Normally I prepare an April Fools joke for my site. I did it last year and I meant to this year but time – the cynical bastard that he is – just decided to catch up with me and I only got the one Dad wanted me to do for DSLR Users.com done as well as the one or two I wanted to get done for work.
It seems strange but apparently my work – Cybershack – didn't have any April Fools pranks of their own in the past. I don't know but that just doesn't feel right.
An April Fools Joke is a way to give the few people who check it out a way of saying "I love you" while royally screwing their heads up. And who doesn't like a good screwing? I mean seriously… that's what life is for!
Sort of.
There are degrees where we step over the limit and if a joke becomes sad or offensive, it loses all its value.
Luckily, this year I stuck to my roots and values with the creation of a few that we just funny. Not sick funny but funny nonetheless.
Interviewing the cast of Half-Life & Portal
This year, my big joke was to have something for Cybershack… and this was something no one would really expect.
As the writer and Roaming Reporter for Cybershack Radio, it is quite common for me to make the trek out to events and interview celebrities.
But what about the characters of the game that no one really speaks to?
Everyone who knows Half-Life knows the Crowbar. The weapon that serves Gordon Freeman more faithfully than Alyx ever will, the Crowbar is what Arthur Dent & Ford Prefect would have if they were Gordon Freeman and didn't have a towel. It is brilliant. It is saviour.
And it has quite a temper as you'll see in my interview with it.
Then there was the other interview. The Crowbar made his way to Cybershack and my original version had bad volume so I apologise to anyone that found the audio fluctuating like a bat out of hell being chased by Harry Potter fanatics at the launch to his next book (is there a next book? I don't read those books; it's just a metaphor, damnit).
The next interview wasn't quite so lucky as I only finished cutting it during my lunch… which was, coincidentally, when the whole "April Fools" thing ended.
This interview was with a rising starlet: the Portal Companion Cube. A note… she's very quiet, and for all intents & purposes, Kotaku Australia's Logan is dead in this "interview". Incinerated. The Cube can be a bitch.
Weighted Companion Cube Interview
And that was my gaming batch. After that, we had one we actually took longer to make.
Kodak Tri-X Compact Flash Film Card
I frequently get asked how I make my black & whites and the answer is always "I have an eye for black & white, not for colour." I mean, that's always going to be a problem with the digital sector: the colour issue. Everyone shoots in colour on a digital because let's face it:
The in-built black & white modes suck on every camera.
Even my beautiful D300.
But what if they didn't….
What if you could get black & white film for your digital camera?
Why then people could automatically get an exposure just like how people did with film!
Click the image to see it bigger!
Presenting the Kodak Tri-X Compact Flash Card, designed to get the most film-like quality out of your images without needing to open a can of film.
Actually, truth be told, this is merely an extension of the joke I rigged up on this site last year. Dad didn't have many ideas so he suggested this one to which I replied "but that's just the joke I did last year with a different image".
He agreed… and so I more or less upgraded my idea with some enhancements designed to make it more "real".
Click the image to see it bigger!
Just like last time, the card looks similar to how the film looked.
But unlike last time, it now sports the temperature it shouldn't be left at, some extra coding for real authenticity, as well as an expiration date.
You can't have film without an expiration date! Do you know what happens to film that's gone and expired?
…well no one really knows. We can't really predict. As an interesting aside, here's what happens when you use a fresh Tri-X CF card…
Click the image to see it bigger!
…and here's what happens when you use a Tri-X CF card that's past its expiration date…
Click the image to see it bigger!
Mmm… streaky goodness.
And here's the CF cards one more time up nice & close in case you wanted to see how much detail I stuck in there.
If you click on this image to make it bigger, you might even notice the extra paper grain I added into the label!