Xatal

Apologies a thousand times for the lack of posts, I’ve really been meaning to post more often, but due to final snad other complications, I haven’t had much opportunity to lately.

However, now that I’m off for the next three weeks, I’ll have more time to post.

If you have anything you’d like to see a post about, I emphasize the Contact page, where you can send me whatever question or suggestion you have. I’m always open to ideas!

Recently I had a massive explosion of traffic to my post showing 50 unique Fantastic Contraption solutions.

The source of it all? StumbleUpon.

For those of you who don’t know, StumbleUpon is a new social media service. Unlike other famous ones, such as Digg, StumbleUpon works differently: you click the “Stumble!” button, and it takes you to a random page, based on topics you’ve shown interest in and what the community has shown interest in. Once on the page, you can then thumbs up the site (if you like it), or thumbs down it (if you don’t like it).

From that one website alone, I had a massive boost in traffic over several days: over 10,000 hits total. Considering that before that burst, my best day had been only about 500 hits (all of this coming from Google Analytics).

Wow. I was surprised.

A little over a week ago, I finally found out about Fantastic Contraption, a very cool physics flash game.

A sample catapult I made

I posted about how addictive I thought it was, as well as showed some cool designs I had seen. Most of the time when I play I try to come up with different designs, but today I was hunting around trying to find some really unique solutions to the levels. Most of the levels are solved basically the same way by most people, so I tried to look for unique and innovative solutions. I found 50 cool new solutions, which I’ve put here.

I sorted them all by level and then each by how much I liked it, putting my favorites last. I’m a firm believer in saving the best for last. :]

I didn’t name these, I just cleaned up the name that they were given. None of these are mine except for “Push” under “Mission to Mars”.

Without further ado, here’s my list of favorites. Maybe some of these can give you cool ideas.

Read the rest of this entry »

After several years of speculation that they were working on one, Google finally released their own web browser today. Named “Google Chrome”, the browser is a fast new browser.

Screenshot of Xatal using Google Chrome

This browser adds yet another alternative choice to Internet Explorer, and it will be exciting to see just how big of a part Google Chrome plays in the future of the Internet.

So far, I’m fond of the interface. Having the tabs above the address bar will take some getting used to, but other than that the interface is pretty simple.

I’ve noticed that the browser is lightning-fast, especially when it comes to JavaScript, something that Google was striving for.

Google also put each tab into its own separate process, meaning that if one tab crashes, the rest will keep running just fine.

As for my take on it, I like it quite a bit so far, but it will take quite a lot before Google Chrome beats out FireFox as my browser of choice. I’m too accustomed to my extensions. However I’ll definitely keep an eye on this interesting new browser to see how it develops.

For anybody hunting for quality free software, Google Chrome is definitely worth trying out.

You can find out more and download Google Chrome here. You also might want to check out a comic Google put up talking about the browser and how it works.

Fantastic Contraption
I’ve been playing this thing nearly nonstop all weekend. It’s really an interesting game: Using your knowledge of physics, the tools they give you, and your own innovation, you must move the pink block you start off with into the goal zone. While it sounds educational, it’s really just plain fun. Once you get the hang of the game, it’s neat to see what kind of creative designs you can come up with.

A sample contraption that shoots the pink ball into the goal zone

You can use rotating wheels to help move the block, you can use rods to attach to wheels or your block. You could build a giant tower or a giant cart. You can create separate machines.

A lot of these can be solved very easily using just a wheel or two and a rod, but I think the more elaborate and creative machines deserve some extra props, if only for the large amount of creativity it takes to make some of these.

Ever since I saw this posted on a forum, I’ve seen some really interesting and creative designs. I made a post showing my favorite 50, and here are some more of my favorites that might help give you ideas:

1. A clever pulley system
2. A well-crafted catapult
3. Actually, why even use the catapult? Just use the environment.
4. A spider to walk over everything. It’s like something from your nightmares.
5. Rolling the giant ball to get there
6. A simple but clever design. This is one of the hardest levels, solved so easily.
7. Using two separate machines
8. An extremely elaborate machine. This is perhaps the most impressive I’ve seen.

Also pretty entertaining to watch are when they just plain don’t work.

1. This one shows how the water bonds can break if they have too much weight attached.
2. And sometimes they just go crazy. Check this one.
3. A clever design that just couldn’t make it.

I tried my hand at this and came up with solutions for all of them. I’m not an engineer or rather creative, so none of mine are anything incredible, but I like watching these two run:

1. Using two separate machines to roll the ball where I want it.
2. Counter-weights can be a huge help.

Try your hand at it, let’s see what you can come up with! I’m warning you, though, it’s really addictive!