What have you learned today?
- Thread starter hanselthecaretaker
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It's Surprisingly Hard to Go to the Sun - NASA
The Sun contains 99.8 percent of the mass in our solar system. Its gravitational pull is what keeps everything here, from tiny Mercury to the gas giants to
www.nasa.gov
Well, I read that. And I'm not in the habit of doubting the people who do mathematics for NASA.It's Surprisingly Hard to Go to the Sun - NASA
The Sun contains 99.8 percent of the mass in our solar system. Its gravitational pull is what keeps everything here, from tiny Mercury to the gas giants to
While I don't want to argue with NASA about this, they are talking about reaching the sun (or close to it) by a set timeframe. Which, ok, but if you are just launching summat at the Sun and not caring how long it takes to get there, not sure how much of that would apply.
All I'm sayin' is, renting a woodchipper is way less expensive than either of those.
Why spend any money at all? You have a stomach for a reason. You'll end up saving money!
Upon doing further research (ie, asking my father, who is a physicist), the reason it's easier to go out of the system than into the sun is because the orbital velocity of the Earth is more than half the escape velocity of the Sun. So we are more than halfway out to begin with.
He also stressed that it is thus easier to fling the Earth into interstellar space than drop it into the Sun, though I emphasised I had no immediate plans to do either.
The guy who plays Kane in the C&C live action videos between missions wasn't a professional actor, when the company was small they just got people who worked there in other roles to do that sort of thing. I'd not have guessed, he does a good job.
I suppose one of the downsides of game development professionalizing is the loss of that kind of guerrilla casting outside of indie productions. Usually friends and family, but one of my favorite examples is the face model for Eli Vance from Half-Life 2, who was a homeless guy Valve just picked off the streets of Seattle. Uncredited, because they never got his name.
Dr Kleiner is an accountant from a company in the same building as Valve hq at the time. Odessa Cubbage was a team members martial arts instructor. Father Grigory and G-man were janitors at Valve. Barney is just one of Valve's execs, while Judith Mossman is another's wife. Wallace Breen is someone from an electric power company.
Alyx is the only major character based on an actual model/actress, tho actually voiced by someone else.
Wow, I had no idea Valve was ever that cheap! "Let's spend millions developing groundbreaking videogame physics, then go super cheap to bring it to life. In fact, let's get a random homeless guy, and not even bother to learn his name!" Makes me wonder what they paid any of them, but especially that homeless guy. Maybe that's why they're not making Half-Life 3; they're so greedy, the thought that they probably couldn't get by pulling in random people for peasant wages is too off-putting to them.
Mind you, those were the face models for those characters. They were voiced by professionals. Like the Vortigaunts, by Louis Gossett Jr and Tony Todd.
Oh, and they paid that homeless guy a couple hundred bucks for the face scan.
Tho cheap is relative. Near as I can find, a couple hundred bucks for a face scan was pretty generous for the day. Going rates for casual, non-union (so staff, friends, fans, etc) face scans was only $50-100 at the time. But even professional and union rates for a face scan back then were only like $500-1000. Also keep in mind Valve was not an industry juggernaut yet, but just a mid-sized team of a couple dozen people. They were actually almost bankrupt when they released HL2 and Steam, due to a combination of the former's troubled development, and lawsuits from their erstwhile publishers.
I was gonna leave it at the "like," but I started thinking about it... NIL money. Years ago, EA was prevented from making NCAA Football games anymore because they were using the names, images, and likenesses of college players who were forbidden from being compensated for anything while EA and universities were raking in the cash hand over fist. They've since instituted NIL, and college athletes can be duly paid when their names bring profit to outside entities. That poor homeless guy got a couple hundred bucks while Half-Life 2 when on to make... *Google search*... "well over $100M"; I feel like some back pay is owed given Valve is now worth in the 10s of BILLIONS. I know it's not as easy as that, but it just feels like the right thing to do, at least learn the guy's name! Though it has been 22 years; I'm not sure what the homeless mortality rate is, but Eli Vance was already old. He's likely long gone. I wonder if he EVER knew the place he holds in gaming culture...
Thanks for making me sad today, @Chimpzy.
My work here is doneI was gonna leave it at the "like," but I started thinking about it... NIL money. Years ago, EA was prevented from making NCAA Football games anymore because they were using the names, images, and likenesses of college players who were forbidden from being compensated for anything while EA and universities were raking in the cash hand over fist. They've since instituted NIL, and college athletes can be duly paid when their names bring profit to outside entities. That poor homeless guy got a couple hundred bucks while Half-Life 2 when on to make... *Google search*... "well over $100M"; I feel like some back pay is owed given Valve is now worth in the 10s of BILLIONS. I know it's not as easy as that, but it just feels like the right thing to do, at least learn the guy's name! Though it has been 22 years; I'm not sure what the homeless mortality rate is, but Eli Vance was already old. He's likely long gone. I wonder if he EVER knew the place he holds in gaming culture...
Thanks for making me sad today, @Chimpzy.
@Lawrence_Talbot 6 days ago
I used to work in a popular candy store that gets a lot of tourists, and celebrities would come in from time to time. One such time CW came in while I was making some candy. He looks at me and asks how hot is the liquid candy when we pour it out. I said about 300 degrees, sir. He then goes, “so you could boil a person alive in that. Imagine eating candy made out of people.” Now I have a dark sense of humor and so I said, “well maybe not a fully grown person, but a small kid, sure. That’s why we call em sugar babies (which is a real candy we sold, not made from human flesh)”. He froze for a solid 5 seconds or so then started chuckling. Says I’m sick, a real “nutso” while still laughing, then the conversation kept getting darker.
Eventually I told him I went to med school for awhile before dropping out and his eyes lit up, asking me what it was like to dissect bodies in anatomy class. The guy was truly fascinated, and I was fascinated that he was fascinated in my life. Eventually my manager comes over saying I need to stop talking about dead bodies and medical stuff, and CW snaps her saying “excuse me but we are having a conversation here. Don’t interrupt us.” Then he hands her his credit card and says he’ll buy all of what I was making (fudge so he bought the entire sheet pans of fudge). That pleased my manager enough to let us keep being weird AF.
I always thought it was cool talking to him, but after seeing this video, I think I may have been one of the very few people to “be on his level”.
I used to work in a popular candy store that gets a lot of tourists, and celebrities would come in from time to time. One such time CW came in while I was making some candy. He looks at me and asks how hot is the liquid candy when we pour it out. I said about 300 degrees, sir. He then goes, “so you could boil a person alive in that. Imagine eating candy made out of people.” Now I have a dark sense of humor and so I said, “well maybe not a fully grown person, but a small kid, sure. That’s why we call em sugar babies (which is a real candy we sold, not made from human flesh)”. He froze for a solid 5 seconds or so then started chuckling. Says I’m sick, a real “nutso” while still laughing, then the conversation kept getting darker.
Eventually I told him I went to med school for awhile before dropping out and his eyes lit up, asking me what it was like to dissect bodies in anatomy class. The guy was truly fascinated, and I was fascinated that he was fascinated in my life. Eventually my manager comes over saying I need to stop talking about dead bodies and medical stuff, and CW snaps her saying “excuse me but we are having a conversation here. Don’t interrupt us.” Then he hands her his credit card and says he’ll buy all of what I was making (fudge so he bought the entire sheet pans of fudge). That pleased my manager enough to let us keep being weird AF.
I always thought it was cool talking to him, but after seeing this video, I think I may have been one of the very few people to “be on his level”.
Regardless of how true any of that is, I can only wonder who would be able to play CW in his biopic.
So I have been going to learning about old memories of my first time in the US.
This was back in like 2004-05, where I practically had no English. The only way to learn was to watch a crap load of TV, and doing ESL at the school. And I am trying to remember some of the old ads on TV that I didn't understand the context of, but remembering the visual elements.
My recent discovery was this ad for Earth Share:
I guess the gentle music and the colorful art-style left an impression on me. Didn't even know it was Harrison Ford who was doing the voice.
This was back in like 2004-05, where I practically had no English. The only way to learn was to watch a crap load of TV, and doing ESL at the school. And I am trying to remember some of the old ads on TV that I didn't understand the context of, but remembering the visual elements.
My recent discovery was this ad for Earth Share:
I guess the gentle music and the colorful art-style left an impression on me. Didn't even know it was Harrison Ford who was doing the voice.