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pc-0x90 writes "In Canada, when engineers finish their undergraduate degree, they attend a ceremony referred to as Kipling. Alongside the formal ceremony are the kipling pranks. This year, the Software Engineers at McMaster University designed a life sized Pac-Man board, thus answering the question of whether or not software engineering is in fact engineering."
"thus answering the question of whether or not software engineering is in fact engineering."
:/
Well it certainly answered whether a Canadian University could withstand a slashdotting after 2 posts
Yo Grark
Canadian Bred with American Buttering
Canadian Bred with American Buttering
They should now team up with the Robotics students to make a pacman robot that follows the maze and 'eats' the 'pills'.
Now THAT would be *very* cool!!!
Woooh!!! Ok, gotta get over my excitement -- it's not everyday that I find an article relating to something that took place in a building no more than 300m away from my bedroom. I go to McMaster and have actually walked on said Pac-Man board.
Generally the Kipling pranks here at Mac are rather well-done (cars are a common theme -- putting them on roofs, hanging them on sides of buildings, etc.) but this year things were slightly lackluster, if you will. I may have just not been out before some got taken down, who knows. That said, the Pac-Man board is still around (I've been in my room for a few days, so I don't know for sure) and still looks impressive.
There was a comment questioning the "life-sizedness" of the board, and being 6'1", 200lbs. I can say I fit most comfortably in the maze. The dots may have been slightly insubstantial for consumption (they were only the labels off beer, not the actual product itself... damn Engineers probably drank it all before hand, come to think of it) and the aliens/ghosts (please, no flames from those who know Pac-Man far better than I and who think I'm an idiot for not knowing at the very least what those things are called) weren't so large as to be intimidating. Other than that the "life-sized" label fits very well (they didn't just follow the pattern of the floor tiles, as this post suggested -- it's all measured out on their own scale).
I'm going to have to run over to the Computer department after I finish studying for this exam and observe the smoulding hulk of server that I'm sure now exists :). Wheee, what a fun day already, and all because of slashdot!
Adam, I don't know if you read slashdot, but my compliments on the good work. That and nice pics.
"this is a really good piece of cantoloupe."
was by far the best this year. Not only was there the pac man board in the student centre, but the SFWR Graveyard was great too (although, politically, with everything going on in the world, I think some of the crazy artsies may have been offended - or mistook the prank for a political stance, meh).
The Graveyard was everything that a Software Engineer lays dead to the world after 4 years. For example the ablility to pick up women, Hit by bus error, Deadlock because "Has X waiting for Y" was buried right beside "Has Y waiting for X", and from all the exams we have no chance in ever passing we bury our anal viginity.
Good-bye www.eng.mcmaster.ca Slashdot now has a hold of you, fair well.
Those images are HUGE!
:)
Here's a recompressed mirror. It should be there until 16:40 GMT.
Or maybe not. Do your worst
AKA Puc Man in Japan. They renamed it to Pac in the western world due to the typeface used on the cabinet. The black outline of the typeface made it very easy to change the P to an F with a carefully placed strip of black sticky tape :)
Kipling pranks at McMaster are occassionally creative, but I've seen more stupidity than creativity in the past few years. I admit up front my bias at being a Comp Sci graduate and resenting the forced merger with the Computer and Software engineers and coming under the evil shadow of their malevolent dictator.
That aside, Kipling has oft been at the root of distruction and vandalism. HOG and Kipling can be seen spraypainted on many signs, buildings, and sidewalks all over campus from Kiplings past. One year they actual released chickens in the middle of the Engineering building while the nursing students had set up their projects in the main hall for educating students on health issues, causing great stress to both the nursing students and the chickens. Laugh if you want, but I don't find the ruination of someone's school project and the injury of innocent animals entertaining - nor do I see that it shows any creativity or skill. The car on the roof of the library awning, while interesting, was also dangerous to passers by and damaged property. Silly Engineers.
I believe my favorite prank, because it was both harmless and amusing, was when they chalked every sidewalk on the campus to have road symbols, including dividing and passing lines, stop lines at intersections, etc.
Here are some more mirrors to releave the pressure.
Mouse powered Chips, Open source Processors and Lego
Hmmmm, let's see graduating 2003....
If they entered university at 19, then they must be about 23, which means they were born around 1980 +- 1 year.
Pacman was long gone by the time they could reach the joystick!
I bet none of them ever played the original Pacman or even understood how big of a fad it was!!!
I remember taking my mom's silver quarters that she had been saving (remember when quarters were made out of real silver?!?), not understanding the value of them, and using them to play video games like Pacman.
"That's Incredible" would have segments on kids getting the highest scores ever, playing it the longest, etc. I got the crappy version of Pacman for the Atari 2600 (at first disappointed, but it was better than nothing, so I accepted it). I watched the terrible Pacman cartoon on ABC. I think they also had a Q-bert cartoon as well.
Ahhh, the good old days.
If they had been good engineers, they would have
used gaffer's tape, not duct tape. Compared to
duct tape, gaffer's tape leaves less residue
and is also easier to tear.
I would NOT want to be the person who has to try
to get all that duct tape reside off the nice floor.
And there's a decent chance that the pranksters
will in fact be forced to clean it up.