Portal cake

I was telling Mark last night that I plan on making the cake which was humorously alluded to and ultimately revealed in the game of Portal. The recipe is quickly shown a few times as part of garbled text transmissions but is somewhat more understandable as audio in the final level. (I'm being as general as possible to avoid any spoilers.)

There's a list of forty-one ingredients which reads innocently enough, then starts to degrade to the inedible before bottoming out to the absurd. This of course, matches perfectly with the sardonic humor of the game.

Quite a few websites have an incomplete or incorrect list but the following is the full version pulled from the GCF audio files:

One 18.25 ounce package chocolate cake mix.
One can prepared coconut pecan frosting.
Three slash four cup vegetable oil.
Four large eggs.
One cup semi-sweet chocolate chips.
Three slash four cups butter or margarine.
One and two third cups granulated sugar.
Two cups all purpose flower.

Don't forget garnishes such as:
Fish shaped crackers.
Fish shaped candies.
Fish shaped solid waste.
Fish shaped dirt.
Fish shaped ethyl benzene.
Pull and peel licorice.
Fish shaped organic compounds and sediment shaped sediment.
Candy coated peanut butter pieces. Shaped like fish.
One cup lemon juice.
Alpha resins.
Unsaturated polyester resin.
Fiberglass surface resins.
And volatile malted milk impoundments.

Nine large egg yolks.
Twelve medium geosynthetic membranes.
One cup granulated sugar.
An entry called 'how to kill someone with your bare hands.'
Two cups rhubarb, sliced.
Two slash three cups granulated rhubarb.
One tablespoon all-purpose rhubarb.
One teaspoon grated orange rhubarb.
Three tablespoons rhubarb, on fire.
One large rhubarb.
One cross borehole electro-magnetic imaging rhubarb.
Two tablespoons rhubarb juice.

Adjustable aluminum head positioner.
Slaughter electric needle injector.
Cordless electric needle injector.
Injector needle driver.
Injector needle gun.
Cranial caps.
And it contains proven preservatives, deep penetration agents, and gas and odor control chemicals. That will deodorize and preserve putrid tissue.

As I suspected, some fans of the game have already attempted their own versions, some more successfully than others. You can view some of the results from Flickr here. I plan to base my recipe as true to the spirit of the original as possible but with none of the boxed or canned stuff. Results will follow...

Portal Fun

Portal ended up being the hidden gem in the recently release Orange Box from Valve. What could have been left as a simple puzzle/logic game turned downright hilarious with the computerized voice of GLaDOS. Rob and I were talking about the brilliant ending credits song "Still Alive". I did some research on it to get some background information on it and came across this very informative blog from the song's creator, Jonathan Coulton. The same site also has a link to a YouTube video that shows someone playing the song using the Half Life engine.

On a related note, some enterprising group was able to mod Half Life 2 to use the Portal gun. I wondered on long it would take for someone to come up with this.

The Orange Box

I just finished Half Life Episode 2 last night. I ended up buying the PC version of The Orange Box since Circuit City had it for such a cheap price. Terrific game, albeit somewhat short (I guess this is a given considering it wasn't intended to be a full game). What really grabbed me was the ending. I won't spoil it in case you haven't finished it but Valve has really mastered the art of storytelling in modern PC games. What also was nice was that they included the Xbox 360 style of achievements. Rob was telling me yesterday he wants to complete all of them but I was warning him that based on this article (GameSpot review) I read it will be quite the task. There are 333 grubs to kill!

BioShock ending

A little late post but I finished BioShock last month after an intense 10-day marathon. It was the best single player FPS I've played since Half-Life 2 was released nearly three years ago.

I found nothing lacking in this game as everything was completely polished to a bright finish. Awesome gameplay, atmosphere, art direction, audio, voice acting, attention to the smallest of details, clever use of weaponry and an emotional ending. Some would criticize the lack of a multi-player option, which is true (it would be fun to setup an ambush and clothesline someone with the trap bolt) but there are so many other premier titles like TF2 that can more than fill this need.

An undocumented "feature" of the PC version is that all the movies used in the game like the old-time, '20s looking training videos are stored in a folder after installation. I found it fun to watch them again (and see the second "bad" ending) to see how they were used to construct the game. One movie in particular called "attractMovie" (pictured above) was interesting because I haven't seen it referenced anywhere online before. It looks to be some kind of promotional video (in HD 720 format) that was probably used for a convention like E3.

The Office

Rob knows that one of my favorite shows for the past few years has been NBC's The Office. It's a rather dry type of humor (perhaps because of its British roots as a BBC series) but I find it funny since I can relate to it so much at my own job. I also love the fact it has no laugh track (do we really need someone to subliminally tell us when to laugh?).

Anyways I came across this fan website where the creator was able to visit the production set and meet the cast. I found it interesting that the phone number listed in this picture actually works. Give it a call and you'll see...