I’ve only been genuinely rickrolled twice and both were by Dr. Tiki, including the “lala Shower Outtakes” video that made it the front page of Digg.com. So when I heard that Jeff Macpherson (the guy who plays Dr. Tiki on Tiki Bar TV) announced a “Dr. Tiki meetup” at my local watering hole Forbidden Island Tiki Lounge, I had to come up with a plan to get him back with a rickroll while he was there.

To trick him into clicking through to a rickroll while at a Tiki Bar seemed like it would be a difficult task, but I had some advantages: One, I am good friends with Martin Cate, the mastermind behind Forbidden Island, which was Dr. Tiki’s destination. And two, I designed and programmed Forbidden Island’s tiki-themed touchscreen jukebox. The idea of using something other than the Internet-- specifically a jukebox -- to rickroll someone seemed incredibly devious and yet the same time strangely appropriate. I pitched it to Martin and he was in.

It all came together quickly. I made a special build of the jukebox software that when activated, would make every song selection on the juke trigger the Rick Astley video full screen. I got it working in record time and coordinated with Martin to clandestinely install it on the jukebox before opening.

The rest was up to Martin himself. The plan was for Martin to give Dr. Tiki a tour of Forbidden Island -- which is a top notch Tiki bar truly worthy of a Tiki connoisseur’s guided tour -- that would culminate at the jukebox. At that point Martin would add free credits to the juke while secretly turn on the rickroll mode, then encourage Dr. Tiki to pick a few songs. Meanwhile, my friends Chad Spacey, Rebecca and I would shoot video.

The plan worked like a charm. Dr. Tiki was caught completely off guard. Someone not in the know even asked him what was going on and got him to explain the whole rickroll phenomena on camera. It was a classic moment. Jeff Macpherson was truly a great sport about it, a genuine nice guy, and I’m glad I and the other Forbidden Island regulars were able to meet up with him while he was in town. It took a lot of work to rickroll him in public like that, but it was totally worth all the effort. I’d like to think we’re even … but I wonder if I have to watch my back, virtually speaking.

Digg this

Enjoy!

Well, um. It’s ah … unimpressive.

Don’t get me wrong … it looks real cute and all. But, it’s just … clearly not Spore. Now I know the trend to make lame mobile “name branded” franchise tie-ins to popular real games has been going on for a while, but I thought the DS was above taking a game that is all about 3d character creation and reducing it to what appears to be Colorforms.

I read on Level Up that EA is claiming that they took the art direction from Japanese 2d rod puppets, but really it’s pretty clear that their real inspiration came from “The DS is not powerful enough to run this game, but we gotta cash in somehow on the brand!”. Nice spin attempt, EA, but these screenshots just aren’t doing it for me. I hope the game in motion convinces me (as, admittedly, is often the case!)

You know, the full mia culpa here is I’ll probably buy it … if it comes out.

[image blantently stolen from Wired News]

CNet: Spore shipping September 7th

Here’s a snippet of what she had to say the next day:

Thank you so much for your prompt response. I can’t thank you enough for your generosity. My son will be delighted! He has Autism and gets obsessed with things for months at a time. He will play the one game for months and then move on to another. Then he will often return to a game he was obsessed with previously. Its so long since we played Rocknor I honestly couldn’t remember when we bought it. Thus far i have managed to keep him away from most of the awful games that consist of killing things.He will be so excited! Actually the whole family enjoys Rocknor and its so nice to have the kids playing something that makes them think instead of just pushing a button.

Once again my many many thanks. You have made one little boy very very happy.

When I hear firsthand how someone is enjoying something I made, it makes it very hard to think of doing anything else as a career or hobby.

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Tell them Hanford sent you.

Scott Lund did the hardware, Matty & Jessica did the case, and Martin Cate organized the content and was executive producer. I did the software and most of the UI design along with the rest of the team.

It randomly plays music from the least-recently played selections on the juke. This was a major beef the owners and staff had about the old off-the-shelf jukebox, which played the same 20 songs over and over.

Here’s a shot of the jukebox’s custom “shipwreck” case:

The end result is this little web app I wrote. It’s got a little bit of GUI to make it easy to adjust the amount of splatter you need. The end result is an image that you can use in Photoshop.

Here’s a brief rundown of how it works:

+ The canvas is made up of “passes” of paint splatter. You can Add and delete as many passes as you want.
+ Each pass has it’s own set of settings. you click on a pass on the left, then you can change the settings for that pass.
+ double-headed sliders set minimums and maximums for settings.
+ As you change settings, you’ll see a realtime preview of just that pass on the right.
+ when you stop dragging a slider, the big canvas will re-splatter with your new settings.
+ To get the image into Photoshop, you click on the “Copy to clipboard” button or “copy inverted”, which reverses it for better channel creation.
+ You can tweak with a small sized canvas, then when you got it the way you want, make the canvas bigger.
+ There’s no way to save settings yet.

you may need to install the latest Shockwave plug-in to make it work. Enjoy

Happy holidays everyone! Here’s to 2008, and posting a whole lot more.