I’ve been playing around with Kerbal Space Program (in alpha, free to download) a bit over the last couple of days. I made a couple of videos because the game is so amazing.

This first video shows the evolution of a single rocket design through many iterations to one that is eventually successful.

I found an odd ship design when challenged to build a rocket out of only solid rocket boosters. The ship seems to dance like one of those flowers from the movie Fantasia.

The other day I saw a sign holder, unenthusiastically holding his sign, jogging back and forth in place. Is that supposed to make me want pizza? Well… I thought about it for a few seconds before whipping out my phone and recording a video of him:

After I put that on YouTube, I noticed in the recommended videos section (aka the section that leeches my soul) another video of a Little Caesars pizza sign holder:

If there is one profession we need more of, it’s super awesome Little Caesar’s Sign Holder Guys.

So, somehow the Meet the Spy video from Valve’s tactical team combat based shooter Team Fortress 2 was leaked.  Anyway, here it is:

I was looking at my “recommended videos” on YouTube the other day, and guess which videos it recommended for me? Two Rick Astely songs, “Never Gonna Give You Up” aka “Rick Roll” and “Whenever You Need.”  Now I know I’ve been rick rolled a few times, but enough times for it to recommend similar, or in this case, the same, video to me?

Sorry for the bad quality of the screen cap, mspaint sucks at compressing GIFs.  Also what the hell is with the other three videos it recommended for me?

If Those One Billion iPhone Apps Were A Village Of One Hundred

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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.

Woot’s eCommerce eKommissar Larry Stalin sent me a robo-email detailing a Woot-Off tonight.  Let’s hope they return to form, and have some good deals and items.  Maybe I’ll get my bag of crap tonight, or as they call them on the Woot forums, bandolier of carrots.

WOOT, INC. INTERNAL EMAIL
STAFF EYES ONLY

Attention Woot employees -

We are now entering the final phase of preparations for the Woot-Off planned for midnight tonight. This is when we depart from our usual deal-a-day model and sell one product after another, offering a new deal as soon as the previous one sells out. For some reason, Woot members like zulfy26 continue to have high expectations for this event. We must make every effort to ensure that they feel disappointed and betrayed.

All workers should be physically and mentally straining to make this Woot-Off a success, like every muscle in a wolf’s body strains to capture and devour its prey. We expect total compliance with the following objectives:

• Make sure the stables are thoroughly cleaned and the horses properly groomed and shod. As you know, Commander Rutledge prefers to lead us on horseback during Woot-Offs. Charge!
• Customer Service department: all vacation requests for this week and next are approved. If you have not filed a vacation request, take one anyway.
• The little green pills in the kitchen are there to keep you alert and working. Take as many as you need. Officially, Woot does not believe in the concept of “overdose”.
• Take at least one of our servers offline, just for laughs.
• Go to the landfill and dig up some more Sansa media players. If you see any Digipro Graphics Tablets (and you will), grab those, too.
• Place crap bags in company latrines so those orders can be “filled”. To this end, the company will provide free lunch today from El Feo, the filthiest burrito joint in Dallas. Do your worst, guys.
• Neutralize all negative thinking among our members. We simply cannot tolerate any more posts like “do not want” or “Woot-Off killer”. If electronic means like word filters and IP bans do not work, we must reactivate the rapid-response teams to physically eliminate all threats to our reputation.
• Last time, spot checks revealed that approximately 25% of products shipped are broken, incomplete, or excessively dirty. This is unacceptable. For this Woot-Off, defective shipments must make up at least 40%.
• Remind SmartPost that there’s no need to hurry on these orders. Prompt delivery makes our customers spoiled and argumentative. Let them learn humility and gratitude while they wait.

Above all, we must strive to make this Woot-Off even more tedious, disappointing, and lucrative than the last one. The employee who achieves the most toward this end will be rewarded with one brown Zune. Second place: two brown Zunes.

Forward into battle! Remember: to give one’s life for Woot is glorious!

Larry Stalin
eCommerce eKommissar
Woot, Inc.

THIS EMAIL WILL SELF-DESTRUCT IN 90 SECONDS

It’s awesome and sarcastic emails and blog posts like this that I keep shopping at Woot, also because they have good prices occasionally.