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Month: September 2021

Hydroforming

Hydroforming

One way of making curved and round surfaces out of steel is to use hydroforming. By welding different shapes completely closed and filling them up with high pressure water – the incompressibility of water pushes on all the surfaces to bend them in unique ways.

But if water isn’t cool enough, one can always try explosives…

Infamous vending machines of Akihabara

Infamous vending machines of Akihabara

I come to these vending machines every time I get to Tokyo and buy at least one thing from them.

In the past, I have gotten a written story (in Japanese and I still need help translating it), a wind up giant stag beetle, and numerous other trinkets I keep on my desk to remind me of better days of travel.

Here’s are two pretty good write-ups on what to experience if you decide to go yourself. But do be aware of the uncharacteristic graphic warning signs posted there.

If these items aren’t your fare, maybe find some of the exclusive vending machines that sell one of a kind and delicious, products.

Best Favorite Scary Stories for Fall

Best Favorite Scary Stories for Fall

One of my favorite pastimes is reading and listening to classic spooky stories. There’s no better time for curling up with a spooky story than a cold, fall evening in front of the fire.

Here’s a collection of my all-time favorite scary stories by the best readers I could find:

Scary-comedy

This is a unique group – and old stories of this genre are very heavy on dry British/deadpan humor and often require a little bit of understanding of the times in 1800’s England. I highly recommend.

Plays/Dramatizations

Good general scary classics channels on YouTube:

Books

Oxford Book of English Ghost Stories – Michael Cox, R.A. Gilbert

Playlists:

Links:

Tengami and foldable geometry

Tengami and foldable geometry

Whenever I have free time and am looking for some inspiration, I love going over to the GDC Vault and watching the countless amazing presentations. Back in the day, one had to pay hundreds of dollars to see videos in the vault, but now they have their own free youtube channel.

In doing some research into visual styles, I ran the game Tengami from Nyamyam. I then found Jennifer Schneidereit’s GDC presentation describing how she created a engine that uses geometry to mimic the mechanical folding of pop-up books.

Rob Humble’s ‘The Marriage’ game

Rob Humble’s ‘The Marriage’ game

Rob Humble was fooling around with the idea of games as art – a continually argued topic in the game development community. In experimenting, he came up with the idea for this art piece/game called The Marriage.

It uses very simple controls and boxes to explore the ideas of relationship.

“The Marriage “came out of a long weekend I took with my wife down to Carmel. It was created that evening on my laptop as I listened to the waves of the pacific below. All the game mechanics were completed that evening although I spent weeks afterwards tuning and polishing. The game was also made “in process” as it were. I simply could not design this game on paper before hand. It had to be done by exploring, discarding and balancing game elements during creation.

You can play it in-browser here, or read more and download the original Windows version (as well as get instructions) here.