not having a job. It’s as if they’re living on Social Security.  “Paid for by your community.”  These people have found your Social Security.

For those of you getting laid off…you know where to look.

I reworked the wallpaper page that was previously at /windpapers/ to allow for quicker visual scanning of each wallpaper. I’ve also added over 50 new ones to bring the total up to over 100 wallpapers specifically sized for the MSI Wind, or any other of the 10″ screen netbooks. Eventually I will be putting up wallpapers in 1680×1050 and additional 1024×600 wallpapers.

[Wallpapers 1024x600]

An auction for the self dubbed “Newton MessagePad 3000″ beta iPhone is nearly over, with a high bid of $2,295.

For all that you get a phone that doesn’t have a ringtone, can’t send text messages, has a plastic screen and is an unforgettable piece of Apple history… I hope whoever buys this really likes beta software.

Plus, Newton MessagePad 3000 is a much better name than iPhone. Maybe Steven Seagal will use this incarnation to save another runaway train or other fast moving vehicle in Under Siege 3.

Update: Steven Seagal’s Newton scene here.

I get a lot of newsletters in my slew of e-mails, but the one I really love to read is my Nickelodeon Newsletter.  I just got it, along with some assorted Google News alerts.   Can you believe that the Kid’s Choice Awards are coming up again?  I can’t wait to see who gets coated in slime!  The real source of happiness from it though is that Chris Brown, upstanding citizen and wonderful musical talent, is nominated for favorite male singer and favorite song.  I know who I’m voting for!  And parents, if you love your kids, you’ll make sure you have them vote for him too.  Onto my news alerts…

Hm…apparently Chris Brown is also charged with two counts of assault after beating his girlfriend, sexy sensation Rihanna.  Well Chris, I may still vote for you, but I’ve got some words of honesty for you.  You stupid motherfucker, are you goddamn kidding me?  You had it made, you’re black, oddly successful, had a hottie and can obviously afford the luxuries in life along with a $50,000 bail.  Only a coward beats their girlfriend.  You need to stop listening to your gangbangin rapper buddies and start listening to Oprah and her friends.  That’s all I have to say.

Vote Chris Brown

Why do car washes have a 30 day refund limit? Can I go back on day 29 and say that my car isn’t clean anymore and that I would like a free wash?