Slashdot Mirror
A Crazy Cambridge Contraption
lhdentra writes "A few friends and I got bored one weekend and decided to build a contraption. Remember the Honda advert? We think ours is better." This took dedication.
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
honda commercial
Slashdot is getting scooped by memepool now.
Does anyone have a picture of this thing?
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
a high bandwdith server first.
That poor site, hopefully they don't pay by the megabyte.
Cambridge rejected me after interview, and yet these geeks get slashdot time AS WELL AS a place at the university? No fair!
There are 2 types of people in the world, those who find that stupid binary joke funny, and those who don't.
I wanna see the contraption, but the thingy-ma-doo went ka-blooey.
** "It's not my job to stand between the people talking to me, and the ones listening to me." -- Pego the Jerk
only took a few seconds to /. ???
When will they learn?
pfft
I just saw the movie... I'm speechless. People have way too much time on their hands. Pretty cool though.
seems like it's slashdotted already :-(
Watch the Teaser Trailer for "The Lightning Thief" Her
That it, describe something that sounds interesting. On the web site, make big the mistake of forgetting to add a nice little PNG or JPG of it so we can see what the big fuss is about. Instead, ask EVERYONE to download between 5 and 12 megs of movie file just to see what it looks like. Oh yes, and host it on a low bandwidth server. If that is not slashdotting-bait, I don't know what is!
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
http://216.239.63.104/search?q=cache:6naSpuNYapAJ: people.pwf.cam.ac.uk/lwh21/machine/+&hl=en
It took me awhile to figure out that this was Cambridge in the U.K. and not Cambridge in Massachusetts with the site currently being /.ed.
The one thing I had against the Honda Commericial is this: At one point, the tire going up the ramp bumps the next tire, appears to go back down the ramp, only to suddenly reverse direction and follow the other tire back up the ramp. The motion of all of the tires is a bit odd.
Oh, wait, site's Slashdotted. Never mind!
"The Contraption.avi" is 8368078 bytes and "machine.avi" is 5851896 bytes. If someone wants to do a torrent I'll upload to them but I've never made a torrent and I'm not starting right now.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
But we had to do something like this for my final in my eigth grade physical sciences class ... we got to use all the chemicals and lab tools in the classroom, and it started by rolling a ball. Different groups worked on different parts, and the point was to be able to use physics and chemistry to provide the mechanisms for the machine to work. It was a lot of fun, and actually seemed to do a good job of testing us on our knowledge of the physical sciences.
i have a mirror of it. http://www.exstatica.net/slashdot/196237/ enjoy :)
Dedicated Linux servers (root access) $45 p.M.
Mod parent up. The description did make it sound like a Rube Goldberg (I guess no one has heard of him anymore, so they think Honda invented it). At least the Rube Goldberg site designers were smart enough to put a jpg of the thing on the main page.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Oh dear
What is it?
I've spontaneously combusted
Well, I am sorry
Oh it's quite all right, I've grown tired of living
Ah, very good then
For the best
Yes indeed
The best education consists in immunizing people against systematic attempts at education. - Paul Feyerabend
here
Rube Goldberg would be proud!
Face it, do something enough times, and it can cause problems.
Apparently the real end of the contraption took a few days, a few internet posts, a bad internet connection and a slashdotted server.
I created a mirror... http://www.exstatica.net/slashdot/196237/ enjoy :)
The "advert" word, common in the UK, should have given it away. It is just "ad" with an extra syllable added.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
http://people.pwf.cam.ac.uk.nyud.net:8090/lwh21/ma chine/machine.avi
Both quicktime and windows media player claim the files are bad. Both look to be the right size and all....
Mark
As Nietsche famously said, "If you stare too long into the Abyss, 1d4 Tanar'ri of random type will attack you."
I cannot play these movie files anywhere. They do not play in WiMP, they do not play in Winamp, they do not play on my Xbox in XBMC. However, windows is able to generate thumbnails for them. I don't know what is going on, but I don't think my files will help anyone.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
What did they start the flame with, the server thats currently burning into the ground?
Thanks to mirrordot for the...well....mirror http://mirrordot.org/stories/4a5348d4e9a30ecdb1883 7ab66bcbcbf/index.html
Wow, this looked really awesome! Much more realistic than the Honda one (Which was still pretty cool) in my opinion.
a chine/machine.avi
I managed to get to it via coral:
http://people.pwf.cam.ac.uk.nyud.net:8090/lwh21/m
Enjoy!
Isee Stars Astro Image Hosting.
The contraption.AVI http://thebrokenwargames.gotdns.com/con.torrent and the machine.avi http://thebrokenwargames.gotdns.com/machine.avi.to rrent
the honda video will be up in a few minutes. stop downloading it if you can. I need the video to make meta.
Not to diminish the awesomeness of the Excellent Piece, it is so compact it fits in a room.
The 1st one was by Fischl and Weiss, they made "the way things go" a decade ago.
except here
http://www.tcfilm.ch/pop_lauf1e.htm
Theres lasted about 20 mins and had chemical reactions and fire and all the honda devices were ripped from a few of Fischl& Weiss's work
and heres a 2001 one from MIT http://www.exploratorium.edu/webcasts/ganson/
Am I the only one who thinks of a certain Styx song after seeing that video clip?
That's the most innovative use of Rubik's cube I've seen in a while! Bravo! I also like the use of the VCR eject feature.
It's 11pm, do you know what your deamons are up to?
1. We made a contraption!
2. We posted it's existance on Slashdot
3. 10,229,033 people clicked on the link
4. The server erupted into white-hot flame for the finale
Sorry, you did not win First Post.
Please play again.
1.Netcraft confirms:In Soviet Russia all your base welcomes a beowolf cluster of CowboyNeal overlords. 2.? 3.Profit!!1!
Look for "Der Lauf der Dinge" (on edonkey for example) to find a 20min story like this.
1. Slashdotter creates site that requires each person to do a 12 meg download to find out what is on it, and submits it to Slashdot.
2. Timothy looks at it, decides it is cool. In the process of looking at it for review, he slashdots the site.
3. "Contraption" story is added to Slashdot. Thousands hit it within seconds, further banging away at some fragile server in the UK.
4. UK server-farms transformers start to smoke. One explodes.
5. Power spike would seem rather small, but it does make its away through an Atlantic cable where it hits an electric relay system near Cleveland, Ohio.
6. Cleveland's vintage "Enron meets East German War Surplus" relay blows out. Cleveland once again has a big blackout. Free TV's for all: loot early and loot often!
7. Ensuing crises causes calls for demands for the resignation of United States energy secretary.
8. Energy sec is good friend of President, so he can't fire him. But he has to do something, so he sacks the Surgeon General.
9. Without a surgeon general, health standards go down, including dental standards.
10. I get a nasty tooth-ache.
Thanks a lot, lhdentra!
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
okay this is your second post advertising the same link not clickable. only slightly different text.
let me guess, in 10 minutes we see the same thing with a clickable link?
power-karma-whoring?
http://195.137.85.254:6969/announce
Mirrordot has a copy of the article here. The videos have also been mirrored and are flowing at a decent rate.
http://slashdot.org/articles/04/04/09/1929235.shtm l?tid=188&tid=97
Wow. You put all that effort into making a great contraption, and then make not one but 2 really unclear videos of it. Well done, lads.
Well, this adds a new meaning to the word 'flame'bait
Pat
If your going to post an article about yourselves, then at least make it worthy of looking at (Don't host your website on yahoo free sites where nobody can get a connection to it...)
So what's the fine line between being so smart you have no common sense and smart enough to have common sense.
The classics of this sort of thing were the schemes dreamt up by the cartoonist Rube Goldberg. I've never seen it but I have been told about one called the "Hitler Killer" which was started when a hen laid an egg or something like that. I went looking for a couple of sites but they seemed to be down (or slashdotted).
Anyway, the link below leads to a contest for producing wildly impractical devices.
news.uns.purdue.edu/UNS/rube/rube.index.html
There was also a computer program called "The Incredible Machine" in which you could construct similar processes. I didn't like it much because it involved damage to cats but my kids really liked it.
A Rube Goldberg machine or device is any exceedingly complex apparatus that performs a very simple task in a very indirect and convoluted way. Rube devised and drew several such pataphysical devices. The best examples of his machines have an anticipation factor. The fact that something so wacky is happening can only be topped by it happening in a suspenseful manner.
You can find them in a lot of science museums, tv shows, commercials, or even the beginning of Back to the Future.
Well at the very least it wasn't better filming than Honda.
From the site: The machine works as follows: 1. The alarm clock rings, and an arm attached to the winder knocks over a CD case. 2. The falling case tips up a ramp holding four batteries, which roll off into the waiting box. 3. The weight of the batteries causes the box to fall, activating a pulley system which turns the model figure. 4. The figure knocks over a row of CDs ending with a book falling off the ledge. 5. The book is attached to one end of a long piece of string through an eyelet, which raises the catch holding the green ball in place on the rails. 6. The green ball rolls down and knocks the blue ball off the door ledge. This ball is attached by string to the end of the ledge, and swings across. 7. As it falls, it knocks a wire lever which causes the yellow ball to roll down the coathanger ramp. 8. This knocks into a red ball which activates the VCR eject feature by means of another lever. 9. The ejected cassette knocks over some more cassettes and a book, the last of which causes half a snooker cue to fall. 10. The binder, propped up by the snooker cue, starts to fall but is hinged at the bottom to the stool on the desk. 11. There is a piece of string attached to the binder and wound round the thread of the stool, so that as the binder falls the stool turns. 12. The screw part of the stool tips up the chute containing the golf ball, which proceeds on down the spiral ramp. 13. The ball rolls under the dart cannon (see later) and is directed onto the leaning chair. 14. The impact of the golf ball causes the chair to fall, pulling the jar off the table. 15. The jar is attached by an arm to the Rubik's cube, solving it in two moves as it is pulled across the table and falls. 16. As the jar falls, it knocks the lid of a filing box which closes, pulling a book off the desk. 17. The book releases the trigger of the dart cannon, which consists of a small carriage on rails, supported by the other half of the snooker cue and sprung with elastic bands. 18. The dart hits the dartboard, knocking it over. 19. The falling dartboard causes another book, hidden behind the table, to fall. 20. As the book falls, it pulls on a lever which causes the lighter to ignite. 21. The flame burns through the string which holds up the bottom of the poster. 22. As the string breaks, a second cube suspended beneath the poster falls, opening out the paper for the finale.
Even the web sites promoting the worst movies don't make the mistake of forgetting to put quick, nice still images of the project on their sites.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
BTW, this is a home made 'subsecuent falling domino pices' ... but instead of 'pices' they use what ever is around in the house/dorm :-)
That's weird -- at my University in the States, we weren't allowed to have any type of open flame in our dorm rooms. ... much less a fully-active dart cannon...
$ touch
- and it lasts 30 minutes. Hypnotic, beautiful
Science fiction for grown-ups...
s/subsecuent/subsequent/
Seed please.
We are one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively. Back to you with the weather, Bob!
Two thumbs down.
"Blimey! If they are not falling out, don't bother me with it! Shove off, wot?"
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Spare their bandwidth. Use the CoralizedLink
When is it ever a good idea to directly post a link to a 17mB file to any high-traffic website? Either this guy has never heard of /., or he's really just out to destroy those servers.
Pretty cool video, though. I still like the Honda ad more.
Discworld.
People there are academically wonderful but famously lack common sense ;)
They can work out velocity and angle of the bus coming towards them instantly in their heads but not have a clue on how to cross a road by themselves...
See title. Rube Godwin's Law was named after the fact that in any fierce Internet argument (first Usenet, now elsewhere), whenever someone discusses ungainly contraptions, someone will always ask "but can you kill Hitler with it?"
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
web server on fire...
the original
the edited type movie
The honda wagon commercial - still a classic
Enjoy
-- There is no sig line, only Zuul.
The video is using Divx 4 (openDivx) which is a silly and old choice. Divx 5 or XVID would have been better. The audio is a waste of 1.2MB because it's MPEG layer 2, not 3. It's 224kbps of (corrupted?) silence. By comparison, mp3s are usually 128kbps.
This is NOT better than the Honda commercial. It's just not as elegant or precarious.
There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie
ok i got cog.mov up and running. Umm could i have some donations. My hard drive is grinding. heh message me! cog.mov is here: http://thebrokenwargames.gotdns.com/cog.mov.torren t
If you download the contraption.avi then read the credits.
Torrent that somebody else has already posted to contraption.avi
Seriously though, I think the machine is cooler and in many ways more innovative primarily because Honda only used parts taken off the Accord. No fires, darts, stools, or other ingenious uses of everyday household items that made the contraption so cool to watch. The Honda commercial was also about absolute precision - parts barely reached their destination and stopped right when they had to - it was more a polished work of art than the purely creative-brute-force of the contraption, Honda also had to constrain the speed at which things happened, precisely for the reason why the contraption required a separate movie to show exactly what was going on in each segment of the animation.
A great video (by a great band) that features a similar contraption. It's worth checking out (even if you're not a fan of the music).
Video - Honest Mistake
Incidentally, this is a band to watch for--expect them to be everywhere in a few weeks.
Really isn't that great. Too much time, lots of movable parts. I prefer the HL2 Rube Goldbergs (see gary's mod forum for more details).
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
The classic Incredible Machine lets you do just this :)
BTW, The Honda movie is a cheat. Seen the wheels speeding up uphill?
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
The Honda one looked way better, and this one needed better music. But seriously, if you like this sort of thing, get together with a local school and ask about coaching an Odyssey of the Mind team. This program is great fun for everyone involved, and God knows that kids today need some recreation that doesn't involve headshots.
REM Old programmers don't die. They just GOSUB without RETURN.
Normally these geeks movies can be mirrored, but in this case the authors forbid it, as can be seen at the end of The%20Contraption.avi: ...any unauthorized duplication, distribution or exhibition of this motion picture could result in criminal prosecution as well as civil liability.
So... have fun in court!
I didn't think blatant karma whoring with an complete lack of formatting was funny...
Remember the Honda advert? We think ours is better.
It's not.
What you've done is cool as a standalone work. But reminding your viewers of the Honda commercial sets up an expectation that your video simply does not fulfill. Sorry.
The great thing about the Honda ad was that everything was balanced to within a hair's breadth. It came so close to failing (and did, numerous times), but held up gracefully, and that's what's so hypnotic about it. Not to mention the beautiful lines and clear photography; in this I couldn't even tell what was happening half the time.
Kudos to these guys for all the work, and I suppose it was worth the 54 seconds it took to watch it, but let's keep some perspective. At the mall I can get a similar show for 25 cents and I get a gumball at the end.
just before the candle
nice try though
I found this contraption very interesting, but not as good as the Honda device.
The thing with the Honda device was that everything was tuned to perfection -- everything just barely triggered the next step. The tires (which, as has been mentioned ad nauseum, were weighted to roll upwards) hit each other delicately, washers and balls rolled exactly the right distance to hit the next step.
Also, for those not in the know, these devices are often called Rube Goldberg devices, after the wacky inventions of Rube Goldberg. I recently did a similar project in Physics, where I needed to light and subsequently put out a candle in at least 10 unique transfers of energy. I have to say, its not easy getting everything to work reliabily.
Mouse Trapt rap.ht ml
http://www.centralconnector.com/GAMES/mouse
I'm also aware that this game isn't the original Rube Goldberg device... just wondering if anyone else played this as a kid (or an adult I guess). I had it back in the 80's.
Sinch
Just reinstall windows. That'll solve all your problems.
shhh...
ed2k://|file|Der.lauf.der.dinge.(1987).VHSRip.a
Bah! once again the codec is not on my box. This is the worst thing about video on the web in general. Half the time I don't have the codec, and the file and/or the site doesn't even tell me what I need. Of course, this is with Media Player 10 on XP sp2. Maybe something else is better, but I DON'T CARE. I just want the stuff to work out of the box. You think they would have automated the codecc update process by now, but NooooOO! (end rant).
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
http://heypete.com:6969/
.mov's.
High-bandwidth BitTorrent mirror in the US. All files are QuickTime
honda.mov - Original Honda commercial.
machine.mov - Full "machine" video.
contraption.mov - Edited "machine" video showing each part in greater detail.
Funny, Microsoft's contraption was the flash ad!!! Conspiracy?
Mind | Body | Spirit | Cash
If you're on Windows, you want the K-Lite Codec Pack ; this collection of codecs (& Media Player Classic) will let you play just about anything you're likely to come across. Plus you can play QuickTime and RealMedia files in MPC, and not have to use their respective crappy players.
If you're having trouble playing that Star Wars Episode 3 trailer you just downloaded, this'll to watch it just fine.
In answer to the most frequently asked question about the commercial:
The sequence where the tyres roll up a slope looks particularly impressive but is very simple. Steiner says that there is a weight [in each] tyre and when the tyre is knocked, the weight is displaced and in an attempt to rebalance itself, the tyre rolls up the slope.
1)Go to google
2)enter divx
3)click I'm feeling lucky
4)select free download
5)save to disk
6)marble rolls over cat's head causing her to scramble and dislodge the brick attached to the string
7)double click oninstaller
8)install the CODEC ONLY or you will have to use the divx player exclusively to see divx encoded videos
9)enjoy video
10)reply to this post sardonically
They made this video in the UK, but they have this cool MPAA warning at the end, with the MPAA logo and the usual "criminal prosecution" warnings... Pretty neat, huh? (I'm talking about the "edited" version)
They didn't cheat at all. They put bolts inside the tire and set the tire right at the balance point so as soon as it was touched it rolled uphill. The only "cheat" in the whole commerical was that they actually filmed it in two parts as their studio wasn't long enough. It's actually spliced where the exhaust rolls across the floor.
22. As the string breaks, a second cube suspended beneath the poster falls, opening out the paper for the finale.
Just as soon as I figure out how to make the second cube turn the alarm clock back by a few seconds.
That, and a way to make my neighbors not make a fuss about the infinitely looping racket.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
Now, that's news for nerds!
OH my g0d th3y 4r3 the 5uxx0rz!!!1one thy did nt us3 my ch01c3 0f c0d3c5 luz0rz!!111!!LOL
Karnal
11)Profit!!!
If they are going to claim it's better then they should at least produce something comparable in quality. The main problem, that someone else mentioned here was the camera work. The they probably had a tracked camera for the honda commercial, not a person frantically running around trying to keep up with the events. Also a lot of the pieces of the system moved too fast. You could barely see a few of the balls that moved from place to place because they were moving fast so the camera moved fast to track with them, which left a nice blur for us to look at. Those things on top of the professional look of the Honda commercial vs the college dorm room look of this setup made the whole thing way disappointing.
All that said. I'm sure it took a *lot* of time and effort, it was cool to watch. It's just annoying for them to say 'ours is better' just to get more attention. If they had just said, here's a cool rube goldberg contraption, take a look, I wouldn't have been let down at all.
No splicing at all, according to multiple articles and interviews with the people who worked on the set. It took 606 takes to get everything to work.
I was all excited until I watched the edited video and discovered that it's got MPAA attribution at the end. Guess we're all pirates now.
Microsoft's Operating System architecture?
(/me runs, ducks and hides)
Help save the critically endangered Blue Iguana
This works out of the box on my Gentoo, erm, box. Go figure.
Holy F**king S**t.
My machine has a freshly installed XP Pro...downloaded every last freaking update on M.S. servers, SP2 and everthing.
Download the avi and...nothing.
Windows....Industry Standard....my ass.
Has anyone ever heard of mpeg?
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Ah, but I do. Here's my picture.. I'm the one in the middle.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Adding "vert" to the end of "ad" has a use: it can distinguish it from being confused with the addition word "add". This makes more sense than doing something like adding a "u" to "favor", which serves no purpose at all.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Every mother thinks there baby's cute! Even the mothers of the ugly babies! Your babie is ugly.
works first time.
finally, THE BIG FINGER to all those D*MN
MS media player files that do not play for me.
DIE MICROSOFT DIE!!!!
Totem Media Player in mandrake 10
just.... tears this thing UP!
Sounds Great!
them Brits have got very nice condenser mics.
Now,
DIE MICROSOFT DIE !!!!!!!
They claim the movie is DivX-encoded but VLC won't play it (at least my copy, it crashes on open). Any OS X folks out there know how to play this?
Nevermind, just answered my own question. Dunno why VLC couldn't handle it, though.
... the Life-Size MouseTrap at Burning Man, 1996.
How much beer was consumed in the planning, building and dry runs?
"Love is like pi - natural, irrational, and very important." (Lisa Hoffman)
Why didn't they use MPEG? I almost never have trouble with those. I get codec-not-found errors in two different viewers with these.
Table-ized A.I.
This is shit. I was bored before it started. Despite being capable at making a cute apparatus, they can't operate a video camera in any stable fashion. Was this done in a fucking salmon boat in the middle of the north atlantic? It was about that blurry.
To get the same visual quality the filesize would have ended up larger. Why they used such an uncommon version of mpeg-4, I have no idea.
When I was a fairly little kid, maybe 35 or 40 years ago, I remember being in some kind of a shopping mall where there was a huge do-nothing machine set up on display. A man was madly pedaling a bicycle and apparently powering everything else there. Doors were opening and closing, a bird cage was moving up and down, an umbrella was opening and closing and doing something else, and you-name-it. All kinds of junk and gears and bits-and-pieces moving and spinning and going "whir" and "buzz" and "chirp", madly working away accomplishing absolutely nothing. The whole thing impressed the hell out of me at the time (and made a lasting impression, obviously) but I've never seen anything like it since then. I remember the machine seeming huge at the time; in hindsight I suspect it might have been about 6 or 7 feet by 15 or 20 feet by 7 or 8 feet high.
Has anyone else ever seen one of these anywhere?
If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
All this time we thought they were working to make the world a better place.
Never mind boring Honda ads, this is definitely inspired by Wallace & Gromit.
And hey, Nick Park is a brit too! Did he go to Cambridge as well?
Remember the Honda advert? We think ours is better.
I hope it's not just me that disagrees with that.
Lager is better than "codec-not-found".
Table-ized A.I.