well... seeing as I made the youtube account to upload it there, as we cannot submit videos from tasvideos.org (they are bittorrent only), that would make sense. If that's frowned on here, I'll happily withdraw the submission. I posted it there because of the previous comment I made.

The video itself is by Genisto and the other fine people at tasvideos.org.

This reminds me of the "air" romhack someone did. Not only did they mod the levels to be insane puzzles like this video, but they changed the engine itself so you can jump even in the air. (infinite jumps)

It doesn't help.

The speedrun some people did of it is rather insane. Even with tools to re-record over the failures, it's still highly impressive.

Edit: never mind, I'll just sift it

Well, photovoltaic cells are neat, but they need to be a lot more efficient before they are useful on a wide scale. More importantly, though, they use a lot of nasty heavy metals like all semiconductors.

Also... I think it may be incorrect to say PV cells have less moving parts. The cells themselves are solid state, but you usually have to put them on some sort of moving panel to keep them pointed straight at the sun. If you know of a large-scale power plant design that gets around that, though, I'm interested in seeing it...

This tower still sounds like an interesting experiment.

Sigh... I never understood people's irrational fear of nuclear power. It usually centers around "big" events like Chernobyl and "long term" events having to do with the waste.

There's a lot of miss-information about both fears on the anti-nuclear side, though. Chernobyl was their, own fault - they shut down many hours of warnings and interlocks to try and run a test they were late on. The plant kept trying to shut itself down, and they overrode it. This is bad, but it's easily fixed with new designs. And as was also mentioned, even in the case of a huge failure, all modern reactors have containment shells.

The waste fear is particularly laughable, though. Most of this stuff was around in one from or another already - we just mined it out. More to the point, though, if it's dangerous, it's usable fuel! We can just keep burning it, until it finally decays to something that's fairly safe. We are barely touching the possible reactor types we could be using... I wonder if these types know that current coal plants put out more uranium waste than is used in all our nuclear reactors. That is the tragedy that should be shut down.

The kicker, though, is what to do without nuclear power. Shutdown the world and go without? (I know some neo-nippies that want that...) Use our current fossil-fuel power? Energy needs only go up in huge ways, and we need something. Solar/etc is nowhere near efficient enough yet. Nuclear power really is the green choice for the foreseeable future.

/sorry for the long post... @.@

that reminds me... I should go dig out my copy of Shiver of the Vampire. what's not to like about a movie with french castles, acid-rock, and vampires that have to strip for no reason in the middle of each fight scene?

"You'll make $1000 a night in t-shirt sales"

Exactly. As they said in Spaceballs, "Merchandising, Merchandising, Merchandising!"

A few free concerts and songs on your web page are advertising for you band, not the end-all product. Get the fans crazy about your stuff, and they'll beg to throw money at you.

while it seems like it's not practical, it's a prototype. Maybe we can learn from it to make a better version?

The big thing I like about it is it's utterly simple. Almost no moving or complicated parts, so perhaps the maintenance costs could be lower than traditional power plants? It looked like it wouldn't need much staff.

Also, the plants might be an interesting side benefit. Maybe not economical for a power station, but a power station plus a huge greenhouse? Maybe that could be exploited for something interesting...

While the game was, shall we say, less than stellar, the trick with mirrors to make it "look 3D" was rather well done. It's too bad some other game didn't really take that idea and make a game that was actually worth playing. (that is, not LaserDisk based)

the voices and instrumentation sounding in Mozart's head are communicated by some strange sort of psychic transfer to Salieri

I know they are (trying?) to be poetic here, but this is one of my favorite scenes ever put to film because of how not "psychic" it is. It's the best example I know of as to why studying music theory is important.

For one that has studied the theory and (spoken) language of music, saying lines like "violins, arpeggios, a descending scale in 8th notes, and then back to the ostinato again" is a highly accurate description of the violin piece for Voca Mei. He had said that it started in C with the vocal part earlier, so no more really needed to be said.

Such a well done movie, though...

I usually mention it in term of how to deal with "customer service" lines that are giving you the runaround, but it's just as relevant here for debt calls and such, too. The magic words that restore sanity to the interaction are:

"My attorney has instructed me to advise you that I am recording this call."

If you actually have the technology to do the recording, great, but it's not necessary in practice. Just informing them that they may be on the hook for things tends to make things much saner. It's a slightly mean way to put the fear of god back into them, so to speak, so I only used it if they have made the first runaround move. They get one or two chances, but then the prisoner's dilemma says to respond in kind, so this works.

I would guess that many of the tactics used by debt collectors are somewhat less than legal, so this will probably clean up their act fast.

Of course, nothing is as good as a registered letter with return-receipt saying "don't call me"...

head explody!

JTHM approves...

I love magicians like that... where even though I know exactly how he's doing it all, I still can't see the drops/reveals/misdirection/etc. He even had a really good story to use to put a spin on an old trick.

Slight of hand can be such a good art...

I loved having an MRI. I want a recording of that noise it makes... it had cool phase/flutter effects to it as the machine shifted to the different views. Of course, I am a freak that listens to MSBR/CCCC and other noise bands, so results may vary...

I have no idea how to actually get a stereo recording from the middle of the coil, though. It's not like you can bring any (metal) microphones anywhere near the machine.

"If I were you, I'd start running!"

"If you were me... you'd be good lookin'."

The Red Elvises are your favorite band. At least that's what their van says. I have to get one of those bass balalaikas.

wow... that was unexpected. A very well-done work that works a little bit different than the NIN and Cash versions.

I can safely say I never thought I'd see Kermit singing like that, but it works.

/goes to cry in the corner now