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Need a Way to Use 225m of Blue Duct Tape?
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."
What is the scale of PacMan in real life??
What I really wanted to see was the space distorters making it possible to wrap around to the other side after crossing the outer border.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
I was hoping for something more 3-D, but it is still cool. Who get's to play the ghosts? They can put some red bull cans where the super-dots are and have alot of fun, well maybe not alot of fun, but at least some.
Gotta love the 80's teenage radicle Pac Man.
"Computer games don't affect kids, I mean if Pac Man affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in darkened rooms, munching pills and listening to repetitive music."
until they figure out how to make pacman appear on the left hand side of the maze after disappearing from the right hand side.
"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
mirror for the page at the authors other site here
There's only 3 ghosts!! Kids today... they don't pay attention to details.
---- Meh.
Note that they asked the security guard for permission... and they likely cleaned up after themselves too... sheesh...
They know exactly how much tape they used, but they don't know how many people were there making it.
"I can't drive 55. It only goes 38."
With that much duct tape, you think they'd be able to piece together a server that wouldn't be slashdotted so fast...
Q: What do you get when you take roughly 20 Software Engineers, 225 meters of blue duct tape, 240 beer coasters, 4 America Online CDs and far too much free time?
:)
A: A labotomy?
I fail to see how the design of a massive Pac-Man board is, in any way, related to the *art* of designing good software.
- Chris Z. Wintrowski -
[ Site ]
Main Entry: sarcasm
Pronunciation: 'sär-"ka-z&m
Function: noun
Etymology: French or Late Latin; French sarcasme, from Late Latin sarcasmos, from Greek sarkasmos, from sarkazein to tear flesh, bite the lips in rage, sneer, from sark-, sarx flesh; probably akin to Avestan thwar&s- to cut
Date: 1550
1 : a sharp and often satirical or ironic utterance designed to cut or give pain
2 a : a mode of satirical wit depending for its effect on bitter, caustic, and often ironic language that is usually directed against an individual b : the use or language of sarcasm
synonym see WIT
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
which software engineer has far too much free time? the fired ones?
Since the original webpage got slashdottet I set up a "mirror", it's on a 100mbps connection. (not much when we have a slashdot effect in the picture)
http://skall.no/~termos/pacman/
Note to self: get smarter troll to guard door.
You finally regretting that Arts degree huh?
Are these '1337' software engineers not capable of running a webserver that doesn't get slashdotted so fast!?
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!!!
Eh?
We referred to it as the Iron Ring ceremony at Queen's.
some one could figure a way to turn this into something like one of those big chess boards you see in some public parks. They brought chess to the pc why not bring pac man into the physical world?
=If life was easy, i would be out of a job=
If only I had know that to be respected by Slashdot as an "engineer" all I needed was some some tape! Would have saved me a lot of time and effort.
"It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance." - Thomas Sowell
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."
OK granted I wasn't the MOST involved in social activities, but when I graduated with a degree in Civil Engineering from the University of Waterloo (1-2 hours away from McMaster, in Southern Ontario) 7 years ago, I never HEARD of any "Kipling" ceremony.
We had the IRS (Iron Ring Stag), and the Iron Ring Ceremony, and of course graduation, but that's all *I* recall...
www.clarke.ca
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.
This McMaster University sounds like a cheap-deep-fried-fast degree-granting institution.
"Would you like a McMaster or a McBSc with that ?
Don't read this sig
look at all of those unused condoms.
The best prank we computer scientists ever did was invite a stripper to the lecture. The stupidest thing we did was let the engineers (those guys that go to engineering school, mechanical, civil, chemical, electrical etc) know that we had invited the stripper.
lecture was eventually held in tutorial room out the back, and lecturer was unexpectedly lecherous - yuk.
Best prank engineers did was hang a roadworthy(?) volkswagon underneath the footbridge and over the river.
Best prank I ever contributed to was the kidnap and ransom of a local politician (with his consent). Raised $40 from the parliament house to keep him, and $300 from the uni bar to give him back.
-- it must be true, it's on the internet.
Those images are HUGE!
:)
Here's a recompressed mirror. It should be there until 16:40 GMT.
Or maybe not. Do your worst
If they were real engineers, there'd be teleporters on either side of the board:)
Great job guys! Looks awesome.
High-speed Road Trip (18.000KPH)
Young man (trying to sound literate): "So, do you like Kipling?"
Young woman (suddenly coy): "Goodness, I don't know; I've never kippled before..."
Well, I thought it was funny.
There are only 10 types of people: those who understand decimal, those who don't, and, uh, 8 other types I forget.
Maybe the real prank was DOSsing their school's webserver by getting a link posted on /.
That is not duct tape, duct tape is silver-grey! Ever seen Macgyver use blue and pink tape?
CAPS LOCK IS LIKE CRUISE CONTROL FOR COOL!
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."
That's like saying "The president played the saxophone, thus answering the question of whether or not politics is in fact music".
Lameness filter encountered.
Your comment violated the "postercomment" compression filter. Try less whitespace and/or less repetition. Comment aborted.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
These guys slashdotted the CAS server! Now I can't download the notes for Dr. Leduc's 4F03 exam on Monday! WE'RE ALL GONNA FAIL! Start running Shabbir! ------------- Adam
HOlding the server together while it was getting slashdotted.
-------
Support Indy Music. Buy
Red Green has got to be a sponsor for this.
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
Ah, McMaster, how I miss thee. I heard through the grapevine that the pranks were pretty good this year. My year the Kipling pranks were poorly organized and thus sucked. Nice work guys.
Looks like they set that up in the new student centre that I paid for for 5 years but never got to see. Enjoy it.
Off for my morning coffee, in my Kipling mug in honour of it's new found fame.
Cheers,
James, Chem Eng '96
Laugh while you can, monkey boy!
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.
That is the craziest way to recreate a pac-man game.
Now I really want to see an animated version. How about getting a video game, connecting it to a video projection system aimed at the floor?
Even crazier, add a motion detection system that would generate input based on people moving across the floor.
I attended the Kipling cewremony about a month ago at my Uni, Carleton in Ottawa. All I have to say is that this "secret" ceremony was somewhat of a let down.
There was no drinking of goat's blood, no biting-off chicken necks, and no munching of donkey ears.
They did however give us iron rings, and apparently we weren't supposed to eat them. They could have mentioned that beforehand...
Now, unlike most of my Canadian eng. brothers and sisters (but much like my engineering friends from SOVIET RUSSIA), I don't wear the ring... it wears me!
using System.Awesome;
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.
Last year someone setup a life size Pac Man board at burning man and actually played out life size games with real life size people. They had all the sounds and music to go along with it.
Quite clever.
-WB
"All the time." - me
aren't 4th year engineering pranks reserved for april fools day? that's when the graduating eng students pull their pranks here at queen's... (and everywhere else i think)
it's already been said, but everyone else calls it the iron ring ceremony so get with it.
mnx
The Software engineering program is an acredited engineering program with the CEAB. The reason-- to the best of my understanding that SFWR ENG is paired with the CAS group, is due to the shared lab space and staff--- plus some of the courses overlap a 4th year eng course is a grad course for CS, etc.
They were so close... but they failed to use ritz crackers as polls and guys in sheets as the ghosts.. now THAT would have been fun to watch.
They go to all that trouble to replicate the game's board, then they make up some gay swirly packman design.
Well, it still misses the point. They replicated the game board. I think the ghosts should be automatic robots (I honestly expected it!) and the player (live person) should just run the maze (without crossing borders!) and pick up all the "dots" without getting caught. That would pretty much replicate the game itself...
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
from the mameinfo.dat file:
they're commonly known as monsters. not ghosts.
Blinky, Pinky, Inky and Clyde are their nicknames.
the real names are Shadow, Speedy, Bashful, and Pokey.
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.
Some day the slashdot editors may learn that they wield the power to disrupt services and cause financial damages. Perhaps someone will sue them; they deserve it.
Until then, i'll be slightly uneasy when posting cool stuff on line. You never know when slashdot will strike!
I just went through this ceremony about a month ago, and it's formal name was "The Ritual Of The Calling Of An Engineer" at the U of M.... although no one actually calls it that... we all just say "The Iron Ring Ceremony".
There's not really any pranking done on the day though... at least, no more than any other day.
-"One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man." -EH
Try the following bittorrent link if the mirrors are too slow: http://f.scarywater.net/Kipling_2003_prank_-_Pac-M an.torrent.
Congrats.
The RED GREEN movie "Ducttape vorever" is funnier.
http://www.redgreen.com
Wolf
Where ever you go, There you are
me too
;-)
Definately the Most sanest post in the thread.
PS: whoops! while your at it, mod me down for me2ing
...shouldn't they be doing something more important? Like defeating international terrorism?