dominoes
Latest
ICYMI: Homo sapien ancestor, AR Pokémon game and more
#fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-690648{display:none;} .cke_show_borders #fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-690648, #postcontentcontainer #fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-690648{width:570px;display:block;} try{document.getElementById("fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-690648").style.display="none";}catch(e){}Today on In Case You Missed It: We are pumped about the discovery of a previously unknown homo sapien ancestor who looked ape-like but still cared enough to bury its dead. Color blind people who have long struggled with watching TV will have the option of buying a device that has a chipset designed to boost colors for their needs. And Pokémon is rolling out an augmented reality game that combines a bluetooth ball with GPS in your phone to hunt the little rascals down in virtual real life.
No Comment: Cool iPhone dominoes animation
We don't care that the falling phones are CG animated; we don't even care that they have a hypothetical NFC patch on the back. This is a great video that put a smile on our faces. We offer it to you as today's No Comment. It's done by the same studio that inadvertently fooled an NYC TV station with an iPhone 5 concept video last year. Hat tip: Sachin Argarwal
Esper Dominoes topple without touching, we fall all over ourselves (video)
Quick, what's wrong with this picture? Oh, that's right -- dominoes don't topple all by themselves, do they? But these aren't your average tiles. Constructed by Japanese interaction researchers in 2009, these "Esper Dominoes" each have ZigBee radios inside, and as each stone falls it wirelessly tells the next to follow suit, all down the line. Of course, knowing all that, why would you ever settle for a boring row of five? Hit the break to see what these bones are really capable of, and join us in praying that some entrepreneur mass produces these perfect stocking stuffers before another two years fly by.
Windows 7 receives 7,000 domino salute (video)
If 7,000 dominoes fall in a forest of cheering Microsoft employees, do they make enough noise for us to care? We don't usually tell Microsoft how to run its promotions, but a domino installation that takes a full three minutes to topple is pretty much an open invitation for "slow boot-up" jokes, and a climactic finale that revolves around a hot air balloon version of your logo crashing against a glass ceiling might also create the wrong impression. Ah well, these guys are engineers and not choreographers, after all -- you can see the fruit of their labor after the break. [Thanks, Colin]
Siliconera drives Mr. D out of town
We aren't even sure anyone was looking forward to this one, but we kinda were, a little. The Japanese puzzle-action game Go! Go! Minon is about a superhero who can materialize trails of dominoes. His super power is also his Achilles' heel, since his movement is limited to those trails. Mastiff is rumored to be planning a US release for this as Mr. D Goes to Town. Any time a Japanese game is colorful and quirky, the word Katamari comes out and our ears perk up. In fact, Siliconera mentioned both Katamari Damacy and Gitaroo Man in the first sentence of this article, ensuring that we would read it. Gitaroo Man is a certain blogger's favorite game, and Katamari is pretty close, despite neither of these actually being on Nintendo consoles.Unfortunately, the palette and the wackiness are apparently the only similarities between this and Katamari. Siliconera cites excessively limited domino-dropping gameplay, movement that is also hampered by the domino mechanic, and checkpoints that drop Minon in seemingly random, nonsensical locations as game-breaking issues. It's really too bad the game isn't great, because dude, look at that boxart.
Fun with physics: Oblivion's domino effect
Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion employs the same Havok physics engine that's been used to create all those fun Rube Goldberg machines in Half-Life 2, so it's only fitting that a similar contraption's been created in Tamriel and recorded for us all to enjoy. The creators used books (instead of dominos) to create the over 3-minute clip! Crazy!See also:Nintendo-themed Goldberg contraptionFun with physics: a HL2 Rube Goldberg machine[Via Waxy]
