Having spent more than five hours Saturday night playing Left 4 Dead with my friend Eric (aka Louis), I found this YouTube video (via Boing Boing) to be pretty funny.

I don’t suffer from first-person-shooter disease, but I did have a creepy feeling recently while visiting Washington, D.C. I couldn’t help but get a strange sense of deja vu while walking through the dimly lit Metro tunnels amid all of the zombie-like commuters and tourists. It was just like playing Fallout 3, set in a post-apocalyptic version of our nation’s capital. There are much fewer mutants in real life, though.

If you’re having trouble with digital-TV reception, maybe you should try a coat hanger.

One thing that came out of the DTV switch is that an antenna is really important for over-the-air reception. This seems reasonable, but it came as a surprise to many viewers, who found that their previous antenna setup no longer was effective. Many people have reported going through several models trying to find the right one for their digital-reception situation. Well, now, an enterprising do-it-yourselfer in Kansas has created a video showing how to create an HDTV antenna out of coat hangers, wood, coaxial cable and other cheap parts. Here’s how:

Does it work? High Def Digest, where I first learned about it, says, “While results are mixed as compared to a store bought antenna, the general response seems to fairly positive.” That, of course, depends on whom you talk to. Comments at YouTube include: “Awesome! Five dollars and two hours later, this antenna has had absolutely NO effect on my reception whatsoever.” As well as, “Just a quick fyi, this video makes this look incredibly simple and quick. I’m an hour and a half into making this thing, and it’s very frustrating.”

Here’s the reality: This setup probably isn’t better than other options. If it works for you, chances are many other store-bought models would, as well. The key here is that this DIY version is cheap. If it works, you run around telling everyone how you got over-the-air HDTV reception using a coat hanger. “It’s amazing!” If it doesn’t, you’re out a few bucks and you wasted a few hours making the thing — and you probably don’t brag about it much.  

So, are you going to raid your closet for your next antenna?

The latest cleverly named iPhone app, iMated, lets you quickly combine photos of two people to see what their love child would look like. It was created by three Minneapolis developers.

Just take a photo of two subject or browse for stored images. Center the images, following guides. And then mate ‘em up. The results will vary widely, as the app takes the two images and blends them in different ways. It can sometimes look really rough, like overlaying two images in Photoshop and spot-erasing one layer. You can keep reloading the image to get different looks. The best results come if you take the time to select images that have matching skin tones and the same background. For instance, imagine if George Clooney and Bea Arthur had gotten together, as I’ve done. (You never know — it could have been her dying wish.) You can save the combined image to your iPhone or iPod Touch, or e-mail it.

iMated goes for $1.99 through the iTunes App Store, a little high for what it does. It would totally be worth it if the program automatically adjusted the images to match the skin tones for a more seamless composite. But maybe that will be offered later. Nevertheless, it could be a lot of fun at a party in the right devilish hands.

iMated was created by Sevnthsin, PopLife and &Yustin.

“Don’t fly United,” is the musical message from a musician who says the airline broke his guitar. After nine months of red tape, run-arounds and inaction, Dave Carroll decided to get revenge by making three music videos to publicize the experience. The first one hit YouTube yesterday and has already received more than 100,000 views. It’s pretty funny.

Here’s Carroll’s brief explanation of what happened:

“In the spring of 2008, [his group] Sons of Maxwell were traveling to Nebraska for a one-week tour and my Taylor guitar was witnessed being thrown by United Airlines baggage handlers in Chicago. I discovered later that the $3,500 guitar was severely damaged. They didnt deny the experience occurred but for nine months the various people I communicated with put the responsibility for dealing with the damage on everyone other than themselves and finally said they would do nothing to compensate me for my loss. So I promised the last person to finally say no to compensation (Ms. Irlweg) that I would write and produce three songs about my experience with United Airlines and make videos for each to be viewed online by anyone in the world. United: Song 1 is the first of those songs. United: Song 2 has been written and video production is underway. United: Song 3 is coming. I promise.”

Be sure to check out Carroll’s website for a more detailed explanation. And don’t check your guitar on United.

UPDATE (July 8, 1:15 p.m.): According to Christopher Reynolds of the Los Angeles Times, the music video has caught United’s attention: “This has struck a chord with us, and we’ve contacted him directly to make it right,” said Robin Urbanski, a spokeswoman for United. (Urbanski also said she “loved” the video.) Urbanski said a phone meeting had been scheduled for Wednesday [today, July 8], and that before the airline decides exactly what to do for Carroll, “we need to have that conversation with him directly.”

When it comes to putting the “thrill” in thrill rides, sometimes designers can go too far — like the folks behind the Human Catapult in the United Kingdom. It’s one of five entries on Popular Mechanics’ 5 Theme Park Rides That Pushed the Limits of Common Sense (via Fark).

The craziest has to be the Human Catapult. For $66, it flung a rider 75 feet through the air at 60 mph to a huge net suspended above the ground. Unfortunately, the net wasn’t large enough, resulting in one rider falling off and breaking her pelvis and another rider missing the net altogether and dying. Gulp. Talk about medieval. But see for yourself:

Other crazy rides include a water slide with a highly unsafe perfect-circle loop and an alpine slide, both at the defunct Action Park in New Jersey (which the writer seems obsessed with). I have to say that the alpine slide doesn’t sound much different than the one at Lutsen on the North Shore  (and surely other ones around the world at summer-mode ski resorts). I still have the scar from when my elbow was rubbed raw on the fiberglass track as I tried to keep myself from flipping over while barreling down Eagle Mountain. It was great fun.

The other two entries were/are actually monstrous successes. The original Ferris wheel sounded daunting in its day — be sure to read the description, and even check out The Devil and the White City for more background  – but it turned out to be a classic in the making, despite its unsettling design.

And all I can say about Kingda Ka at Six Flags Great Adventure (also in  New Jersey — go figure) is that I can’t wait to ride the world’s tallest, fastest coaster, after watching this incredible video:

But I’ll pass on the fly-by-knight Human Catapult, thank you.

It turns out you were getting a deal when the PlayStation 3 sold for $599. It actually cost $840 to make, according to Business Week (via ZiggyTek, via friend Steve Hopstaken). That was for the 60GB model. The $499 20GB version? It cost Sony $805 to make. Similarly, the originally $399 Xbox 360 really cost $470 for Microsoft to make. 

Why? The companies were hoping for long-term sales to make up for the initial loss. Since both companies also develop games for their systems and, more importantly, earn money from licensing, accessories and related services, such as Xbox Live, it’s a bold business model that’s not uncommon in the industry. With estimated worldwide console sales of close to 31 million for the 360 and 23 million for the PS3, it seems to have worked. And as the systems have become more popular, they’ve also become cheaper to produce from the early days, when these figures are for. “Falling prices on components turned [Microsoft’s] $71 per-unit loss of 2005 into a $76 per-unit profit by the end of 2006,” Business Week says.

Here, according to Business Week, are other popular gadgets and what they cost when they were introduced vs. the actual cost of their components:

iPhone 3G S
MSRP: $199 (starting)
Actual cost:  $179.16

Palm Pre
MSRP:  $200 (after rebate)
Actual cost:  $137.83

Amazon Kindle 2
MSRP:  $359
Actual cost: $185.49

BlackBerry Storm
MSRP: $249
Actual cost: $202.89

iPod Touch (1G)
MSRP: $299 (8GB), $399 (16GB) 
Actual cost: $147, $179

iMac
MSRP: $1,299 
Actual cost: $898

Finally, the first HD DVD player cost Toshiba $700 in components. It sold the model, the HD-A1, for $499. Talk about an uphill battle. Toshiba didn’t even stand to profit from selling discs. Sure, it would have benefitted in other ways and manufacturing costs would have declined, but it sure put a lot of money on the line in backing the high-def disc format. And now you can find the HD-A1 — with 10 movies on HD DVD! — for less than $35 shipped on eBay.

TAKE THE TECHNOBABBLE MP3 CHALLENGE!
Can you tell the difference between MP3s and the original CD?