Most of the people who know be know how random and unrelated my talents/interests are, so here's another: Pen spinning.

It fits in my niche because it's not dangerous, it's something you will inevitably and steadily get better at with practice and because it can be done practically anywhere.

As for the reason I made a video of myself doing it, well... mostly I'm just procrastinating from doing homework. Also, I wanted to make a video after watching some other people have their CWalk videos up, but decided that my family would probably not appreciate me pounding on the floor of my room, so I made this instead. Nice and quiet.

Take a look at me spinning: Jamie Pen Spinning for November 3rd

Watch the pros at work here:
Japanese Pro Spinning Collboration

All of you have probably at some point or other seen videos of Rube Goldberg machines. Basically, various, overly complex, overly unreliable mechanisms to accomplish a simple task. One of the more impressive ones in the past was the Honda ad one, in which they used basically every part in the car to achieve a beautiful effect (after taking a hideous amount of takes.)

Now, while I still think all those and all those that have accomplished something similar are amazing in the first place, this video just 1-up's all of them.

What did they add? Fire of course. Because Fire makes everything better. Fire and Zeus. If you don't know, you probably wouldn't get it.

Watch Fire Contraption

So after managing to find a really good Cinema 4D Abstract tutorial (as my old methods fail me, with the possible exception of the method I used for whiplash, which I just can't rememember...), I created this.

Now, it seems I made the actual 3D portion overly complex, as it took 26 hours to render. Yeup. Didn't see that coming. It was rendering less than 20 pixels/second. It took more than a minute to finish a single row of pixels. Damn.

I like overall how it turned out. The font isn't great, but I was getting kind of tired of working on it.

To see the tutorial I followed to get this, take a look here: Ultimate c4d abstract tutorial

Modeling: ~2 Hours
Rendering: 26 Hours (>__<)
Photoshop: ~3 Hours

If only life were this simple.

What I'm talking about is Conway's Game of Life.
Now, if you must, you can go read the Wikipedia article, but really, all you need to know is this:

The 4 Rules:
1. Any live cell with fewer than two live neighbours dies, as if by loneliness.
2. Any live cell with more than three live neighbours dies, as if by overcrowding.
3. Any live cell with two or three live neighbours lives, unchanged, to the next generation.
4. Any dead cell with exactly three live neighbours comes to life.

Now, if you'd like to see my version:
Download Life.zip

Inside the archive is:
-A compiled version
-A ddl required to run the program
-And the source code

To see what it's gonna look like before downloading, click the picture above (it looks kind of stupid if it isn't fullsized.)

If you want to compile it yourself, you're going to need allegro, which you can look up if you're that interested.

This program was written between school and home, using C.

Before I start getting yelled at for endorsing animal cruelty, both observe the picture above and the category this post is in.

No, this is a sweet game I found while wandering around on StumbleUpon. While the actually game concept isn't particularly original, the execution is excellent. The graphics are good, the rules are straightforward and there really is a kind of strategy in the game. The one thing I really don't like about the game is how long it takes to go back to the beginning after suiciding because of a bad shot. That's sort of obnoxious. But anyway, I would still call this quite an excellent game.

The checkpoints I've reached are:

Men's Restroom
Ladies Restroom
Dartboard
The Stag

Play Rat Shot

In addition to the name being a horrible pun for the image above, it also describes the video within this post.

First, the image. The image above was actually made by accident while creating posters for yearbook. Unfortunatey, due to the printer at school being solely black and white, this couldn't be used for the posters. Regardless, I still think this looks pretty cool by itself. The swirl itself was made in illustrator, but was flipped and altered in opacity in Photoshop.

The effect on this one works considerably better if you click on it for an enlarged view. The concentric fuzzy black rings around the center seem to fluctuate, and if you stare at the centre, it appears to be growing larger and larger.

Now, the video. The reason I say it describes the video well is because I've already seen all the illusions within the video, but the connection with the musics, the style of narration and the fact that some have been animated where I've only seem them still before is pretty cool to me.

So, watch The Whitest Boy Alive: Golden Cage

As a side note, I have absolutely no idea why it's titled that. Other than "the", I'm fairly sure none of those words actually appear anywhere in the video.

While it's difficult to compare the level of difficulty of ball control in proffesional baseball, basketball, soccer, football and countless other sports, it's difficult to dispute the difficulty involed in this impressive routine of juggling.

It's just mind boggling. At times, it really does look like the balls are just floating there.

Watch Extreme Juggling

While the Internet has given us access to information above and beyond (and way beyond I-didn't-want-to-know/see/hear-that) our everyday needs, it clearly has it's downfalls. Primarily, the ability for anyone to contribute anything, in any "language" i.e. "lulz" (That's right Boyelly,) severely hinders both intelligence and communication. Maybe one day computers will have a way of administering an electric shock to anyone spelling/inventing more than 7 words in a sentence. Except you can't call it a sentence because there are no period to be found. Except on the odd occasion when someone decides to use an exclamation mark. Or seven. Or seven exclamation marks, a 1 and the word "one".

But anyway, presenting this in a way guarenteed to be funnier than this mini-rant, here's collegehumor.

Watch Internet Commenter Business Meeting

Now, I have some problems with how facebook is used (not so much how it's built, as it really is well built and designed beautifully.) Regardless of that fact (or perhaps partially because of that fact) I find the following video hilarious.

I'm sure it helps if you've seen the movie Face Off, but I only know the basic premise of that movie (guy gets identity completely stolen, face and all) and I still think it's awesome. But naturally, I'll leave that decision up to you.

Watch Facebook Off

Whether you're a Mac or PC fan, we can all agree that they're not meant to be gangster.
Seriously.

Buuut.. that's why this video is so freakin awesome.

Honestly, who would think of dancing to the dialup sound? Man.

Watch "Mac or PC" Rap