I’ve seen some bad paint jobs on cars recently. One guy had some kind of Franken-car that looked like half Gremlin, half Honda, lowered, with huge rims and a body that looked like it was made poorly from paper mache. But as I have often suspected, it’s often just the craftsman that makes the difference. Witness the nifty paint job on this Corvair:

50 Dollar Paint

The trick? It’s done with Rustoleum and rollers. Lots of coats. Lots of wet sanding and buffing. Very neat. If I had some beater to paint, I might even think about doing it this way. Maybe some future robotics project will benefit from this knowledge…

I felt like I needed a new game. I was at Best Buy. I saw the new Transformers game on the shelf. I thought it might be fun. I plunked down my hard earned money without consulting a review.

I made a mistake.

It blows. It’s not the graphics, the sound, or the repetitive gameplay. It’s the stupid camera.

It’s one of those games where you’d imagine that having a camera follow along behind you would just work, and be simple and reasonable. After all, Mario 64 had this kind of a camera interface, and it worked rather well. Transformers has a camera which seems pathologically committed to viewing your robot from precisely the wrong angle. It seems almost designed to make it impossible to see where you are going and what is attacking you at all times.

I’d give it a 2/10. Don’t waste your time or money. Not even worth a rental.

[tags]Wii,Transformers[/tags]

Here is an awesome demonstration of gyroscopic stabilization, as well as a sure indication that duct tape is useful, even in space.

[tags]Science,Gravity,Gyroscope[/tags]