c4countdown

With such a multitalented bunch of people, you lot must be doing cool things all the time. Perhaps you gave a speech to the Queen, got a sweet new job, or invented a novel use for the squid. This is where you post about it.

I laid the first brick of a retirement home that I forget the name of in Weeke, on the outskirts of Winchester. I was chosen because I was the best. I was on South Today.

I wrote a rap about quadratic equations.

Joseph Krol wrote:I wrote a rap about quadratic equations.

Can something so geeky be classed as cool?

Ian Volante wrote:

Joseph Krol wrote:I wrote a rap about quadratic equations.

Can something so geeky be classed as cool?

Yes.

Finished in the top 3 agents at my office for three out of the four weeks in January.

That's top 3 out of 160.

Ben Wilson wrote:Finished in the top 3 agents at my office for three out of the four weeks in January.

That's top 3 out of 160.

Do you work for the FBI?

It was a few months ago now, but I'm one of a very small number of people (I think it's still three worldwide) who have managed to complete a perfect level on BIT.TRIP BEAT on the Wii.

http://commandervideo.com/perfects.html

I once topped the leaderboard for a day on a game called Jailbreak on addingtinggames.com, I took a screenshot of it but I can't find it on my laptop now. To be fair the game was new and was pretty shit so this is either impressive or cool. I'll think harder.

I solved Minesweeper on beginner in one click.

If this is all about how well you've done in computer games, I've got some pretty excellent lap times on Super Monaco GP on the Game Gear. Anyone want to compare? Mine are definitely better than yours. Also, Micro Machines 2 and 96 on the Mega Drive.

Yeah, cool things I did.

Got two nice victories against a top Japanese player on Super Street Fighter 4 last night.

On the non video game front, I went to an amateur comedy night and the M.C. announced some guy but he hadn't shown up so I shouted out that I'd go on and he let me. Didn't have anything prepared but managed to tell three jokes (one wasn't mine admittedly) and got the biggest laugh of the night. Well of the solo stand ups. There was a comedy troupe of about 4 people doing sketches who were pretty good.

Mark James wrote:On the non video game front, I went to an amateur comedy night and the M.C. announced some guy but he hadn't shown up so I shouted out that I'd go on and he let me. Didn't have anything prepared but managed to tell three jokes (one wasn't mine admittedly) and got the biggest laugh of the night. Well of the solo stand ups. There was a comedy troupe of about 4 people doing sketches who were pretty good.

That is pretty cool actually. Was that the first time you've done anything like that?

On the subject of computer games, I made this animation about a year and a half ago:



The cool thing about it is that it got passed around the interwebs a lot and eventually showed up on Jordan Mechner's twitter feed.

Graeme Cole wrote:The cool thing about it is that it got passed around the interwebs a lot and eventually showed up on Jordan Mechner's twitter feed.

That is proper cool.

Gavin Chipper wrote:Also, Micro Machines 2 and 96 on the Mega Drive.

OMG yes they were awesome. Some more computer game achievements. On FIFA 95 for Sega Megadrive I scored with the goalkeeper and the game crashed because it had not been programmed to deal with such a situation. I'm also pretty sure I completed level 1 of Sonic 2 (Emerald Hill Zone) in a time of 0:25.

Clearly this shows that c4cers have all spent too many hours playing computer games and done nothing that is actually cool in life.

Ryan Taylor wrote:

Gavin Chipper wrote:Also, Micro Machines 2 and 96 on the Mega Drive.

OMG yes they were awesome. Some more computer game achievements. On FIFA 95 for Sega Megadrive I scored with the goalkeeper and the game crashed because it had not been programmed to deal with such a situation. I'm also pretty sure I completed level 1 of Sonic 2 (Emerald Hill Zone) in a time of 0:25.

Clearly this shows that c4cers have all spent too many hours playing computer games and done nothing that is actually cool in life.

What do you mean? This is cool. On a related note, I always found on Sonic 1 on the Game Gear I completed level 1 in 24 seconds if I was going quickly. Then I did it in 23 seconds. So, yep.

Gavin Chipper wrote:

Ryan Taylor wrote:

Gavin Chipper wrote:Also, Micro Machines 2 and 96 on the Mega Drive.

OMG yes they were awesome. Some more computer game achievements. On FIFA 95 for Sega Megadrive I scored with the goalkeeper and the game crashed because it had not been programmed to deal with such a situation. I'm also pretty sure I completed level 1 of Sonic 2 (Emerald Hill Zone) in a time of 0:25.

Clearly this shows that c4cers have all spent too many hours playing computer games and done nothing that is actually cool in life.

What do you mean? This is cool. On a related note, I always found on Sonic 1 on the Game Gear I completed level 1 in 24 seconds if I was going quickly. Then I did it in 23 seconds. So, yep.

Yeah but this was Sonic 2. Twice as hard, bitchin'.

Gavin Chipper wrote:

Mark James wrote:On the non video game front, I went to an amateur comedy night and the M.C. announced some guy but he hadn't shown up so I shouted out that I'd go on and he let me. Didn't have anything prepared but managed to tell three jokes (one wasn't mine admittedly) and got the biggest laugh of the night. Well of the solo stand ups. There was a comedy troupe of about 4 people doing sketches who were pretty good.

That is pretty cool actually. Was that the first time you've done anything like that?

Yeah, first and last. Don't know if you've ever read a book called The Dice Man. It's about a guy who makes a list of things to do and rolls a dice to determine which one he's gonna do. I made a list and one of the things on it was to do a stand up gig. The dice didn't pick that one but I decided to do everything else on the list anyway. I had only gone to the club to see what the standard was like, just pure coincidence the dude hadn't shown up. Some buzz afterwards I can tell you.

Ryan Taylor wrote:

Gavin Chipper wrote:Also, Micro Machines 2 and 96 on the Mega Drive.

OMG yes they were awesome. Some more computer game achievements. On FIFA 95 for Sega Megadrive I scored with the goalkeeper and the game crashed because it had not been programmed to deal with such a situation. I'm also pretty sure I completed level 1 of Sonic 2 (Emerald Hill Zone) in a time of 0:25.

Clearly this shows that c4cers have all spent too many hours playing computer games and done nothing that is actually cool in life.

Okay, if we're talking video games...

Finished Super Mario World with 96 exits (SNES & GBA versions)
Finished Mario 64 with all the stars (N64 & DS versions)
Finished Mario Sunshine with all 120 shines
Finished Mario Galaxy with all 242 stars
Finished Mario Galaxy 2 with 120 stars, currently working on getting that up to 242
Finished Banjo-Kazooie with absolutely bloody everything collected (XBLA version, still working on the N64 version)
Finished Sonic Adventure with all 130 emblems, even the annoying Chao ones
Finished Sonic 3 in under an hour without losing a life
Got all original achievements on Fallout 3, only missing the annoying 'read all the logs' from the final piece of dlc for all achievements in their entirety
Currently ranked in the top 200 out of about 80 000 on Pac Man CE DX on XBLA
More Rock Band drum 100%s than I can count- on expert.
Cracked the online top 100 on MSR on the Dreamcast
Psycho Pinball on the Mega Drive- fluked my way into a perpetual motion kind of thing and wound up resetting the score counter
Finished Final Fantasy VII in 23 hours
Got all the chaos emeralds on the notoriously tough Sonic 2 on the Master System. Not all in the same playthrough, mind, but near enough.
Won every single event on Gran Turismo 1 on the Playstation.
Beat MGS4 using only non-lethal weapons (Liquid Normal difficulty).
I used to be able to consistently S-Rank all 4 missions on Resident Evil 2 on the Playstation.
Set what might have been (at the time) a world record on the oval bowl stage on Rollcage on the Playstation (9.16s)
Completed Crash Bandicoot 3 with 105% completion (though I did admittedly use an autofire pad for some of the time trial challenges)
Beat 9/5 on the original Tetris on the Gameboy using only one hand.
Collected all the secret stars (and it is always stars) and unlocked the secret ending on Braid (XBLA).

Looking back on all those kinda makes me want to weep for my wasted childhood/adolescence/hell, most of my adulthood to date...

So to steer this back onto more recent things...

One of my statistics articles was linked on the front page of IMDb this weekend.

Michael Wallace wrote:So to steer this back onto more recent things...

One of my statistics articles was linked on the front page of IMDb this weekend.

That is cool. I'm guessing it was the one Charlie posted on fb and I read it. It was good.

This is interesting. I think I've done lots of interesting things (maybe), but I wouldn't class them as cool particularly. Self-esteem issues to the fore

Ben Wilson wrote:[Psycho Pinball on the Mega Drive- fluked my way into a perpetual motion kind of thing and wound up resetting the score counter

My friend did that too, but I'm not sure if we waited until the counter got reset - how long did it take?

I threw out the 'TV guide in a resolution to live life by the seat of my pants. Moment to moment: that's me

Also twice I came top in the country on the dodgy Sky game of "Are you smarter than a ten year old?". Free game to anyone prepared to pay the postage on the never-opened (either of them actually) spare.

Lesley Hines wrote:I threw out the 'TV guide in a resolution to live life by the seat of my pants. Moment to moment: that's me

Also twice I came top in the country on the dodgy Sky game of "Are you smarter than a ten year old?". Free game to anyone prepared to pay the postage on the never-opened (either of them actually) spare.

What game? (How much postage?)

Board game (weighs just under 1.2kg so add brown paper packaging tied up with string for a round number)

Edit - that makes it £4.41 postage. Please form an orderly queue

Lesley Hines wrote:Board game (weighs just under 1.2kg so add brown paper packaging tied up with string for a round number)

Edit - that makes it £4.41 postage. Please form an orderly queue

I've not played this but I'm imagining that there is a deck of question cards? How much to send all the question cards without the box and board and whatnot?

Ryan Taylor wrote:

Lesley Hines wrote:Board game (weighs just under 1.2kg so add brown paper packaging tied up with string for a round number)

Edit - that makes it £4.41 postage. Please form an orderly queue

I've not played this but I'm imagining that there is a deck of question cards? How much to send all the question cards without the box and board and whatnot?

And how much for just the photo of Noel Edmonds off the box?

Charlie Reams wrote:

Ryan Taylor wrote:

Lesley Hines wrote:Board game (weighs just under 1.2kg so add brown paper packaging tied up with string for a round number)

Edit - that makes it £4.41 postage. Please form an orderly queue

I've not played this but I'm imagining that there is a deck of question cards? How much to send all the question cards without the box and board and whatnot?

And how much for just the photo of Noel Edmonds off the box?

Is the sofa cushion on the left for sale, yeah?

How do you come top in the country in a board game that you play with one or two other people?

Actually, talking of cool (though this is going to be a particularly subjective understanding of the word), the first ever Flash animations I made were for a site called SelfHatred, which no longer exists but was half a dark blog and half a porn emporium, and run by this surprisingly delightful (considering the content) Asian guy I met playing Yahoo! Pool fucking ages ago.

I'd love to embed them both as flash objects here, but one is deliberately really annoying (flashes FREE PORN for ages then flashes the word EPILEPSY), and the other is NSFW, so you'll have to click this link if you so wish, and load the HTML documents inside the zip to view them.

If you're wondering, in relation to the latter I have no idea how many entries he received. Oh, and what payment did I get for these? Free porn, of course, in the days where good quality stuff was much harder to find for free than it is now. I was such a naughty teenager.

Charlie Reams wrote:And how much for just the photo of Noel Edmonds off the box?

You can have that for free - I know how much you love him :

Matt Morrison wrote: Is the sofa cushion on the left for sale, yeah?

So sorry, only the one on the right, and Ryan made me an offer for it by pm before you posted that.

Nah, it was one of those dodgy games on Sky games, or on the red button, or whatever. Most correct + fastest time and all that jazz. It was a quality use of my time.

Matt Morrison wrote:Something that sounded really entertaining

It don' work on mah muchine Probably just as well cos my browsing history just got a whole lot more interesting.

Graeme Cole wrote:On the subject of computer games, I made this animation about a year and a half ago:



The cool thing about it is that it got passed around the interwebs a lot and eventually showed up on Jordan Mechner's twitter feed.

This.

I turned up half an hour late for a chess match against an expert player, somewhat pissed, and mated him in 15 moves. He said: "this shouldn't happen to me I am a 2000 player!" I nodded apologetically then asked him where the toilets were as I needed to puke.

Do you always puke after mating? My girlfriend does.

Finished third in House music - Strings category grades 5 - 8.

(The 6th former lost it because he forgot to bow )

Rhys Benjamin wrote:Finished third in House music - Strings category grades 5 - 8.

(The 6th former lost it because he forgot to bow )

Didn't he wonder why his violin didn't make any noise?

Gavin Chipper wrote:

Rhys Benjamin wrote:Finished third in House music - Strings category grades 5 - 8.

(The 6th former lost it because he forgot to bow )

Didn't he wonder why his violin didn't make any noise?

Why was he trying to play house music on a violin in the first place?

Jon O'Neill wrote:Do you always puke after mating? My girlfriend does.

In any sense of the word, "mating", it's a rare experience so I do not know if I can attribute the word "always" to it.

Haha. I taught myself how to play the musical saw. I'd always loved it, ever since hearing Mercury Rev's 'Deserter's Songs' (which I found out this morning that they're going to be playing in full in a pretty small venue in town in May - a really special thing, cool bands don't come to Cork much because our venues are too small) and being scolded on my first ever busking session in Dublin (with Kevin from this band http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EoJcs45w7nM ) by this guy http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQPcx3Jl ... re=related for playing to near him before seeing what he was doing (which happened in late 98, around the same time Deserter's Songs was released).

It wasn't until I met these guys http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXmg39nf ... re=related a couple of years ago though, that I ever tried it. Martha showed me the principle technique and eventually I went into a hardware shop (about 2 years ago) and bought a saw and got a violin bow in the music shop and ever since I've been wrecking my housemates and friends heads with it.

Anyway... that's just an introduction to the really cool thing that I wanted to mention, which just happened a few minutes ago. In my local Chinese takeaway, the lady who owns it was really curious a few weeks ago as to what the hell that stuff was in my bag (I tend to carry it around in a large rucksack with my uke, bow, cables and other stuff, where it pokes out of the top in it's custom made cardboard case). When I told her, she asked if she could see/hear it so I killed a couple of minutes waiting for my curry by playing her something (I was fairly steaming so wasn't shy). Tonight, while I was waiting in the same takeaway (sober enough), a drunk woman asked me about my camera tripod stand. I'd just come from a gig and was carrying a mic stand. When I told her it was a mic stand, she realised I was a musician and started talking all sorts of shite about music and stuff. I told her I was a singer (well, I told her the mic stand was for singing) and she told the lady behind the counter, who felt compelled to tell her about the saw. Before long, I was being quizzed about this and the drunk lady and her husband insisted I play them some saw. I did, just like, a little made up thingy for like, a minute, and they loved it and insisted that they should pay for my meal.

I used to be a really sh!t busker, but now it seems i have it down to a tee.

Can't compete with Andy but here goes:

I just finished directing a production of the old thriller Gaslight for a local theatre company. When I was planning the production about nine months ago, there were no set designers available so I did it myself. I have no artistic or technical drawing skills whatsoever and know next to nothing about the practicalities of set design and construction, but anyway I had a reasonable idea of what I wanted so I downloaded Google Sketchup and set to work.

I have to say I was pretty damn pleased with the outcome. Sketchup is a doddle to learn the basics of (although working out how to do accurate scale work is a bit harder) and it didn't take me too long really. Once the set was modelled, I was able to generate scale plans for the construction team and fully textured 3D projections to show the set dressing and props people the sort of furniture, colour palette etc I wanted. The result exceeded all my hopes.

Here's a view of part of the Sketchup model:



and here's a corresponding view of the actual set:



Anyone who works as a designer or architect or does this kind of thing all the time would probably say "So what?" But, for me, seeing something I'd designed and modelled made real was just the coolest thing ever. When you've done walk-throughs on screen of a 3D model of a room that you've created, to then stand in the actual room and walk around it for real is quite something.

Good work. I like that they found all those specific niche items, but a red tablecloth? Too much!

Charlie Reams wrote:Good work. I like that they found all those specific niche items, but a red tablecloth? Too much!

Haha. Yeah, in fact the armchair and the tablecloth seem to have swapped colours. Outrageous.

I'll long cherish the expressions of unalloyed glee that came over the faces of two of the crew when I gave them particular instructions: the scenic artist when I told him "Make it dirtier" and the set dresser when she asked me "Is it too cluttered?" and I said "No! I want more!"

Phil Reynolds wrote:Can't compete with Andy but here goes:

Rubbish. All I did was take a bow to a piece of metal. That's class. I am available for any musical productions where you require a saw player though! I'm playing a show on Wednesday with my own tunes actually, and i'm thinking of getting a loan of a chainsaw to hide on the stage and whip out after playing a tune where I use the saw, just so I can plant a mate in the audience to shout Judas.

Andy Wilson wrote:

Phil Reynolds wrote:Can't compete with Andy but here goes:

Rubbish. All I did was take a bow to a piece of metal.

It's not so much what you did; it was where you did it, the manner in which it happened and the effect it had on those around you that was cool.

Ah, cheers. You should have seen the look on the guy in the hardware shop's face when I went to try out a new one!

I completed Auf Wiedersehen Monty on my Amstrad emulator today. Never managed it when I originally used to play it, so I'm pretty pleased with that.

Gavin Chipper wrote:I completed Auf Wiedersehen Monty on my Amstrad emulator today. Never managed it when I originally used to play it, so I'm pretty pleased with that.

Wow, so many speccy games, I've still never finished owt!

Gavin Chipper wrote:I completed Auf Wiedersehen Monty on my Amstrad emulator today. Never managed it when I originally used to play it, so I'm pretty pleased with that.

Genuinely impressed. Don't think I ever managed to complete that on the Speccy, although it did teach me a hell of a lot about European geography!

Bob De Caux wrote:

Gavin Chipper wrote:I completed Auf Wiedersehen Monty on my Amstrad emulator today. Never managed it when I originally used to play it, so I'm pretty pleased with that.

Genuinely impressed. Don't think I ever managed to complete that on the Speccy, although it did teach me a hell of a lot about European geography!

Nice to get the appreciation of master of all trades Bob de Caux. But yeah, it is a tough game because you have to collect all the money in the game. Unlike Monty On The Run, which I completed years ago, where collecting the objects is basically optional.

A few weeks ago my other half and I filmed ourselves being chucked off a mountain.

Cool.
I think there would definitely be a code brown if I tried that

Phil Reynolds wrote:A few weeks ago my other half and I filmed ourselves being chucked off a mountain.

Nice, and nicely put together video as well.

Gavin Chipper wrote:Nice, and nicely put together video as well.

Ta!

Myself, former NBA player John Amaechi, current NBA All-Star Andre Drummond and former England footballer Owen Hargreaves did an NBA Final Preview panel thing for Facebook Live earlier this month. All a part of my plan to eventually become the next presenter of Countdown.

https://www.facebook.com/nbauk/videos/1 ... nref=story

Mark Deeks wrote:Myself, former NBA player John Amaechi, current NBA All-Star Andre Drummond and former England footballer Owen Hargreaves did an NBA Final Preview panel thing for Facebook Live earlier this month. All a part of my plan to eventually become the next presenter of Countdown.

https://www.facebook.com/nbauk/videos/1 ... nref=story

Are you the next one after Nick? The timing could be good. He's unlikely to want to carry on for too much longer at his age.

Gavin Chipper wrote:Are you the next one after Nick? The timing could be good. He's unlikely to want to carry on for too much longer at his age.

#Nexit

I like the way you made it sound like an inevitability that I would be at one point. Thank you for that.

Phil Reynolds wrote:A few weeks ago my other half and I filmed ourselves being chucked off a mountain.

Was worried you'd holidayed in Syria before watching the video, but that looks great fun! Can I be gauche and ask how much it cost?