Living in a Machine
When not writing fairly innocuous blog entries about geckos, I find myself getting sucked into things like puzzling, and this weekend was chockful of puzzle-related goodness, two glorious days of carefully controlled geekery.
The Game is coming, and we're been prepping for our ticket to glory. For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about, you can either go here, read my write-up from last year here, or just take my word for it and assume it involves a big group of nerds doing what we do best. In order to participate in this yearly event, you have to get a team of 6 or so together, send in an application, and be prepared to go without sleep for a couple of frantic days in the San Francisco Bay Area. This year, the application is asking for a video either of a reenactment of our favorite spy movies or a working Rube Goldberg machine. Despite not having any real engineering skills or mechanical knowhow, my team, S.P.I.E.S. (Sidney Poitier Is Extremely Sexy), decided it was a good idea to spend last Saturday constructing a Rube Goldberg machine.
It was amazing. I think I was probably on the brink of heart attack throughout the entire filming process, but it worked! Hopefully at some point, the video will be edited and we can put it online to share our monster baby with the world, but for now, just understand that besides using all the usual marbles, levers, and pulleys, we also had a rubber ducky, canned air, and fire. Setting it off for the first time was the most satisfying 6 seconds of my life. It took us all day and God knows how much duct tape, but we got that sucker to ring the bell, and it's all on camera, baby!
That said, Sunday was much quieter, and I could forget about puzzling and inefficient mechanisms. Yes, Sunday, the day of rest, perfect for doing homework or...playing Gateway II. *hangs head in shame* Oh, Anders Gustafsson...why do you do this to me? It looks like an innocent little game, with all kinds of shiny design awards pinned to it, but no, it's yet another little bundle of clever, soul-sucking puzzles. Haven't you put me through enough?! No more puzzles!
*sob*
Ex-excuse me...I...I have to go do a crossword...
The Game is coming, and we're been prepping for our ticket to glory. For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about, you can either go here, read my write-up from last year here, or just take my word for it and assume it involves a big group of nerds doing what we do best. In order to participate in this yearly event, you have to get a team of 6 or so together, send in an application, and be prepared to go without sleep for a couple of frantic days in the San Francisco Bay Area. This year, the application is asking for a video either of a reenactment of our favorite spy movies or a working Rube Goldberg machine. Despite not having any real engineering skills or mechanical knowhow, my team, S.P.I.E.S. (Sidney Poitier Is Extremely Sexy), decided it was a good idea to spend last Saturday constructing a Rube Goldberg machine.
It was amazing. I think I was probably on the brink of heart attack throughout the entire filming process, but it worked! Hopefully at some point, the video will be edited and we can put it online to share our monster baby with the world, but for now, just understand that besides using all the usual marbles, levers, and pulleys, we also had a rubber ducky, canned air, and fire. Setting it off for the first time was the most satisfying 6 seconds of my life. It took us all day and God knows how much duct tape, but we got that sucker to ring the bell, and it's all on camera, baby!
That said, Sunday was much quieter, and I could forget about puzzling and inefficient mechanisms. Yes, Sunday, the day of rest, perfect for doing homework or...playing Gateway II. *hangs head in shame* Oh, Anders Gustafsson...why do you do this to me? It looks like an innocent little game, with all kinds of shiny design awards pinned to it, but no, it's yet another little bundle of clever, soul-sucking puzzles. Haven't you put me through enough?! No more puzzles!
*sob*
Ex-excuse me...I...I have to go do a crossword...