Tuesday, February 28, 2006

Massively Multiplayer Pong

Fancy a game of Pong with a difference? Play Massively Multiplayer Pong! You'll be automatically assigned to a side and then, by using your mouse, you register where you'd like to move the bat to. Hopefully the others on your team will do likewise and the bat will move! It's hard to explain, but it's based on this theory (from Edge Online):
In his book Out of Control, author Kevin Kelley describes a Las
Vegas conference room
where a crowd of 5000, led by Pixar co-founder and
Rescue on Fractalus co-creator Loren Carpenter, learn to adapt and react as a
hive mind as they play a game of 2500 on 2500 Pong. Each half of the auditorium
took collective control of each side, registering their individual intent to
move in a certain direction with the wand. The input lead to a computer, which
averaged and relayed the moves to the game, with initially disastrous but
eventually workable results.

Tuesday, February 21, 2006

Generate music through mathematics...

This site takes mathematical algorithms and turns them into music. It's quite good fun for a few clicks and can generate some very strange sounding stuff. If you like what you produce, you can download it as a ringtone for your phone!

Translations of My hovercraft is full of eels in many languages

Learn how to say "My hovercraft is full of eels" in another language.
If you don't understand, then you need to watch more Monty Python...

Monday, February 13, 2006

Nearly Useless Software Co.

Try some of the software at the Nearly Useless Software Co. Does what it says on the tin. Another link from Download Squad.

Sunday, February 05, 2006

More Nintendo themes...

Following on from my earlier post, I've got three links which are all quite strange yet entertaining and they're all examples of Nintendo music being played on unusual instruments.
Firstly, there's this one which is a guy playing the Mario theme on his guitar. It's pretty impressive (he does the sound effects too!) - thanks to Ken for this.
Secondly, there's this one which is a bloke (Jean Baudin - there's a link on his website to a clip of him playing the same thing on an 11 string bass - you've never seen such a crazy guitar!!) who's playing the same theme but on his bass guitar - it's a 9 string, Pac-Man themed bass (worth watching the clip just to see that) and he plays it in a 'tapped' style that's really very clever to watch.
Finally, I've found this link which is a group of a capella singers doing a whole medley of Nintendo themes! Be patient - I found it quite slow.
Have fun!

Super Mario Synth!

This page hosts a "Super Mario Brother's Audiosound Super-Synthesizer" which is all a very grand way of saying that you can start the mario tune and activate the in-game effects from a flash-based interface. Quite entertaining for 5 minutes...
Found via Analogue Industries