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This made me laugh out loud!

Follow URL for pic:

https://idle.slashdot.org/story/08/09/04/1532205/teens-and-steroids

Don’t do this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0utBfPhtjg&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.videosift.com%2Fvideo%2FRace-Boat-Catches-air-and-DIVES-into-the-water-at-74-mph

Watch video

Unless you have one of these:

http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_2994343.html (dead link removed, see below)

Dead links

• http_//www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_2994343.html

Here’s the website of some guys from NC State building a supercar almost entirely out of wood!

https://www.woodmagazine.com/community/great-woodworkers/joe-harmon

Watch video

I am an avid Firefox user. It’s truly a great browser, especially after the 3.0 upgrade. One pretty cool feature is the ability to zoom in the entire web page. I definitely like it, but unfortunately it replaced the ability to zoom text independent of pictures, layout, and such. Sometimes I find that for certain pages, zooming-in doesn’t get the text as big as my slowly aging eyes would like. Well, actually I could keep zooming in and hit my target font size but this causes the width of the page to exceed the monitor’s available screen size and thus require use of the horizontal scroll bar.

For a while, the only way to zoom text independently in Firefox 3.0 involved some pretty hackerish stuff that the average user wouldn’t be able to do. Luckily, the Firefox devs did finally add a “Zoom Text Only” configuration checkbox to the View->Zoom menu. This gives me a decent, but not perfect workaround for zooming. I have found that the perfect zoom for my eyes on troublesome web pages would involve a combination of full page zoom and text-only zoom. This is unfortunately not possible as best I can tell—at least with basic Firefox GUI interactions.

Personally, I wouldn’t mind just memorizing zoom-in/zoom-out hotkeys for full page and text-only (a total of four keys). However, that approach is less than ideal for the average user and I understand why the Firefox developers did not include this ability.

After thinking about the problem some, I decided what I really want is a way to maximize the page such that there is no wasted horizontal space. Ideally, I want to maximize the use of horizontal space, but not have the ratio of text line length to font size be too great as this makes it difficult for one’s eyes to track text across the screen. The text-tracking problem is exacerbated by newer widescreen monitors. So basically an AUTO-ZOOM that zooms in so that all horizontal space is used without triggering the horizontal scroll would be great. Once that is achieved, I’d like the ability to resize the text until it’s comfortable for my eyes. Even better would be an auto-text-zoom that tries to guess what text size I would like.

I believe there would be some technical difficulties in implementing the AUTO-ZOOM and would probably require that the style sheets or HTML be analyzed in order to properly calculate the maximizing zoom settings.

Perhaps there are some browser plug-ins out there that address my needs. I have searched briefly, but had no luck. Has anyone found a solution?

Here are some graphs to help you better understand Beatles Songs:

https://graphjam.com/?s=beatles

I like the one titled “Goo Goo Goo Joob”

Now for one of my pranks. This is unfortunately one of the dumber ones I did, and it didn’t even work as intended. In hindsight, it could have probably gotten me into a bit of trouble; and I suspect if someone attempted a similar prank in this day and age they would probably face a much harsher punishment than I would have if caught.

This one involves my good friend Kevin. (Sorry no alias for you Kevin, but at least you were just on the receiving end. Lol!) In high school being the über nerds/geeks that we were, we of course didn’t have any girlfriends or even remote prospects of finding any. This led to no end of ribbing one another over said deficiency. Anything from tongue-in-cheek verbal insults to elaborate comics/drawings demonstrated our ineptness with women. Here is just a small sampling of the drawings:

(Typically, Kevin would draw me, and I would draw him. You’ll notice that there are more examples of Kevin than me, but hey it’s my blog. :) )

We could sooner build a Bride of Frankenstein-esque mate than find an actual girlfriend, and that’s a good introduction to the joke I took a little bit too far…

So this was back in high school when I was taking Biology. Most of the kids in my grade level were taking a science class one below mine in the course schedule. For instance in 9th grade, most folks were taking a different class than me called Physical Science (or something similar). The option to skip Physical Science was available to kids coming out of the middle school’s enrichment program and/or that had a high enough average entering high school (I can’t remember the exact details). While you might think I was trying to be a nerd show-off or overachiever by taking advantage of this option, I had a much more pragmatic motive: I figured out that I could avoid doing a science project if I skipped Physical Science because that was the only basic-level science class that required it! The science project was this multi-week assignment students had to do outside of class and sounded like quite a chore. The real show-off/smarty pants skipped Physical Science to HONORS Biology, but I avoided that one because it DID have the science project requirement.

In any case, I found myself in way over my head. It was quite difficult and I was always studying for it and it was probably detrimental to my grades in other classes. My plan for avoiding the science project turned out to not save me any effort after all, like a lot of my harebrained schemes. Now by skipping Physical Science, that also meant that I must later take AP Biology to get enough science credits. That class was even harder.

So back to the prank. In both Biology and AP Biology, we would learn about various critters that we had to dissect. I would meticulously slice open formaldehyde-drenched worms, starfish, fish, whatever and then try to identify various organs from the mush found within. I’d do all this while trying not to breathe in any of the stinky carcinogenic fumes or get any goo on my hands.

I can’t remember if my prank took place during AP or regular Biology, but we dissected a frog at some point in one of the classes. The frog seemed to have much more distinguishable organs inside and was all-around easier to work with than previous critters. It even looked a bit human inside, or at least what I thought a human might look like under the skin. I could see well-defined muscles, bones, and internal organs. I couldn’t peel the skin away from the lips or eye sockets due to some difficult connective tissue that kept the skin tightly attached. So those parts of the skin remained attached. This resulted in the head of the frog having a sort of bizarre human look to it in a Kafka meets Dali and has a love child sort of way. I think it took nearly a week to do the dissection, study it, and finally a lab practical quiz to identify different frog parts according to little tooth pick flags with numbers written on them. These toothpicks were stabbed into the various organs of everyone’s frogs by the instructor like it was a sampler of little gross-out hors d’oeuvres.

Once we were done with the quiz, we were supposed to dispose of the frog in some standardized and sanitary procedure. I think the frog was supposed to go in a bucket or something with other embalmed critters and eventually a hazardous waste disposal service would come pick it up.

Unfortunately, I had the bright idea of using my vaguely human looking and skinless frog in a prank on Kevin before I disposed of it. The idea was this: I was going to break into Kevin’s locker and put the frog inside along with a sign that said in so many words that I found a girlfriend for him. The sign may have even said, “How about a ‘nice wet lickery kiss,’” in reference to Mouth on The Goonies.

Before I continue, here’s a not so short digression about locker pranks: Kevin and I worked hard not to be seen entering our combination lock code at our lockers by one another or other “friends.” Another guy we knew already had his deciphered and was regularly pranked, and that was motivation enough for us to avoid falling to a similar fate. Regardless I eventually picked up enough fleeting glimpses of Kevin’s combo that I could occasionally get his locker open. However, the last two numbers I had were only accurate to about plus or minus 5 and I’d often have to enter the numbers many, many times to get it open. One day I was making attempts to break in for a different prank but I had a particularly bad streak of luck opening it…

Uh oh! A janitor spotted me at the locker…What do I do? OK, I’ll pretend to be at my own locker and just work slowly on the combo hoping he will walk on by…Uh oh! He’s standing right next to me and holding some clipboard. I look slowly over, thinking I’m about to be in big trouble. He says, “What combination do you have?” Gulp. “I have 32, 24, 16,” I say picking numbers around the sweet spot of the range of numbers I would use when trying to break in. (Man, my mom is going to kill me if I go to detention.) He looks at the locker and the “192” that identifies it. He then starts flipping through the pages clamped in his clipboard, runs his finger down a page, and stops. He says, “Well, you’re off a little bit on two of your numbers. It’s 32, 25, 14. Give that a try.” He then waits for me to open the locker. The code works! I say thanks and then take something randomly out of Kevin’s locker to continue to play along like I’m at the right place. The janitor then says, “You’re very welcome,” and continues his walk down the hallway. Phew!

And that’s the story of how I got Kevin’s locker combination. :) Kevin wasn’t too happy about me figuring out his combination as demonstrated by this comic he drew of me:

So yet again, back to the frog prank. I skipped the frog disposal knowing that the goo bucket wasn’t going anywhere and I could always dispose of Ms. Ribberta Froggy later. I then went home and looked for various props to dress the frog up to have a feminine appearance. I actually raided my sister’s old toy dolls and found a little dress and bonnet on one of the dolls. I took these along with some materials to make the sign with me to school the next day.

In homeroom I worked on the sign. One of the guys in my homeroom noticed me working on it and I had to explain it to him. The mistake of being seen making the sign turned out to be my downfall. This guy shall remain nameless but he’s an Italian/Russian with a dark tan, striking good looks, and a last name start with a “V”. So I told him all about the prank and he actually seemed to think it was pretty funny rather than turning me in to the Funny Farm.

I continued on with the plan. I would go to biology class, sneak the frog into my bag and covertly “dress” the frog up. Then I would go to Kevin’s locker when I knew he wouldn’t be around and place inside the little Bride of Frankenstein girlfriend and sign right where he could see it. Next, I would casually meet up with Kevin later as he walked to his locker to exchange books. I figured I needed to be there both to enjoy watching his response as well as to manage the situation so that it didn’t blow up and get a teacher involved.

I met up with Kevin like planned, but he seemed a bit odd. I stood behind him to observe and also serve as a shield with my back so no one else could see the monstrosity waiting inside. He opened the locker and said something in monotone like, “Nice, Jeff.” He was completely unphased by the prank! It was as if he already knew it was coming.

Sure enough, Kevin then proceeded to tell me he was sitting in another class and he overheard Mr. V. telling some other kid about my prank. All that preparation and planning went down the drain. Oh well, and probably just as well. Otherwise, Kevin might have suffered permanent mental scaring.

So I had to take the frog, remove the formaldehyde-soaked doll clothes and drop the frog in the biology goo bucket. Good riddance.

FYI, I am a very stable person and no longer exhibit any activities that could be construed as a “warning sign” for sociopathic behavior. Honest. :)

Oh, and Ms. Ribberta Froggy did occasionally come back to visit Kevin in comic form.

And Kevin made references to my failed prank in his comics as retaliation:

Another prank that Leon accomplished was back when he was in high school. I like this one because not only is it pretty funny, but it also involves a teacher from my high school before he moved to my high school years later (at least I’m pretty sure).

So back when Leon was in high school, there was one particular football coach that picked on Leon and his other buddies all the time. This resulted in the coach being a regular target of Leon’s pranks.

Now, Leon as well as some of his buddies were Boy Scouts. So Leon had all manner of skills in things like tying knots, rock climbing, camping, archery, etc. Additionally Leon had picked up quite a bit of civics knowledge including the etiquette and ceremonial procedures of handling the United States Flag.

After school, Leon and his buddies would often find themselves roaming around on their school campus with nothing to do. One evening, they made it over to the football stadium when no one was there and bummed around. Conversations drifted towards how much they disliked the football coach. At some point, one of the Boy Scouts of the group looked over at the flagpole where the United States Flag is raised before football games. He pointed to a grungy trashcan sitting right next to the flagpole. He said, “Hey, there’s not supposed to be a trashcan within fifty feet of a flagpole where the American Flag is raised!” Leon agreed. It is in fact against United States flag handling etiquette to have a refuse container in close proximity to the flag on display (though I’ve probably gotten the exact distance wrong).

Leon and his friends decided they must do something about this. They could do the simple thing and just move the trashcan an appropriate distance away. However, they felt the blame rested with the annoying coach and therefore a prank was in order. Leon wanted to send a message to the coach as well as stop the flag from being raised under such unpatriotic conditions.

The solution they decided upon was to put the trashcan on top of the flag pole! This would definitely stop the flag from being raised, and if the coach ever managed to remove the can he would most likely not put it anywhere near the flagpole again for fear of a repeat prank. The prank would be all the sweeter because a home football game was scheduled for the next day.

Now recently Leon and the other Boy Scouts had learned about rope climbing and rappelling, including during emergency or survival situations where proper equipment is not available. Leon could tie climbing harnesses out of rope as well as the variety of knots that are necessary for safe climbing and lifting of equipment.

It just so happened that Leon and his buddies were aware of a nearby construction site that had a few useful supplies lying around including some heavy duty rope. So they borrowed the rope and brought it back to the football field. The smallest, skinniest guy was voted (against his will) into being the guy that had to go to the top. Leon then fashioned the makeshift climbing harness as well as a variety of loops and knots for the ascent. A loop in the rope was hoisted up the flagpole by the smaller, flag-raising rope. This facilitated some sort of pulley-like system that would allow guys on the ground to pull their buddy up to the top while he held onto the trashcan. (I’ve unfortunately never exactly understood how this worked, or how it was safe. I think the climber was raised at an angle rather than straight up.)

The harness turned out to be quite uncomfortable (especially for the family jewels), yet the climber endured, made it to the top and put the trashcan into position. Leon and his buddies then carefully lowered their friend and returned the rope. They were successful in placing the can and briefly admired their handiwork. Now they just had to wait until the next morning to see how well the prank worked. Would the football coaches immediately figure out how to get the can down, or would it stay up until the evening football game?

Sure enough, the next morning the football coaching staff became aware of the trashcan almost immediately and began their attempts to get it down. They were trying everything. Between class periods and when class windows were appropriately aligned, Leon would observe the various strategies the coaches were using. At one point they leaned a tall painter’s ladder against the flagpole only to abandon that approach due to the instability. Another attempt involved attaching extensions to a long pole, but was unfortunately for them not strong enough. Finally, as a last ditch effort the school must have called in a truck with a cherry picker. Unfortunately the truck that arrived wasn’t tall enough either, and apparently no one else was available on a late Friday afternoon.

Leon was successful. The trashcan stayed up the entire day and the coach had to abandon raising the flag at the game. I’m not sure if the school sang the National Anthem or not but perhaps someone in the school’s marching band held up a flag for that. In any case, it had to be an incredible embarrassment for the coach.

It turns out the can stayed on top of the flagpole for quite a number of days after that, perhaps because the impetus of the pending home game had already passed. Yet attempts by the coaching staff to remove the can continued with comical failure. Finally, at some point the coaches exhausted their playbook and perhaps didn’t have the funds to hire another cherry picker truck.

At this point, they decided to enlist the help of a smart young physics teacher named Mr. Wimpey. In short order, Mr. Wimpey came up with a rather simple and elegant solution. He attached a small pole to the flag rope at two points (i.e. the clasps for attaching the flag) and left some excess pole sticking up beyond those two attachment points. He then raised the pole while keeping the rope taut. The excess length of pole reached under the trashcan’s cylindrical wall to what would normally be the can’s bottom, but at that time was the ceiling of the upside-down can. This allowed the small pole to lift the can up and over the flagpole. At this point the weight of the trashcan and the instability of the smaller pole allowed the can to flip and fall off to the side and down to the ground.

What I find particularly cool about the solution is that I’m nearly certain that the Mr. Wimpey in this story is none other than Coach Kim Wimpey that taught me physics and coached me in soccer some number of years later at my high school! One of my favorite teachers and it’s cool to think he was the one to solve this physics puzzle. :)

Additionally, I think that Mr. Wimpey’s solution for getting the trashcan down could in fact be used to put a can ON TOP of a flagpole. However, I think some extra supports would be necessary. Also, if the trashcan is very heavy then one would risk the trashcan falling down on themselves. Finally, don’t bother attempting the prank at North Gwinnett HS where Mr. Wimpey teaches. :)

Here is a diagram that demonstrates some ideas (click for larger image):

The old “pencil lead in eraser” prank I mentioned earlier got me thinking about a college buddy who is a reformed prankster himself (and will remain anonymous to protect the innocent and guilty alike :) ). He participated in a quite a number of hilarious pranks that he told me about. However one prank in particular really stood out as truly epic. This one deserves a bit of set up for the full effect. I must apologize for the length.

My friend, we’ll call him Leon, is very musically gifted. So gifted in fact that he was offered a scholarship to attend Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College (ABAC) to study music. ABAC is a fairly small college located in South Georgia and is commonly referred to by its acronym, pronounced “Aye-Back.” As you might guess from the name, the school primarily teaches farming and ranching rather than the arts or engineering (at least at the time of this story). ABAC did however have a music department and some funding to offer as scholarships to help build the program up. One thing to keep in mind is that this took place many years ago, so any impressions you get of ABAC or its student body from this story don’t necessarily hold true anymore.

Leon accepted the music scholarship on a whim. It was free after all. He went there without really knowing anything about the school and didn’t even visit the campus before he accepted. On Leon’s first day, he found out he didn’t really fit in at all…

At lunch in the cafeteria the first day he sat down by himself to eat lunch. Shortly thereafter a guy with a cowboy hat politely asked if he could set down next to Leon to eat. Leon agreed thinking maybe he would meet a new friend. After the initial name introductions, the cowboy asked Leon where he was from. Leon stated he was from Lawrenceville, Georgia (changed slightly from his actual home town just to be safe :) ). The cowboy suddenly exhibited a look of disgust and said, “Yer a Yankee!” He then stood up, grabbed his food tray and walked off.

Leon was completely flabbergasted and didn’t even understand how anyone could think he was a Yankee, let alone be so offended by someone just by being from the north. A nearby student noticed the events unfold and said, “Around these parts, there’s something called the Macon-Dixon Line.”

Notice I said MACON-Dixon and not the Mason-Dixon Line. Instead of a boundary between Pennsylvania and Maryland being used to separate the divisive Northern and Southern cultures, a horizontal line at Macon, GA is used to separate out the carpetbaggers from the truly Southern. Yes, some folks from South Georgia consider folks from Atlanta, Gwinnett County, even Winder, to be Yankees!

Compare the difference between the Mason-Dixon Line and the MACON-Dixon Line below:

This encounter is only one of the culture clashes that Leon encountered, but it certainly set the stage for stay at ABAC. He was by no means a stranger to Southern culture, but this was an entirely new ball game.

Leon did manage to find friends in other musicians, artistic types, and computer geeks. They all somehow managed to get stranded in a place that did not favor diversity in the least. Leon and his friends learned how to keep to themselves and avoid drawing any unwanted attention during their years at ABAC.

On the weekends, Leon and his friends would often escape by taking road trips various places. The most common destination was Atlanta. Georgia Tech in particular was a common point of interest because some friends from high school were studying there. Leon was amazed at how different things were at GT. The diverse student population in particular was a big contrast to ABAC. There were all sorts of international students, folks with multi-colored hair, etc. At some point, Leon noticed that there was a student club at GT called GALA – The Gay and Lesbian Alliance of Georgia Tech (now known as the Pride Alliance).

At some point after that GT visit, Leon and his friends at ABAC were sitting around bored in their dorm. Idle discussion drifted to how much different ABAC was from GT. Leon noted how GALA could never exist at ABAC. Someone else said, “Well if it did exist, I know what they’d call the club….GAYBAC!!” Everyone broke into hysterical laughter and imagined gay cowboys on the campus.

After the laughter and joking settled down, someone else said, “You know, we should print up some flyers about GAYBAC and put them up around campus!” And so the prank was born. One of the guys had access to a computer with some special banner/flyer design and printing software. This is back when students rarely had computers in their dorms, and didn’t have internet, or PowerPoint. So it was a lucky coincidence to have the banner/flyer software and access to a printer.

Now you might first expect the obvious, where the guys make a flyer describing the creation of the GAYBAC student club. However, they were far cleverer and decided that the imaginary club had been around for a while and already had several members. On the flyer they listed the name, description, time and place for the annual kickoff meeting, as well as this line: “Help us increase our membership from last year’s total of 50 members to 100!!!”

The flyer was meticulously crafted in the design software late at night so no one could see what was going on in the office with the computer. They had to similarly be careful not to be seen printing and photocopying a stack of the flyers.

The flyer probably looked something like this:

Then it was time to execute the prank. The group stayed up until the early AM hours and snuck out of their dorms for the critical stage of posting the flyers. They were very careful to not be seen putting the flyers up and moved about campus on bicycles in case anyone figured out what they were doing then they would be able to make a fast getaway. Even with the risks, these flyers went up everywhere. Windows, doors, unlocked classrooms, phone poles, sign posts, you name it. One thing was for certain, anyone at campus the next day was going to know about GAYBAC. Leon and his cohorts headed to bed and eagerly awaited the morning so they could observe the response.

After daybreak, they carefully headed out onto campus in the most nonchalant way they could and took a gander at the various locations where the flyers were posted. What they saw was a far more intense response than they ever expected. Many of the flyers would be angrily ripped down. Others would be defaced with various homophobic epithets and threats. At more popular locations like the student center, groups of students were huddled around the posted flyers angrily professing their disgust. Students continued to arrive for class unaware of the controversy, witness the angry groups and try to push to the front to see the flyer or query other already informed students to figure out what they should be mad about as well. This continued ad nauseam for quite a while and maintained the intense vitriol. By lunch time the entire campus knew of GAYBAC and was embroiled in discussing the gay student group. Just who were these fifty existing members? How come no one knew the club existed until now? How did their school, where men go to learn to be real men, become infested with what they felt was a moral wrong at the basest level? While no one could answer the questions, one thing was sure. The flyer stated the time and place of the GAYBAC kickoff meeting, and the time was that evening. Different groups of cowboys schemed and plotted how they were going to show the homosexuals a thing or two.

At this point Leon and his friends were a bit worried about the prank. It had already worked to far greater effect than they had ever imagined and they hadn’t even reached the climax of the prank. Leon and friends were already outcasts and likely targets for blind accusations. They decided that they must be even more covert in observing the meeting location of the imaginary club than when they checked out the flyers earlier in the day. It was a train wreck that was on a precise schedule. So it was best not to be too close the action when the time came.

Leon and others decided that making observations by bicycle was the only reasonably safe way to watch the events unfold. About a half hour before the scheduled meeting time, a group of cowboys showed up. They were fully decked in their machismo regalia: big cowboy hats, giant belt buckles, and pointy leather boots ready to do some ass kicking. They stood outside the door of the building listed as the meeting venue with menacing looks, puffed out chests, and fists clenched. Any moment the gays were going to start arriving and they were going to be sent packing. There would be no more gays on campus after the cowboys were done.

Leon and his friends could only make fleeting observations of the building. They would ride by briskly on a nearby sidewalk trying not to be caught paying much attention or be seen going by too many times. They certainly weren’t getting close enough to hear any discussions going on; however Leon didn’t really need to hear much to understand the situation.

Shortly after that first group of cowboys showed up, another group was seen strutting towards the building. The opposing groups noticed each other and simultaneously reached the same conclusion. The gay cowboys on campus had been outed and were about to get an ass whuppin’ that they would never forget. Each posse stormed towards the other. Thankfully (because otherwise knowledge of the prank probably would have been taken to Leon’s grave), the groups came up just short of blows to allow time to each share their profane treatise on what they thought of each other and where they could go in a handbasket. This allowed just enough time for each group to have doubts about having in fact tracked down their target.

About the time their confusion peaked, another group would show up. Surely this new group was the gays showing up for the meeting of sinners. As one might imagine, this process of accusations, threats, and confusion continued, just barely avoiding blows and ending up on the evening news.

Eventually, the actual start time for the imaginary meeting arrived. The cowboys began to realize that they had been had. By that time Leon and his friends split because the cowboys were now no doubt looking for signs of pranksters. They went back to their dorms relieved they hadn’t gotten anyone maimed or killed and then proceeded to roll on the floor laughing their asses off.

This was no doubt one of the most comical events ever to occur in the history of mankind. I wish I could have seen it in person. :) I suspect this prank could be pulled off at various other schools, but I just can’t recommend this one for replication. The prank teetered on a fine line between hilarity and outright anarchy.

I wonder if any of the cowboy gangs realized the irony of being the only ones to show up for the GAYBAC meeting?

A grade school friend of mine and I used to avoid paying attention in high school by passing notes and drawing comics. I came across this note in our scrap book:

You remember that day in Computron [computer science*] class that you broke lead in my eraser? You said “One day in class you’ll be erasing and you’ll end up with pencil lines all over your paper.”

Well, of all times, that trick decided to work during quiz.

I forgot how great this prank is. :) It continued on through the years going back and forth with constant paranoia and trying never to lose sight of our pencils and checking for sabotage when we did happen to forget.

It’s best to use a mechanical pencil because it’s easiest to break off multiple pieces of lead deep inside the eraser. Simply stab the lead (sticking out the tip of the mechanical pencil) into your victim’s eraser and then break off the lead. Do this multiple times for greater effect. You may want to lightly erase to remove the tell-tale signs of lead-injection.

** We called computer science class “computron” as a geeky slang, I think in reference to the “Talking Computron” kids computer and not the transformer robot toy or any of the other possible definitions.*

I ran into a pretty silly error with the Ageia / Nvidia’s PhysX SDK recently. The PhysX documentation didn’t cover the problem (at least that I found) and searching relevant terms on Google didn’t drum up the answer either. Therefore, I will throw this up on my blog to possibly benefit others.

If you get a NXCE_PHYSX_NOT_FOUND error when trying to run PhysX examples after installing the SDK, then the problem is most likely that you don’t have the runtime drivers installed. For some reason, the runtime files aren’t included in the SDK installer (like most SDKs that I have used before).

For instance if you install PhysX_2.7.3_SDK_Core.exe, you will also need to install PhysX_7.11.13_SystemSoftware.exe. Similarly, PhysX_2.8.0_SDK_Core.msi needs PhysX_8.02.13_SystemSoftware.exe.

There may be other ways to get the above error. For instance, some people seem to experience installer problems that fail on DLL registration or registry changes. These reports led me on a wild goose chase. :)

Is it just me or does Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, have really seedy eyes?