Clever little game! My stats: finished in 8:19 with 36 deaths. Can you beat that?
February 8, 2010
January 12, 2010
December 21, 2009
December 1, 2009
BioShocking
Propmaker and artist Harrison Krix designed and built a Big Daddy prop suit from Bioshock. Amazing, amazing stuff. The arm works, the LED’s work, it has 4 cooling fans, and is absolutely full of win. Here are actual pictures (with his awesome partner in crime, seamstress, and fiancee as a Little Sister).

More pics here.
and it’s for sale on ebay! (limited time link)
November 24, 2009
November 6, 2009
August 13, 2009
June 11, 2009
May 2, 2009
Lego Bunratty
A neat site by a Lego fiend who specializes in building reproductions of European castles. Kinda nifty to see some of the castles we saw in Ireland reproduced here.
http://www.carneycastle.com/index.htm
Original Castle (being attacked by a dragon)
img src=”http://thebigthink.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/bunratty-attacked.jpg” border=”0″ height=”192″ width=”256″ alt=”Bunratty Attacked!.jpg” align=”" />
Lego version (no dragon, unfortunately):
img src=”http://thebigthink.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/south.jpg” border=”0″ height=”297″ width=”230″ alt=”south.jpg” align=”" />
Neat stuff! Check it out:
http://www.carneycastle.com/index.htm
**Just checked this after posting. I’m really sorry, everybody. The company that hosts this knows that there are issues but they’re really dragging their feet fixing things. Knowing that nothing I post will display correctly has taken most of the joy out of blogging for me, which is why you haven’t seen many posts the past few months. They’ve been saying it’ll be fixed “soon” or “next week” or “within the week” since early March. I think fixing this is so low on their list of priorities that they’re not going to ever really get around to it. Sigh. Really sorry you have to come here only to see messed up code, but it really is out of my hands. Drat.
April 8, 2009
Nerdvana
wherein my compatriot Sean recounts the fearless adventures of Gront and company. Thanks Sean, I had a blast!
http://www.mcmains.net/2009/04/07/tabletop-roleplaying-the-nerdiest-post-of-the-year/
February 3, 2009
Two Rooms
Timewaster of the day. I’m quitting now so I can get some work done… You have been warned.
November 15, 2008
Wee Play
Any Wii friends out there up for a game, our number is 3193 7016 2384 5914.
Drop us a line!
November 7, 2008
September 1, 2008
July 21, 2008
June 24, 2008
June 10, 2008
April 15, 2008
March 26, 2008
Roll One for My Homie

MIT Students roll a giant 20 sided dice in memory of Gary Gygax, the creator of D&D, who died recently. You can see all the pictures here.
March 24, 2008
Ultimate Flight Sim
Check out this flight simulator.

In addition to looking awesomely cool, it can help you get your pilot’s license. The FAA has reportedly said that you can use it for up to 2.5 hours of actual stick time toward your license. Unfortunately, the $100/hour or so that you save is more than offset by the $17,250 pricetag of the simulator. When I was getting my license I bought a copy of MS Flight Sim and ran it on my roommate Patrick’s PC. I used the very basic keyboard and joystick controls to run pattern and landing procedures, and even simulated a couple of flights. I couldn’t log the time, but just practicing the procedures at home allowed me to easily save the $40 in flight time that the program cost me. A very good investment.
I think that I could easily build something like this, using just this picture. I’d have to use a preexisting computer (which I have), and buy some monitors and other gear, but I think it’d be easily possible to make this for under a couple grand.
Hmm.
Monitors: 3 Dell 22″ LCD’s $750
Computer: exising
Software: $50
Chair: $200?
Tubing and infrastructure: $200?
Instrumentation: Ooo.. this looks like it’d be the expensive part. Probably cost a couple grand to outfit a full suite of instrumentation. Luckily, most of it seems to be built on a standard interface protocol so it could plug into MS Flight Sim or X-Plane.
So for a “mere” $3500-$4000 outlay you could have a killer homemade flight sim- and ’save’ $12,000!
Okay, it’s not cheap, but what a fun project to undertake for someone. I’d bet you could easily sell it for more that the cost of parts (though not the time invested).
Hey, I can dream, can’t I?
*UPDATE* For a righteous Moon plug-in for your flight sim, check out Terrabuilder’s site. Their software allows you to change the Earth terrain maps to a lunar map, then fly around in their landers. Awesome screenshots.


