Meet the Medic

I've always been a fan of the "Meet the..." videos Valve does for its Team Fortress 2 game. There are nine different character classes in the game and Valve has created short animated films to introduce each one. Recently they released "Meet the Medic":


While the Medic is quite enjoyable, my favorite "Meet the..." is the Spy:


Considering Valve released this game in 2007, and recently made it free to play forever, it is amazing they are still spending time and money to promote it with such well-made animations. Most studios "forget" about their game 6 months after the release and move on to the next thing, while Valve continues to please its fans with treats like these. Just one final "Meet the..." video to wait for now...

Weird Job Interview Questions (brain teasers)

I am a few months late on this, but business sites published a list of the "Weirdest Interview Questions from 2010" earlier this year. Some are fun brain teasers, others are completely subjective questions with no right answer, and a few seem almost deviously presented to obtain information that interviewers can't legally ask ("what has happened in this country over the last 10 years" may offer some insight to political leanings).

Before reading the questions and then a select few of my personal responses, you must understand the purposes to questions like these. I've interviewed many candidates for computer engineer and various tech positions and questions like these help us get insight on a person's thought process and ability to "think outside the box". In an interview, a candidate does not have to answer the question with the correct answer (if there is only one), but seeing a candidate realize that there just isn't one answer to the question or ask for details which were intentionally omitted tells us they can adapt and try new methods to real life problems presented to them on the job. Sometimes they may give a wrong answer, but the thought process that took them there is what impresses us; and since they really only had 5 min or less to come up with the answer we understand that the first hypothesis is usually not correct but a stepping stone to finding the final answer if given enough time. (a self-motivated candidate who calls back a few days later with an updated answer after time to reflect on the question is even more impressive).

Few of the Weirdest Interview Questions from 2010:

If you were shrunk to the size of a pencil and put in a blender, how would you get out?

How many ridges are there around a quarter?

What is the philosophy of martial arts?

Explain to me what has happened in this country during the last 10 years?

Rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 10 how weird you are?

How many basketballs can you fit in this room?

Out of 25 horses, pick the fastest 3 horses. In each race, only 5 horses can run at the same time. What is the minimum number of races required?

If you could be any superhero, who would it be?

You have a birthday cake and have exactly three slices to cut it into eight equal pieces. How do you do it?

Given the numbers 1 to 1000, what is the minimum number of guesses needed to find a specific number if you are given the hint “higher” or “lower” for each guess you make?

If you had 5,623 participants in a tournament, how many games would need to be played to determine the winner?

An apple costs 20 cents, an orange costs 40 cents, and a grapefruit costs 60 cents. How much is a pear?

There are three boxes. One contains only apples, one contains only oranges, and one contains both apples and oranges. The boxes have been incorrectly labeled such that no label identifies the actual contents of its box. Opening just one box, and without looking in the box, you take out one piece of fruit. By looking at the fruit, how can you immediately label all of the boxes correctly?

How many traffic lights are in Manhattan?

You are in a dark room with no light. You have 19 grey socks and 25 black socks. What are the chances you will get a matching pair?

What do wood and alcohol have in common?

How do you weigh an elephant without using a weigh machine?

You have 8 pennies. Seven weigh the same, but one weighs less. You also have a judges scale. Find the penny that weighs less in three steps.

Why do you think only a small portion of the population makes over $150,000?

You are in charge of 20 people. Organize them to figure out how many bicycles were sold in your area last year.

How many bottles of beer are [consumed] in the city [in a] week?

What’s the square root of 2000?

A train leaves San Antonio for Houston at 60 mph. Another train leaves Houson for San Antonio at 80 mph. Houston and San Antonio are 300 miles apart. If a bird leaves San Antonio at 100 mph, and turns around and flies back once it reaches the Houston train, and continues to fly between the two, how far will it have flown when they collide?

How are M&Ms made?

What would you do if you just inherited a pizzeria from your uncle

And now for a few of my answers to these. They may not be right, but I really enjoyed the thought processes it took to get me to them! One thing to note is many of these questions use a similar idea of the candidate assuming the "standard way" to do an activity. Once you break that assumption, these questions actually become really easy.

DO NOT READ MORE IF YOU DO NOT WANT TO BE SPOILED! HALF THE FUN OF THESE QUESTIONS IS THE PROCESS OF FIGURING THEM OUT!

1. If you were shrunk to the size of a pencil and put in a blender, how would you get out?
   Pencil sizes are not all standard, a person the size of a "large pencil" could easily get out. Or, a person the size of a regular #2 pencil is still long enough to easily shimmy up the sides of a normal-sized blender. (there likely isn't a right answer, I'm sure "screaming my lungs" out tells as much insight as these answers)
   
   
2. Rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 10 how weird you are?
   This reminded me of the "How humble are you" catch 22: a humble person never admits they are humble. My answer is 5, because a person who says 1 is afraid of being weird; yet we are all weird/different, so who wants to be the same? And a truly weird person doesn't believe they are weird and would never say 10. Anyone who says 10 is flaunting themselves in a way a weird person would not. Answers 4-6 work just as well.
   
   
3. How many basketballs can you fit in this room? This is just a good example of estimating lengths and volumes, and a good test of memorization of formulas (but having the guts to ask for the volume of a sphere formula, since really we would just look one up if we didn't know it, is good too)
   
   
4. Out of 25 horses, pick the fastest 3 horses. In each race, only 5 horses can run at the same time. What is the minimum number of races required?
   My favorite question, this one was fun. My first answer was based on the obvious omission: do we have a clock? If so, you would only need to race each horse once (5 races) and compare their speeds to find the top 3.
   If not, my original thought was 11, since each race you could always eliminate the slowest 2 horses. It would take 5 races to get the top fifteen, 3 races to get the top nine, 2 races to get the top 5 (if you raced the winner of the previous race again you could order all 9 horses), and 1 race to get the final 3.
   But the general rule of a numbers answer is the first one you get is likely wrong especially if it is double digits. So I worked on it more. Currently I believe 7 is the right answer, but I may be wrong:
   5 races to find the five horses who place #1. 1 race between the five "first placer" horses to get the champion of champions, then 1 race with the 2nd and 3rd placed horses of the "first placer" race, the 2nd and 3rd place horses from the champion's first race and the 2nd place horse from the 2nd place horse's first race. The idea is the 2nd and 3rd place horses who originally lost to the champion horse may still be faster than the other horses who won 1st in their races, and the 2nd place horse who lost to the 2nd overall horse may be faster than the other 1st placers and 2/3 of the champion's first race too. Take the 1st and 2nd place winners of this race and along with your champion you have the three fastest horses.
   Read it a few times, it makes sense :)
   
   
5. You have a birthday cake and have exactly three slices to cut it into eight equal pieces. How do you do it?
   The first of the "breaking the assumption" questions. The assumption is when cutting cake you cannot move any pieces, which is false. Cut the cake in half, then in half again to get 4 equal pieces in the original shape of the cake (square, rectangle, or circle). Then line up the pieces in a row and cut one long cut through all 4 to get 8 equal pieces.
   
   
6. Given the numbers 1 to 1000, what is the minimum number of guesses needed to find a specific number if you are given the hint “higher” or “lower” for each guess you make?
   I originally got snooty with the semantics on this one and said 1. It only takes 1 guess to possibly get the right answer (this is not the right answer and may come across wrong). But if you want the "minimum number needed to guarantee a right answer" then this is a simple binary search any computer engineer learned when first studying: you always guess halfway between the numbers.
   The guess pattern assuming the answer number is 1: 500 - 250 - 125 - 63 - 32 - 16 - 8 - 4 - 2 - 1! The answer is 10 guesses, but you will likely find it before the 10th guess unless the number is 1 or 1000.
   Also, if you paid attention in math class you know binary searches are all based on powers of 2. If you find the power of 2 higher than (or equal to) the maximum amount you know the answer based on the power. If the answer is between 1-8 your guesses would be "4 - 2 - 1", 8 is 2 to the 3rd power (2^3) so the answer would be 3. 2^10 power is 1024 so the answer to the 1-1000 question is 10. And any computer/video game geek should know the powers of 2 up until 11: 2 - 4 - 8 - 16 - 32 - 64 - 128 - 256 - 512 - 1024 - 2048 etc (these are the common numbers for "bits" and "bytes" for ram, memory, and processors among other things)
   
   
7. If you had 5,623 participants in a tournament, how many games would need to be played to determine the winner? Very similar to the "guess" and "omitted info" problems above. My first answer was the obvious: 1 game. Nowhere does it say how many participants can battle in a single game, so a game where 5,623 gladiators fight each other until 1 is standing is possible.
   But if you assume only two can play at once then the answer changes. I got this answer "wrong" when I read this, I assumed it was asking for rounds and treated it like the "guess" question above. My answer was 13, since it would take 13 rounds (2^13 = 8000ish which is higher than 5,623) with multiple games per round.
   But after reading the question again while typing this post, the question asks for the number "games" not "rounds" So instead of asking the number of "guesses" like above, we are adding the actual number of the guess. I don't know the answer while typing this, but the formula is similar as above where you keep halving the number: 2,812 + 1406 + 703 + 352 + 176 + 88 + 44 + 22 + 11 + 6 + 3 + 2 + 1.
   In an interview I could likely spout off the string of numbers above (doubling or halving numbers in your head is easy) but without a calculator and pen and paper I wouldn't know the answer is 5,626 (I cheated and just used this computer's calculator), which is suspiciously close to the original 5,623 number above (I rounded a few times which explains the difference) which tells me there was probably an easier way to answer this than brute forcing the numbers and adding them. I will need to reflect on this. :(
   
   
8. An apple costs 20 cents, an orange costs 40 cents, and a grapefruit costs 60 cents. How much is a pear?
   Not enough info. Probably market value. Plus you can't compare apples, oranges, and pears but if I had to guess it would be closer to the apple's price since the others are citrus and larger than a pear.
   In honesty, that is where I left my answer. But I researched the answer because I didn't feel like it was "right" like I felt my other answers were. And the "best" answer I found is when this question is asked verbally most candidates mishear the final word and think it is "pear" when the questioner really meant "pair". Therefore the answers would be a pair of apples = 40 cents, a pair of oranges = 80 cents, etc. When the question is written this confusion is removed.
   
   
9. There are three boxes. One contains only apples, one contains only oranges, and one contains both apples and oranges. The boxes have been incorrectly labeled such that no label identifies the actual contents of its box. Opening just one box, and without looking in the box, you take out one piece of fruit. By looking at the fruit, how can you immediately label all of the boxes correctly?
   This one is really easy if you have a vivid imagination (or can draw it). Since you know all boxes are labeled incorrectly, you just draw from the box labeled as "Both". If you pick an orange you know only oranges are in it (since it is mislabeled), thus the box labeled "Oranges" must be apples and the "Apples" box must be filled both.
   
   
10. How many traffic lights are in Manhattan?
    I've never been to Manhattan, so I would guess the number of blocks (and likely be way off) or ask someone in the room if they knew, then assume each block has 4 lights, realize that blocks share traffic lights so I can't multiple by 4, and arbitrarily multiple my guess by 2, then find the closest square number (my geeky Rubik's Cube days taught me 1 block has 4 intersections, 4 blocks have 9 intersections, 9 blocks have 16 intersections, etc, thus all intersections are to the 2nd power: 4, 9, 16, 25, 36, 49, etc. There is a formula in there somehwere but it would take longer in the interview to figure it out than just creating an educated guess as mentioned above.
    
    
11. You are in a dark room with no light. You have 19 grey socks and 25 black socks. What are the chances you will get a matching pair?
    I assumed the was a trick question (as you always should), so my first answer is 50/50 chance (since picking a second sock is not affected by the color you picked first). My next guess is slightly less than 50, like 47ish, but it would take some math of total possible solutions which may take me a while (I'm rusty on my probability formulas). My 3rd guess and final answer (because this is what I would do in real life) is to just pick 3 socks and ensure a 100% chance of picking a matching pair. Nowhere does it say how many socks you need to pick up at once.
    
    
12. How do you weigh an elephant without using a weigh machine?
    Using water, such as a pool, and determining the elephant's volume and then measuring its density. I don't know the exact formulas off the top of my head, but that is how you find weight without weighing an object. There are probably other ways too, but that was the first that came to mind. Given enough time, I could probably come up with some pretty creative contraptions that were not technically "weigh machines". Now getting the elephant to voluntarily participate is a much harder problem...
    
    
13. You have 8 pennies. Seven weigh the same, but one weighs less. You also have a judges scale. Find the penny that weighs less in three steps.
    Really easy, although I had done a harder version of this test years ago. The assumption is you can only weigh 2 pennies at a time, which, again, is false. Weigh all 8 pennies as 4 vs 4. Take the group of 4 that was the lightest (since you know the light penny is among them) and weigh them 2 vs 2. Take the lighter pair and weigh them 1 vs 1 to find the lightest one.
    This test gets much harder if you don't know if the one odd penny is heavier or lighter than the others. The answer to that problem is long and complicated but uses the same principle as above (you start off weighing 3 vs 3 and hope the odd penny is one of the 2 not weighed), it just takes a few more rounds to determine if the penny is heavier or lighter.
    
    
14. What’s the square root of 2000?
    My final answer is a guess depending on how far they want to go into decimals. But I know 40^2 is 1600 and 50^2 is 2500 so the answer is between 40 and 50. 2000 is smaller than 2050 which is halfway between 1600 than 2500, so the number is likely less than 45 which is halfway between 40 and 50. A quick mental multiplication tells me 45^2 is 2025, and 44^2 is 1936. I hate multiplying decimals mentally, so at this point I would guess 44.7 since 2000 is roughly 70% of the difference between 2025 and 1936. If I was allowed a calculator (and couldn't cheat the answer by typing it in) I would brute force the answer by narrowing down the decimals from 44.7 until I got the answer (which my computer now tells me is 44.72135... yea, I would not have found that precisely without a calculator to help).
    
    
15. A train leaves San Antonio for Houston at 60 mph. Another train leaves Houson for San Antonio at 80 mph. Houston and San Antonio are 300 miles apart. If a bird leaves San Antonio at 100 mph, and turns around and flies back once it reaches the Houston train, and continues to fly between the two, how far will it have flown when they collide?
    Yea, I hate these problems as they are too cliche and not that hard to figure out. Not to mention we don't know if the trains are on the same track, left at the same time, or if the bird is even flying towards Houston.
    Anyways, I know the distance traveled in a specific time must add up to 300 so the formula is 60x + 80x = 300, or 140x = 300 where x is an equal amount of time both trains travel. I would need a calculator to figure out the exact decimals but mentally I know it it is just over 2.14 hours (140 goes into 300 2 times, the remainder of 200 another 1 time, and 600 4 times, etc). Convert this into time and you get roughly 2 hours, 6 minutes + less than 3 minutes (.04 x 60) or a little less than 2 hours and 9 minutes (again, without a calculator) until the trains hit. But the actual time in minutes is pointless, I want miles.
    A bird traveling 100 mph for an x time of 2.14 (100 x 2.14) travels 214 miles.
    

Whew! That was fun, yet draining. Let's see what odd questions 2011 brings!

Die Pennies, Die

I admire this man's passionate diatribe against pennies, plus he gives some very good points as to why pennies are no longer needed:

Parallel Parking

This 30 sec short should help to remind everyone to always pay attention to the street signs before parking, else you could end up like this:

Parallel Parking from Yum Yum London on Vimeo.

Nice stop-motion style to the piece too, kudos to the creators.

When culture creates its own pop clothes

The internet offers artists a chance to show their work to a much wider audience and skip the traditional "middleman" when it came to creating and selling their art. One industry which exploded in popularity with the internet is the user-created clothes industry. For decades, everyone and their mother had ideas for cool shirts, but unless they knew talented artists, stores with screen-printing machines, or could live with text-only shirts very few of them ever made the shirts. Now, everyone with a shirt idea can create a store and sell the shirt to anyone in the world. Entire sites have appeared whose sole business model is "allowing" artists to upload their art for the chance of being popular enough to appear on a shirt. In some harsher cases, the sites accept the artists work, sell the artwork on shirts, offer nothing to the artist (accept pride), then prevent the artist from selling the same or similar concepts on their own in order to make a living.

Anyways, while I may have an issue with a few sites exploitation of uninformed artists, I definitely do not have an issue with the encouragement for creating art and showing it to the world. Especially creative pop art. Below are a few of my favorite, hilarious art samples from various shirt sites (many of which are also collected here). Many of these contain references to characters and situations from the 80's and 90's (the timeframe today's creative internet users grew up in), so if you don't get the reference just ask a twentysomething.

High Five!

I have no idea why, but the last 15 seconds of this trailer contain one of the funniest skits I've seen in years.


I have no desire to see the movie but I couldn't help to laugh at this prank. I still can't believe these guys are still creating material. he first Jackass TV show premiered my freshman year in college and was the funniest thing ever (for 18/19 year-olds); yet somehow these guys have survived all the crazy antics and explosions over the years and are making yet another movie 10 years later. At 28, these childish pranks now seem as juvenile as they are, but occasionally one stands out that just brings a smile to your face.

High five!

Fantasy Football ads dissected

I am a big fan of creative commercials, especially ones with technical feats that make you go "how did they do that?". Being in the visual effects industry and having worked on set for some visual effects shots by ILM, I try to dissect the videos to determine which techniques they used based on my own experiences. Some of the more interesting commercials (which really don't sell anything) are the Fantasy Football ones where players do outrageous feats (yet they could be "real" with enough skill and a lot of luck) in order to convince you to choose them from your fantasy team. Here are a selected few, see if you can figure them out:


I had my guesses on a few, and it turns out I wasn't far off. Once you figure out how they hand the balls in and hide the transitions it really isn't that difficult. Surprisingly, not as many virtual balls were used as I expected (ILM can create fake hand-held balls that you would not be able to tell the difference, but here all balls in hand are real). Here are the same commercials dissected:



Fascinating!

I was considering adding a sports category to my blog, but it seems my only sports posts tend to be funny commercials or science rants...

Muppet Memorial

This year marked the 20th anniversary of the death of Jim Henson. The man was an inspiration to millions and his work still retains its relevancy decades later. Almost every American under 40 learned from him ("c is for cookie!") throughout their childhood. My children know who Big Bird is even two decades after Henson's passing (they also love the original Muppet Movie and can sing "Movin' Right Along" which is stuck in my head due to my 5th grade music class with Mr. Ukena).

I was too young to really understand what his death meant and how we lost a brilliant teacher (and comedian), but this somber anniversary helped me realize how much he meant to the world. His service is on youtube, and if you are muppet fan then the medley of muppet tunes is a must see. You may not have heard some of this songs since you were under 10 years old, but hearing them will bring back wonderful memories. And if you want to cry today, watch Big Bird singing "It ain't easy being green".







And to end on an upbeat, here is one of my favorite moments from Seasame Street:

Building a single-person boat out of cardboard...

Every year our company completes a team building event which varies from being practical (cook-offs in the kitchen featured in Top Chef), to techy (geocaching event in Tilden park), to the downright geeky (scavenger hunt in downtown Berkeley where, among other thing, we found actors in various stores dressed as comic book heroes). This year's event takes the cake for being the most creative: we designed, built, and launched single-person boats made out of cardboard.

Each team of four had to design a boat that would ferry a single person across a lake and we could only use the materials provided at a store for a small price (or so we thought, the rules were left intentionally vague). We then built the boats, decorated them, pitched them to the "client" (who was determining which one to mass produce), and finally tested each one in a lake.

Some teams spent time planning their boats before buying the supplies. Unfortunately for them, other conniving teams (*innocent eye roll*) bought all the supplies first and held monopolies over valuable resources such as tape. Those teams also began scavenging the park for extra flotation assistance, with recycled plastic bottles conveniently left over from our picnic working quite well in assisting the pontoons. Once the boats were built, flags designed, and hulls decorated each team made a hilarious sales pitch and showed off their designs (a few teams scrambled to find more resources to finish their boats while others pitched).

Finally we trekked to the lake and selected one lucky anchor..er, volunteer from each team to sit in the boats and row across the lake. Some boats actually floated quite well (especially the winning pontoon with sealed plastic bottles inside).

Others... did not.

Overall we had blast, and we were surprised at how some of the "sure-thing" boats quickly sank while other "doomed" boats made the entire voyage unscathed (except for the nerves of the expecting-to-be-drenched passenger). I don't know how we are going to top this next year, but word is that it may involve building hang gliders...

Click the link below to see all photos from the event (including the delightful picnic prior to the boat building)

Helium!

A great short from a talented grad of Animation Mentor!

Helium. from Daniele Zannone on Vimeo.

The variety of facial expressions in this are amazing, and the simplicity of the short (essentially 2 characters and one object, no other sets needed). Plus a little morbid humor to end it all. Great job Daniele!

Modern Vintage

I sense a new trend...
Check out these two ads to see it:




Man, the 80's had some weird commercials, didn't they? These ads bring back some awesome memories of these toys...
Or do they?

Well if they do, they aren't real toy memories. Because these two "80's" ads were created for products that came out in 2010! Lots-o-Huggin Bear is another used toy at the daycare in Toy Story 3 (and he briefly appeared in Up too), and Mega Man 10 is a new game created for nostalgic gamers which looks and plays like 80's entries of the franchise.

The creators of these ads recreated the 80's feel perfectly. The ads come complete with recorded vhs distortion, cheesy soundtracks, 80's apparel, and fake sitcom closers found on many 80's series. Gotta love the creativity, and determination, of these ad agencies!

Bonus: Lotso has a Japanese counterpart it seems...

I didn't watch much Japanese television ads as a child but I assume they weren't too far from this.

Conan is in town

This weekend Conan O'Brien came to SF for his "Legally Prohibited from Appearing on Television" tour (the title is literally true, he is not allowed to be on television for few months after leaving the Tonight Show). The show was hilarious, but also very similar to his TV shows without trying anything new. I was hoping to see an uncensored/unrestrained Conan but save for a few curse words he was the same guy that I watched on TV. Which is fine because I laughed throughout the entire show. Unfortunately, there were no big name guest stars on this part of the show. The very next night Conan played in LA and had a special guest:



Oh well, it was still an awesome show. You can see the beginning of it here, and I'm sure eventually it will be broadcast online or on DVD.

Epic everything

Sometimes artists create pieces of work that serve no purpose other than to mix some of the most epic characters/creatures/machines in the same painting. This week I've randomly come across three separate pieces done in this fashion so it that was message enough to convince me to make a post about them:

If this one doesn't make you feel patriotic, there is something wrong with you:
"George Washington defending a American flag from a Bengal Tiger on a sinking boat in the middle of a hurricane"

by SharpWriter


This logo is for a bowling event...

As far as I can tell, that is a silhouette of an angel on top of a unicorn with lightning for a horn surrounded by various weapons, a shark with an assault rifle, a manatee with nunchuks, and a t-rex with a hatchet. The website also includes a bald eagle, jets, and a stunt motorcycle.

Nic Cage teaches overacting (unintentionally)

When acting out dialog an animator (or actor) may tend accent every syllable or action with a pose or hand gesture. This is an easy trap to fall into because once we force ourselves to think and analyze conversations, especially when breaking it down to 24 fps, we no longer act "naturally" and tend to add movements and gestures no person would actually do in real conversation. You end up creating a scene with so many accents that nothing stands out and one which confuses the viewers, or worse, takes them out of the movie completely. Watch the clip below of Nic Cage over emphasizing:



"Not one time!"

Remember kids, overacting is bad! (Although it can be quite funny once taken out of the movie and shown to the world)

Nic Cage as everyone!

As odd as it may sound, this week as been an unplanned "theme week" for my posts. Beginning with the Face/Off reference in the "How to Train Your Dragon" soundtrack, going through the Kick-Ass Premiere and Wondercon preview, and ending with tomorrows interesting reference material, this week has had a Nicolas Cage theme. And I didn't plan that. It just so happens that there is a lot of Nic Cage material out there and somehow it came across my browser more this week than it has in the past 7 months.

But the ultimate collection of Nic Cage humor is here:

NIC CAGE AS EVERYONE!

(a smaller collection of pics can be found here too)

For some reason, the internet mobs decided to take Nic Cage's face and insert it into (in)famous people/characters. The results vary, but here are a few of my favorites:

Bad-Ass Alphabet

We all grew up with different Alphabet guides to teach us the letters (A is for Apple... Z is for Zebra, etc), my childhood favorites were The Z was Zapped and Animalia, but today I found one that best represents the last 15 years of my hobbies: The Bad-Ass Alphabet.

With alliterate phrases like "F is for the Fantastic Four saving the Finnish Ambassador from Fred Flintstone, who's flinging flaming fajitas at his Ford Fiesta" and "W is for Wolverine wishing Wonder Woman wasn't wasted" the artist takes fan favorite (and somewhat obscure) characters and puts them in situations both humorous and educational (well, sorta). The fact the Optimus Prime gleefully laughs while obliterating Oompa Loompas makes this alphabet a win until the end.

Musical Humor

Time for another edition of random funny, but this time with a musical theme!

The first two videos show an interesting way to use the website "Chat Roulette". CR randomly connects your webcam to a stranger for about 30 seconds before switching you to another stranger. Basically you get to talk to a random person you will never see again for 30 seconds. Sadly, the promise of anonymity allows people to act pretty immature on camera (seeing unmentionable body parts is not uncommon), but this guy decided to use the anonymity for good! Each time he was assigned a person he wrote a song about them to cheer them up (if he didn't break out laughing first):


This trend was so popular that the musican Ben Folds did the same thing at one of his concerts. There's nothing like expecting to chat with a lone person in their bedroom only to find out you are being broadcast to an entire stadium of music fans...


Not exactly funny, but cool: this person filmed himself twice so he could play a duet with himself playing famous TV themes. This is something right up my alley, gotta try it some day.


Similarly, the guy filmed himself 4 times lip syncing to a John Williams a capella tribute (not sure who actually performed the song):


In other news, this cat and break dancing do not mix:


The 80's were known for their catchy advertisement tunes. This is what happens when a company today buys the rights to an defunct tune (Big Red gum) and recreates it for their own product.


Finally, this video is the original music video to OK Go's This Too Shall Pass. It is performed by the Notre Dame marching band and when the video released the record label decided not to allow embedding of the video (meaning I can't show it hear on my website). OK Go, known for their viral videos, were so furious about this that they dropped the record label and created the new video I wrote about earlier this month. Click the link below for the band version, which is quite catchy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJKythlXAIY

And as a bonus, two non-music video that make me laugh (although I can cheat and say one has a guitar in it and the other is a bunch of videos set to [annoying] music).

Kevin Butler is a genius

I love the new Playstation commercials with (fictional)executive Kevin Butler. Kevin, complete with odd job title, answers questions from random people curious about a new game. While his game descriptions are to be expected, his witty remarks to the questions are what make these commercials work best. Here are a few of my favorites:






He even attacks the Wii (with its rudimetary controller movement) and Microsoft's Project Natal (which has you point your fingers to simulate controllers to catch balls and shoot people) in this one:



You can watch the others here:

Oscar funny

The Oscars are tomorrow. My winner choices have been submitted [update: I was second place in the office pool! Woohoo! Damn you Logorama, I was a shoe-in for 1st with Wallace and Gromit] and now it is the waiting game.

At least we can make it a fun one. This trailer is guaranteed Oscar winner for next year...


And if you like this, check out the similarly themed song "Title of the Song" which breaks down tragic love songs.

Penny Arcade live!

I began reading the webcomic Penny Arcade back in 2000 before anyone really knew what a webcomic was. Back then no one thought that you could make a living drawing comics for a website (or newspapers for that matter). The people who drew the comics did it because they loved the art and were passionate about the subjects they drew. And not too surprisingly, a number of webcomics were based on video games, a topic which tended to be popular among college (art) students who generally had the most free time and internet savvy to create the comics.

A select few of the comics stood out over the years and soon the modest video game comic with a few thousand readers grew to a few million and became a very profitable enterprise. This week, the creators of Penny Arcade are celebrating the release of their 11 1/2 year anniversary book. They have a knack for celebrating the inane, even their book titles having nothing to do with the actual contents of the book and are nothing more than a reason to create a funny, genre-satire phrase ("Epic Legends of the Magic Sword Kings", "Birds are weird", "Attack of the Bacon Robots", "The Curse of the Mummy's Gold", etc). They began their book release with a tour which stopped close to my home, so I decided to visit the artists who made me laugh over the last 10 years.
The amazing part of their "presentation" was that they were exactly who they started out as: down-to-earth geeks who love what their do. Talking to them felt no different than talking to a group of gamers about the cool new game or geek collectors item. Even though their company now employs 10 people full-time, raises millions of dollars for charity each year, and hosts some of the largest gaming conventions in the world, these guys acted no different than the fans sitting in front of them. And all of their success is based on their weekly action of drawing characters who enact a funny punchline within 3 panels.

And did I mention they were hilarious?

The entire presentation was a no-holds-barred Q&A session that went to some pretty weird places. People in the audience asked whatever was on their mind and these guys would comment on it. A few of the stand out moments included:

• When asked how they continue to make time for games even after having young children they jokingly replied that it was definitely difficult, but if a new, must-play game came out it was nice that their kids didn't know how to read a clock: they could put their kids in their lap, look at a clock and make that knowing, fatherly nod that says it is "bed time" even if it was 2 hours until bed time. Suddenly they had two hours to play!

• One girl asked how she could "please" her gamer boyfriend (maybe she meant it to be more innocent than it came out, who knows). They were too embarrassed to announce on the loud speaker the answer, so one of them began singing a sea shanty (yes, an actual 19th century shanty) while the other took off the mic, ran to her chair, and whispered in her ear. Who knows what he said, but she was embarrassed and laughed afterwords, and then both guys gave her a big thumbs up and congratulatory nod.
  
  
• When asked how someone who is borderline OCD would be able to get a tattoo, they replied to find the largest tattoo artist possible and have him place his hand on your chest as being obsessive compulsive really doesn't mean much when a sumo wrestler wants you to stay in one place. They then showed off the Pac-Man tattoos and described the 400 behemoth who held them in place.
  

All in all, it was a wonderful time. I look forward to their 14 1/3 anniversary book tour in a few years!