White Stripes’ “Seven Nation Army” performed on things found in a laboratory:

The Blast Lab at Imperial College, London, is a place where scientists study how explosions affect the human skeleton, and try to find ways to mitigate some of those effects. As you can imagine, this involves blowing stuff up fairly regularly and The Blast Lab is a pretty loud place.

But the team of students behind PLoS’ Inside Knowledge blog noticed something cool about that. The sounds in The Blast Lab weren’t just loud noises, they were loud notes. Edit them together, and you could reproduce a whole song, using nothing but sounds recorded in a working scientific laboratory.

In this video, the Inside Knowledge crew plays The White Stripes’ “Seven Nation Army” on the Imperial College Blast Lab. In case you’re curious, here’s the breakdown showing what lab equipment the team used to replicate the sound of which instruments.

Bass Guitar: Main sensor output cable

Bass Drum: Blast Rig

Toms: Hammer & Storm Case

Hi-Hat: Oil Spray

Cymbal: Blast Plate

‘Vocals’: Laces to contain dummy leg during blast

‘Guitar’: Accelerometer cable & Fastening Strings

Video Link

Submitterated by Ben Good

#798; The Traditional Relationship:

Good Cop, Dadaist Cop:

PlayFic: an online toolset and community for easily making text-adventure games:

Andy Baio and his 15-year-old nephew Cooper McHatton created PlayFic, “a community for writing, sharing, and playing interactive fiction games (aka ‘text adventures’) entirely from your browser, using a ‘natural language’-inspired language called Inform 7.” Basically, it’s a site for making your own Zork-style games, sharing them, critiquing them, and collaborating on them. It includes a “view game source” button that, like the “view source” item in browsers, can be used to kick-start your own progress into creation by seeing how the work you admire is put together. Waxy sez,”

My hope is that Playfic opens up the world of interactive fiction to a much wider audience — young writers, fanfic authors, and culture remixers of all ages.

While the language can be tricky, building simple games is surprisingly easy. Cooper had never coded anything or made a game before trying Playfic, and within 30 minutes of futzing around, he’d made his first game.

Some stuff is broken and missing, but I’d love to hear what you make of it. Open to any and all feedback. Go make some games!

Playfic

(via Wonderland)

[Aaaaahhhhhhh. -egg]

A walk in the woods with 42 Saint Bernards:

Over at Submitterator, anelson sends us this surreal video of a child playing with a huge pack of Saint Bernards in a temperate rainforest in British Columbia. I love the idea of being surrounded by these panting, gallumphing beasts.

Thanks anelson! [Video Link] Check out more wonderful submissions here

Apollo 17 astronauts singing on the moon:

El Zombre sends us this great video of Apollo 17 astronauts singing a silly song together on the moon surface. I dug in a little, and Wikipedia confirms that this is real footage!

Thanks El Zombre! [Video Link]

How to: Cook like Nathan Myhrvold in your own kitchen: If you ever needed a good reason to buy a whipped cream maker: The New York Times adapted several of Nathan Myhrvold’s Modernist Cuisine recipes to work with ingredients and equipment you’re actually likely to have in your home kitchen. The whipped cream maker is the only tool used here that I don’t own. And it might be worth buying one if it means that I can make bloody mary-infused celery sticks.

[Well, now, that’s a thing of beauty. -egg]

[This is AWESOME. -egg]