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The Ping Pong Printer

Alex •

Vern Graner and Rick Abbott of The Robot Group built an inkjet printer for ping pong balls:

Why print on boring old paper, when you can get your message across on some nice bouncy ping pong balls? The appropriately named PingPongPrinter can print dot-matrix messages directly onto the spherical surface of ping pong balls.

Builders Vern Graner and Rick Abbott of The Robot Group used a Parallax inkjet print head kit and the EFX-TEK Prop-2 controller board to bring their wondrous creation to life. As each ball leaves the hopper, it’s loaded onto a rotating platform, and sprayed with tiny ink droplets.

The best part: the balls it prints are used as ammunition for the group’s other dastardly invention, the pneumatic, ping pong ball firing PONGINATOR!

Check out technabob blog for the video clip of the PingPongPrinter in action and the awesome giant PONGINATOR: Link


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Dang! Trivial Pursuit has a question, What is the most frequently landed-on property in Monopoly? The answer is Illinois Ave. I was hoping to someday find out how the hell they know that.
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Actually, Cheeseduck, I think you'll find Risk is much more reliant upon statistics. There's a clear distinction.

(Tactics and diplomacy also factor in)
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Johnny Cat - I would think that St. James Place would be the most commonly landed on property, and here's why: There are more ways to end up in Jail than any other spot on the board, so that makes Jail the most common space to start your turn. With 2 dice, the most common roll is 7. Starting from Jail, that would put you on Community Chest, which is not technically a "property". Next most common would be 6 (St. James Place) and 8 (New York Ave). However, there is a card (I think) that tells you to go to the Reading RR, making Reading slightly more common of a starting place than most other spaces. St. James Place is within 12 of Reading, but New York is not, so St. James Place has the slight edge.
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sparge, perhaps the rule of 7 is what the Trivial Pursuit answer was based on, through averages and the fact that games tend to have upwards of a hundred "laps"...or they just made it up. Either way, they say Illinois.
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Actually, the four London rail spaces are mainline stations, rather than underground stops. There is no underground station called Fenchurch Street, although there are associated stops at the other three.
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I use to play scrabble every day. I learned all the two letter words and studied strategy. Started beating everyone at the coffee shop I hung around at, I was the man. I thought to myself it was time to go to the pros, join a club, these rookies were no challenge. Called myself up to the bigs. I like to refer to that night as "The day my manhood shrunk." If you ever successfully become deluded and happy in a small pond, stay there. Never, ever take your big fish show on the road. The memory of that night made me shiver, that is all.
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Whoa! These are all really oldschool games and they can not be compared to actual games in terms of fun. Alex, you really should try some new boardgames. They are so much better than the ones you show here. I assure you: You will never want to play games like monopoly again.

For a good overview of all kinds of boardgames I recommend www.boardgamegeek.com It is the biggest boardgame database I know of with tons of gaming related things.

And for a really good introduction to "new" boardgames I recommend "Settlers of Catan". It's a game you can play with all kinds of people. If you like a really good mostly strategic game, give "Puerto Rico" a try or "Caylus". But these are more for "real" gamers than for the occasional one.
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Please do one on Sorry! I used to play that all the time with my sister, this game probably provoked more fights and flipping of game boards than any other game we had.
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Yeah, Scrabble is great. One time I was playing it and at the very end of the game I had 3 letters left, E, N and D. But ofcourse I couldn't use 'em like that, I think I did 'Dens' instead. Murphys Law huh?
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I would like to see one on Risk as well (and if you ever play it with a bunch of career army people I garuntee its more than luck). I would also like to see one on Stratigo (sp?). I loved that game when I was a kid. Trivial Pursuit would be a good one to do to. Settlers is a great game too and every one should check it out. Also, how about some history on some really old board games: chess, checkers, go, etc...

For a good "new" game my friends and I have had very good luck with Apple to Apples.
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I second Frank's suggestion:

REALLY give one of the "new" "german-style" board games a try. Settlers of Catan is a great game and I know several people who didn't really enjoy board games but ended up loving Settlers. Puerto Rico is perhaps a bit hardcore along those lines, but once you do get used to the idea of those kinds of games, Puerto Rico's almost complete lack of randomness and huge number of valid strategies makes it one of the best games ever made.

PS: any game that thinks there are 96 two letter words in the english language is pure and utter crap :)
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You know, it's different strokes for different folks. I play Puerto Rico and Settlers, yet I also enjoy Scrabble. I grew up on Scrabble, long before Settlers and Puerto Rico existed.
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Risk, a skill game? Hahahahahaha! Struggle of Empires leaves Risk players weeping quietly, and has very little of its luck. Not to mention it won't let you hole up in Oz.

Thanks for your awesome list. It takes me back. Though I echo what others have said: it's time to update the collection. Wits and Wagers is a GREAT party game. For Sale and Razzia! are fun, too. Settlers of Catan beats the pants off Monopoly (and I'm a former competitive Monopoly player--Illinois is the most landed-on, but St. James is second-most). Bohnanza is the most fun you can have playing cards with your clothes on (but no one says you have to).

I'd love to see a post about your game group tackling some of the post-1960s games!
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Bring out yer dead. Mark your calendars of doom in ominous blood-red scrawl, for today is the day that American software beast Microsoft Corp. chopped the retail head off its stalwart XP operating system and held aloft (the still unpopular) Windows Vista as its now unavoidable successor.
If the post made in the wrong section, please move
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The highest-scoring competition scrabble word was actually from last year (it was reported on NPR), and was "quixotic", spelled across two triple-word scores. Throw in the 9x multiplier from that, two ten-point letters, and the obligatory 50-point bonus for using all the letters, and the total score was in the 600s. Weird, wild stuff. Do some better fact-checking next time, Neato.
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Surprised no one has brought up Diplomacy yet. Like Risk, only no dice at all. You maneuver by making deals/breaking deals with other players. Takes a long time to finish a game but psychologically interesting. Great game for budding young Bismarcks.
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Word games are the best. I am glad to have seen Scrabble on this list. You had some interesting facts about that one that I hadn't heard before. How about Boggle??? Love that one too. I guess I love most word games. I have been enjoying a new word game (though it certainly isn’t a classic at this point) called 5 To Close. http://www.5toclose.com/word-unscrambler-game.html It's a good variation because it is a word game played in teams. I also haven’t played Jumble yet, but I have heard great things about it and it has been recommended to me by others.
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