Domino Day '02 Ends with a New World Record

Bobson writes "It took 89 people 8 weeks to set up 4000000(4e6) domino pieces for an attempted World Record. The last piece was set at 21:00 CET(Central European Time) by a Backstreet Boy. Jim somebody... Anyhow said piece started of over 90 minutes of an amazing domino avalanche show. It is one of the top hacking feats I've had the privilege to witness. This time Live on TV. I hope tapes (dvds) of it become available. They even had time delays of more than 5min each, built into the system to allow for advertising intermissions. Some parts of the installation didn't quite work, but overall it was worth seeing. The final tally came to 3847295 pieces fallen. It ended less than an hour ago and you should have seen it."

Comments

Google translation

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's the story, according to this informative Google translation:

New world record

The Aufbauer celebrates a FEC resounding in Leeuwarden its giant success, the largest nuclear chain reaction of the world in that successfully ran off. Up to the last second it remained exciting, those stands remained stones by a notary was officially counted.

With 3.847.295 pleased stones the world record attempt is successful. With some fields some stones stopped, the large final field with 1 million stones were however completely cleared.

Gaensehaut Feeling already with the start of the Spektakels: the zehnsekuendige COUNT down was loudly down-counted. "Backstreet Boy" nod Carter the domino avalanche around point 21,00 o'clock released: The 22-jaehrige Popsaenger set the last stone and in such a way those approximately two meters high "Domino" balance with a span of five meters from the equilibrium brought.

Now domino man Robin Paul Weijers can be and 89-koepfiges team about a new world record and a further entry in the Guinness book of the records to be pleased. During the preparations Robin Weijers was allowed in resounds however neither to cough nor be sneezed,: "by the mass of the blocked stones it is in resounds become close. A wrong movement and the disaster are perfect."

With the balance it went loosely!

Those approximately two meters high "Domino" balance, by which the world record attempt was started.

In the past year PUR-tents and up to 13.72 million spectator the TV Event of the superlative pursued 3,540,562 dominos.

Re:Google translation

[Gsus411]

No, English isn't based on Latin.

England has been overrun so many times in the past, it has taken on words from many different languages. English orignally came from Saxon. When the Normans invaded England, they brought over their Norman French. So, it's basically Saxon with a massive Romance vocabulary. The syntax of the language is hardly Romance, however.

The 100 most common words are Saxon based though.

You can even see who conquered who in the language. For example, pork and hog. Pork is Old French. Hog is Anglo Saxon. The people who worked with the animals used one word that had a connotation of dirty, while the people who ate it used their own word for it that means it's nice, clean, and edible.

English, then is more closely related to modern German than Latin. Actually, Afrikaans is the closest modern relative to English.

I'm sorry my rant, calling English a Romance language is one pet peeves.

Aaargh !

[Anonymous Coward]

It just horrible enought it took place in my town here in the netherelands.

Every year they're trying to keep the netherlands pos #1 of the dull domino worldrecord.

Instead of trying to get us back at #1 of education country.....

Oh, you forgot to mention that there were add-brakes were build in of 5 minutes. So the live-broadcast did not to interrupt te broadcast fot commercials. How they did it ? With a pendel moving slowly to a key, pushed by a domino.

Re:5 minute delay?

[ruudn]

Pendulums, at least the last delay (I only watched the last part, it's kind of boring...)

The pendulum just circles around, in smaller circles until it hits a domino, et voila!

Re:5 minute delay?

[Anonymous Coward]

using a domino on a string building a big pendulum which circles for 5 minutes until the radius is small enough to hit next piece in the center.

Re:Payoffs

[cheezehead]

...and HOW much counting to get to 4 million?

A friend of mine was involved in this back in the '80s. They don't really count the dominos. They weigh them. Given a certain tolerance in the weight, you can calculate the uncertainty in the number of stones. The exact number is not all that important, it's more that you can establish that you beat the previous record.

backstreet boy

[KarateBob]

first, theres no backstreet boy named jim, so i looked at the article to see who it was

well, it was in german, so i searched for "backstreet" and found out it was Nick Carter who setup the last piece.

Same stuff, some nice new effects....

[NightWhistler]

Like a few people already said: this is beginning to be a recurring event on Dutch television.
It's organized and televised by SBS6, a Dutch network, so I don't know what the links to RTL (a German network) is all about... The link to the program is here

They did come up with a few nice new things though... I aspecially liked when they had domino's falling under water, and at one point they even had a bubble of air rising to the surface, knocking down domino's as it went... ;-)

I'm curious to see what they come up with next year...

Re:Same stuff, some nice new effects....

[MonoSynth]

But even then, SBS stands for Scandinavian Broadcasting System and is, together with Net5 and V8, the biggest competitor of the HMG, with RTL4, RTL5 and Yorin in the Netherlands. And RTL stands for Radio Television Luxembourg, and afaik that's because the ASTRA stations are in Luxembourg, it's geographically the center of Europe. So RTL is originally not german (at least if you don't see Luxembourg as a province of Germany, but that's another story)

But it's all corporate stuff. Maybe SBS NL doesn't have much to do with SBS Scandinavia anymore, and RTL NL doesn't have much to do with RTL Luxembourg or Germany.

I missed the show yesterday, but the last time it was mostly in German. Even Dutch people who were talking in German, and that really sucks. I mean, speak in your native language or speak English (we Dutchies hate german people who come here for their holidays and expect us to talk fluently german.)

Re:Same stuff, some nice new effects....

[Corporate Troll]

at least if you don't see Luxembourg as a province of Germany, but that's another story

Oh? And what is that "other" story then? If memory serves me right Luxembourg has been independent since 1831 (a year after Belgium). So take that back, Luxembourg *is* a country! It's not because it's small that it isn't one, because then to your standards The Netherlands couldn't be a country either: look at Germany, much bigger than The Netherlands. Historically Luxembourg would be more likely to be a Belgian of Netherlandish province anyway, or why do you think our flag looks like yours?
We are *not* Germans, and you caravan-carrying-hollandish-tourists should be lucky enough that we speak German to you, because if we really wanted we'd talk French (or Luxembourgish) instead and you'd be screwed! Ever been to a French camping in the summer? Well, I did, and the "oh 't is hier o gezellig" makes me sick. And above that you think that Heineken is good beer, pfff!

Now for your link between SES Astra located in the Chateau de Betzdorf, and RTL Group is definately not true. SES-Astra carries more than just the signals of RTL-related channels. SES-Astra was created in 1985 and the predecessors of RTL were around since 1917. While it is true that RTL is "Luxembourgish based" nowadays, I think that can be said about any big company that has many mergers behind it. Don't forget that RTL originated from CTL which definately is Luxembourgish. There are many reasons for media companies to settle in Luxembourg and most of them are monetary (Tax, Filmmaking is highly subsidized here,...) If you didn't know: the only TV channel that can uses just "RTL" as logo is "RTL Télé Lëtzebuerg", which is the native-luxembourgish-speaking channel, all others have a suffix (like 4, TVI, television).

Oh, tv series that are shown on RTL4 (like "Goede Tijden Slechte Tijden", oh, I hate that show), are often shot in Luxembourg. It's happened to me that I crossed one of the actors in Luxembourg city.

translation

[cheezehead]

German is my 3rd language, but here it goes anyway.

UNAUTHORIZED TRANSLATION
------------------------

NEW WORLD RECORD

In the FEC Hall in Leeuwarden the builders are celebrating their big success, the biggest chain reaction in the world has completed successfully. Up til the last second it remained suspenseful, the stones that had remained standing were officially counted by a notary.

With 3,847,295 fallen domino stones, the attempt at a new world record has succeeded. In some fields some stones remained standing, but the final field with 1 million stones cleared completely.

Goose bumps were felt already at the beginning of the spectacle: the 10 second countdown was performed loudly. "Backstreet Boy" Nick Carter set off the domino avalanche at exactly 9:00 PM: the 22-year old pop singer placed the final stone, and by doing so unbalanced the two meter high "Domino Scale" with its five meter span.

Now "Domino Man" Robin Weijers and his 89-person team can enjoy an additional entry into the Guinness Book of World Records. While preparing, it was forbidden to cough or sneeze inside the hall. Robin Weijers: "Because of the amount of stones, space has become limited inside the hall. One false move and the catastrophe is complete".

THE SCALE STARTED IT!

[picture] The approximately two meter high "Domino Scale", through which the world record attempt was started.

In the past year 3,540,562 domino stones fell over, and up to 13.72 million people watched the TV event of superlatives.

HISTORY OF RECORDS

On November 5. 1999, domino expert Robin Weijers and his team built up 2.5 million dominoes in the Prince Bernhard hall in Zuid-Laren. Up to 14.2 million viewers followed the event live on TV, when 2,472,480 stones fell over. Give or take a few, 3,112,000 stones were toppled on November 3. 2000, again in the Prince Bernhard hall. In front of up to 13.2 million viewers, 2,977,678 stones fell over in a live broadcast. Then last year. Linda de Mol and Robin Weijers' team placed 3.75 million domino stones in the "Mecc" hall in Maastricht. The 90 person international team had worked seven weeks on the 75 different projects. On November 16 everything was ready. The Australian superstar Kylie Minogue started the biggest chain reaction in the world with a flick of her fingers. And again up to 13.72 million viewers watched the spectacle with the stones weiging 8 grams.

Re:5 minute delay?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually the whole thing was done by the Dutch. There is an english-language link here: http://http://www.dominopr.nl/index1.htm.

Re:Priceless.

[Anonymous Coward]

Travel expenses for 89 people to Germany:
$60000

As most of you /.ers are American it may be useful to say this clearly:

The Domino Day event was in The Netherlands.
Germany != The Netherlands.

Got that?

It's a Dutch - Japanese tradition

[Traa]

with lotsa other foreigners tossed in for maximum commercial coverage.

Anyway, it IS pretty spectacular stuff, here are some facts:
4.000.000 dominoes
51 projects
85 x 90 square meters of building space
100 domino builders
Builders are from Holland, Germany, France, Spain, Belgium and Italy
27 basic colours
1.320.998 painted dominoes
331 variety of dominoes

Their main (sponsor) site with more info.

90 minutes, live on TV in 5 countries. I'll buy that tape, makes for good party background stuff.

Geeks and Backstreet Girls

[The Monster]

Out of the entire Slashdot population, one person said "hey, there's no Backstreet Boy named Jim," and then set out to discover who it was.

Just because he beat me to it:

"Backstreet Boy" Nick Carter hat die Domino-Lawine um Punkt 21.00 Uhr ausgelöst: Der 22-jährige Popsänger setzte den letzten Stein und hat so die rund zwei Meter hohe "Domino"-Waage mit einer Spannweite von fünf Metern aus dem Gleichgewicht gebracht.

You don't even have to know much German to follow what happened here - you can probably figure out that Nick is 22 years old, for instance...

Here's a little tip from a geek who is actually married to a female human... Some of them (including The Bride of Monster) actually like the Backstreet Boys, so knowing their names might come in handy when you want to have a conversation about something she likes, because the story that of that sed-regexp-in-a-do-loop I threw together at work the other day for one of the Guys in the Ties (to save him half a day's manual editing work that was holding up hundreds of thousands of dollars of a customer's cashflow) was kinda neat, but not something she can relate to that well, beyond the obvious "Monster did something at work that made the higher-ups happy - maybe that means he'll keep his job if there are layoffs". Who am I kidding - if she were a real geek, it wouldn't have impressed her anyway, because it was trivial, and with a little thought she'd probably have shown me a more efficient way to do it! (I do hope for one of the Monsterettes to eventually achieve that status, however.)

So, here are the names of the other 4 Boys, in the interests of helping fellow geeks get some play:

• A. J. McLean
• Brian Littrell
• Howie Dorough
• Kevin Richardson

Litrell and Richardson are cousins, and are married (Kevin's wife is from near here, and Brian's wife is expecting their first child) while McLean is engaged

The last word on the date was 2 Jan, which is coincidentally the anniversary of my marriage to TBOM - there is a lesson here too - for reasons not immediately apparent to the average geek, women think that remembering such dates and, uh, relationships is important. I recommend a crontab entry to email yourself a reminder a week before such events.

For now, this little HOW-TO will have to substitute for the lack of

man woman