Worst fail in sports history
It’s not the ‘Agony of Defeat‘ guy, it’s not Finkle putting the laces out, it’s gotta be JR Hildebrand’s last corner crash at the Indy 500 in 2011.
Oscar Mayer Wienie 500
Why wait for the Indy 500 when there is the Wienie 500!
Quite frankly, these hot doggers are going to haul buns and let nobody catchup! The one that can cut the mustard is going to grill the competition, smoke their buns, come out top dog, and relish in victory!
2027 Luxor Eclipse in Egypt
Aug 2, 2027, there will be a total eclipse that will pass right over Luxor Egypt. Luxor is full of monuments, temples and tombs of ancient Egypt. Does this game called ‘Total Eclipse‘ from 1988 have a bit of foreshadowing?
The game backstory as explained in the manual is that an Ancient Egyptian priest has put a curse on a pyramid dedicated to the Sun God Re. Any object obstructing Re’s shrine from the Sun would be destroyed. The protagonist is an unnamed archaeologist who learns that on 26th October, 1930, a total eclipse will obstruct the sun above Cairo, and that the curse will cause the Moon to explode, devastating Earth with debris. He decides to travel to the pyramid and destroy Re’s shrine, preventing the curse.
The game starts having just arrived with a biplane parked outside the pyramid he is about to enter, two hours before the eclipse. Can he destroy the shrine and save the earth from destruction?
Sadly, the game isn’t historically accurate as there was no eclipse over any of Africa in 1930.
Press Your Luck Limerick
Press Your Luck was my favorite gameshow as a kid. I was recently watching the Twitch channel YerOlDad who watches classic old episodes of gameshows like Press Your Luck. During one run, I came up with this ditty.
There once was a whammy from Nantucket
Who put all your money in a bucket
He then dumped it all out
And shook the bucket about
And said, “How much more can I take?”
Volumetric Ice in UE5
Bengisu Selçuk shares how he created Volumetric ice materials in UE5 for Rift of Souls. https://www.artstation.com/bengs
Links:
- https://80.lv/articles/intricate-volumetric-ice-material-set-up-in-unreal-engine/
- This and other effects on his Artstation site: https://www.artstation.com/bengs
Reality of the Portland Commercial Real estate collapse
Besides the very public failing of the new Ritz-Carlton in downtown Portland facing foreclosure, now ‘Big Pink’ US Bancorp tower is up for sale for a fraction of it’s original value. There’s a reason Portland has the highest commercial vacancy rate in the country; and the internet company that just moved out didn’t hold any punches
After Digital Trends moved out of the U.S. Bancorp Tower in Portland, Ore., the technology publisher didn’t hold back about why it left.
The property, once a premier address in the city, was afflicted with “vagrants sleeping in hallways of vacant office floors.” They were “starting fires in stairwells, smoking fentanyl and defecating in common areas,” according to papers the company filed in a lease-termination lawsuit.
The building, once a cornerstone of the the city, is now joining a long line of other top building being fire-sold at huge losses:
The 42-story tower was recently put up for sale. The building affectionately known as Big Pink because of its pink-hued Spanish granite and pink glazed glass has an asking price of about $70 million, according to brokers. That is more than 80% below what the owners paid for it a decade ago
The forward outlook continues a multi-year DECLINE as companies flee Portland’s livability, homeless, and harshly anti-business taxes and laws
But Portland’s commercial real-estate market shows few signs of recovering from the fallout of the pandemic, rise in homelessness and the state’s botched experiment with drug decriminalization…. Portland’s first-quarter office vacancy rate at 35% was the highest among the 25 largest central business districts in the U.S., according to real-estate firm Colliers
Links:
Baby Whooopsie
Ideal made this toy in 1975 and I have to say I re-enacted that scene of making my sister’s pony tails flip up at a gas station while we were waiting for our mom to fill the car.
Unreleased Resident Evil 1.5
I was blown away back in 1996 when Resident Evil came out for the Playstation. It did so well, that the developers started making a follow on. After a period of time, they realized it wasn’t working and abandoned that initial sequel. What happened next, however, turned into a multi-year attempt to find what had been completed.
The story of the collectors trying to find and secure a copy is a … very interesting story in human nature. A copy of the 60% complete version was secured but at a cost to those pursuing it that went far beyond money. Predictably, like many of these pursuits, it turned into a years long search with fakes, name calling, and even lawsuits.
Believe it or not, people have gotten it working and done playthroughs of the acquired game. They even continue to fix bugs.
You can finally see how far the next version would have looked like in these most recent playthroughs:
Terry English Aliens Armor
Terry English made the original armor for the Aliens movie. He still makes them today. The Prop Store recently sold one of those handmade replica Hudson (Bill Paxton) Colonial Marine Armor pieces. Final sale price was £6,300 ($7,950 USD)
PaintCam: Paintball powered security
PaintCam Eve isn’t your typical home security device. It’s a home security webcam…armed with paintballs to shoot anyone it doesn’t recognize via it’s facial recognition features. No word on how it will handle animals, your delivery guy, or asking everyone coming to a dinner party to send facial recognition info to you. I’m sure I can think of lots of other ways in which this could go wrong.
One more step towards ED-209.
Links: