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The long and storied history of Aperture Science
Most of us only know Aperture Science for that, erm, unfortunate happening with the "deadly" neurotoxins (most of the details of which are still suppressed by court order, but of course that "deadly" was surrounded by massive sarcasm quotes -- you could take a bath in the stuff). But did you know that its great facility has tested many products long before the rumored ongoing "Portal" initiative? Since the early '50s, Aperture Science has been working hard on some pretty impressive shower curtain technology, perfecting something called the "Heimlich Counter-Maneuver" (designed to interrupt the commonly known first-aid action) and setting up the Take-a-Wish Foundation, a charity to "redistribute wishes" from terminally ill children. After all, how many do they really need, anyway? All that and more can be found in this informative history of the company founded by Cave Johnson, posted over on the Game Informer site. Of course, we haven't heard much about the latest Aperture project since all of the chaos at the Black Mesa Research Facility and the arrival of the Vortigaunts and the Combine in our world, but we presume that, even with the Aperture Science lab in lockdown since 1998, the GLaDOS AI is carrying on tests as usual. Because, as we're sure she'd agree, there's still science to do.
Found Footage: The do-it-yourself wedding photo booth
What do you get when you mix a MacBook, a US$99 printer, some Ikea shower curtains, and lot of wedding guests? In the case of Mac user David Cline, you end up with a very happy sister! During planning for his sister Helen's recent wedding, Cline looked into renting a wedding photo booth that would take pictures of guests, save a digital copy, and then print out a strip of photos for the guests to take home as a keepsake. The cost for the rental was prohibitively expensive -- about US$2,000 a day. David quickly decided that by combining his Mac, a special Automator workflow that he created, an Epson PictureMate Dash printer, an old wardrobe frame, and colorful shower curtains from Ikea, he could inexpensively re-create the functionality of the expensive rental. His Automator script prompted wedding guests for their names, took 3 photos, arranged the photos in a vertical strip, displayed the photos on the screen for the guests to view, printed out the photo strip, and then saved the individual photos and photo strips in digital form onto the Mac. After the wedding, the photos were uploaded to an online photo album. From the looks of the happy wedding guests, the Do-It-Yourself Photo Booth was a success. I'd venture to say that David Cline is ranking high in the standings for the "Brother of the Year Award."
