Stuff you didn't know and probably don't care about

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CZroe

Lifer
Jun 24, 2001
24,195
856
126

pc demo scene , some pretty cool stuff imo
Yeah, but now that they aren't pushing hardware to the limit I'm kinda confused that this is still a thing. I mean, are they even bothering to generate the music on the PC that's running the demo or is it pre-recorded these days? If the latter, then why not just prerender the visuals too? Then it's just an artistic short film competition with a weird retro scener theme! I watched quite a bit and none of it seems to be trying to push PCs to their graphical limits like they used to.

The reason we were amazed by bouncing reflective spheres and rotating cubes before was because it was amazing to see our computers do those things in the first place... not anymore. That's why the demoscene was influencing performance benchmarks like 3Dmark and such.
 
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KMFJD

Lifer
Aug 11, 2005
29,044
41,734
136
Yeah, but now that they aren't pushing hardware to the limit I'm kinda confused that this is still a thing. I mean, are they even bothering to generate the music on the PC that's running the demo or is it pre-recorded these days? If the latter, then why not just pretender the visuals too? Then it's just an artistic short film competition with a weird retro scener theme! I watched quite a bit and none if it seems to be trying to push PCs to their graphical limits like they used to.

The reason we were amazed by bouncing reflective spheres and rotating cubes before was because it was amazing to see our computers do those things in the first place... not anymore. That's why the demoscene was influencing performance benchmarks like 3Dmark and such.
no idea, i wasn't even aware there was a scene still
 

lxskllr

No Lifer
Nov 30, 2004
57,364
7,516
126
A honey bee uses symbology to give directions to food sources to other bees(part of a larger article)...

"But perhaps the best-known and most insane bit of intelligence from bees is what’s known as the “waggle dance.” This is a method of communication that the bee uses to tell other bees in the hive the location of a flower or source of food. Here’s how it works: a bee performs the dance on a vertical surface inside the hive. The dance is shaped like a coffee bean: roughly, an oval with a line down the middle. Dancing straight up means to fly in the direction of the sun, straight down means away from the sun, and left and right mean to fly to the left or the right of the sun.

The bee travels in a figure-eight pattern, tracing the line in the middle before performing the loops around the outside of the coffee bean shape. The amount of time it takes the bee to make its circuit around the outside of the coffee bean tells other bees how far away the food source is: a one-second loop means, roughly, that the food source is a kilometer away. The longer the loop, the farther away the food source is.

The bee will repeat this dance many times to indicate the quality of the food source: a really great one will find the bee doing this over and over again, yelling “IT’S A KILOMETER NORTHWEST OF HERE, IT’S A KILOMETER NORTHWEST OF HERE, IT’S A KILOMETER NORTHWEST OF HERE” for minutes on end. A decent but not quite as good source might find the bee repeating the message only a few times."

 
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JujuFish

Lifer
Feb 3, 2005
10,999
733
136
I took a freshman writing seminar on animal behaviors from a guy who helped prove bees use complex dance to communicate. He seemed like a decent enough guy. Always referred to everyone as Mr. or Ms. <surname>.
 

MtnMan

Diamond Member
Jul 27, 2004
8,722
7,828
136

this is really cool, i love how they are able to restore some of these old films to give us a glimpse of life back then
I don't think the technology to record sound existed in that era. Just general crowd noise, can't hear the ball bouncing. Kinda think it was added.

But still cool
 

shortylickens

No Lifer
Jul 15, 2003
82,854
17,365
136
Peanuts was Originally Lil Folks, and had a different style.



SAG_lilfolks_1_2000_001_060-0721.jpg
 

stargazr

Diamond Member
Jun 13, 2010
3,812
3,125
136
'The day the music died', February 3, 1959 when Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper were killed in a plane crash in Iowa. Waylon Jennings was the bass player, and was supposed to be on that flight but there was no room. He had to drive or take a buss to the next gig. Anyway he joked to Buddy, "Well, hope your ol' plane crashes!". Waylon was pretty upset about it for a long time.

118069818_769532237115459_4247411411900898526_n.jpg
 
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lxskllr

No Lifer
Nov 30, 2004
57,364
7,516
126
@highland145 's question of "How many trees go into a can of cedar oil?" got me reading pages on cedar. I re-read the wiki on it, and ran across this. I've read the page before, but didn't take particular notice...

Native American tribes have historically used juniper wood poles to mark out agreed tribal hunting territories. French traders named Baton Rouge, Louisiana, (meaning "red stick") from the reddish color of these poles. It is still used in ceremony by some Nations.

 
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CZroe

Lifer
Jun 24, 2001
24,195
856
126
You guys remember that urban legend of the Atari cartridges buried in the desert?

Well, guess what.......



This was never an "urban legend" even though people started saying this around 10 years ago. It was reported in the papers back then and everything. Buried in Alamogordo right outside of Albuquerque, New Mexico. Didn't even need to look that up. :)