Santa Secret's

[tak197]

Actually, I'm very curious--is Graham's fear of the Creepy Dolls an exaggeration of an actual trait of the actor, or is it an invented phobia for the character?

What kind of hardened, grizzled mind has to invent a fear of Creepy Dolls?

Someone who thinks that they are legitimately adorable and friendly once you get to know them (which so far seem to be me and Kathleen, perhaps Tally in a Stockholm syndrome kind of way).

I was highly amused by the fact that all the stuff for the automatic card sorter that Paul talked about was "Just stuff I had."

I'm starting to think that all of the items needed to make a supercomputer to compete on Jeopardy without human aide may not be in IBM's laboratory, but in Paul's linen closet.

[Kaiserin]

Actually, I'm very curious--is Graham's fear of the Creepy Dolls an exaggeration of an actual trait of the actor, or is it an invented phobia for the character?

What kind of hardened, grizzled mind has to invent a fear of Creepy Dolls?

If you were watching when Ian sang Creepy Doll and Kathleen spun it round the camera you don't need to question the fear of the creepy doll.

[Master Gunner]

Actually, building a Magic-card sorting rig wouldn't be too difficult with the right tools, and the real Paul could probably cobble one together if he had to.

The key parts would be a spare camera of decent quality (I have two or three lying around that would easily work), a control system (a laptop with the right software package would do), some basic mechanical and electrical components (servos, conveyors, etc), and something like an Arduino to control the physical rig based on commands from the computer.

The deck is placed in an input bucket, and the rig draws off a card at a time and places it under a camera, which takes a picture. Camera sends picture to the computer, which runs an OCR package grab the card's details, and stores that information in a database which it can call on later (the card could be tagged to facilitate future sorting), and determines which basic categories to sort it into (such as creatures, enchantments, artifacts, lands, instants, etc). The card is then advanced an output stack, such as a large card rack, capable of holding a few hundred cards at a time. Knowing the current order of cards in the stack, and having the information on all the cards stored in a database, it can quickly calculate the proper sorting order virtually. Then it's just a matter of retrieving the cards from the stack in the proper order (many ways of doing this), and placing them in an output bin.

Such a system could also be highly extensible. If you have a massive number of completely unsorted cards, you could with just a few modifications replace the card stack with a spindle holding several card stacks, each assigned different attributes (so each card type, set, rarity, or whatever will come in a different stack off the bat, no need to manually separate them after the fact), which will just rotate around when needed, be individually sorted, and can drop into separate output bins.


Were I any good with electronics (and had a decent OCR package lying around), I could probably build or prototype one. I came up with that design just in the five minutes I've being typing this up. Paul could probably have built it in that time, given his experience with such things.

[GaProgMan]

A good pattern matching algorithm is all you need, really. But, then you'd need to have details of all the cards you could have on file somewhere. And that could end up being a massive database, depending on how many different individual cards have been made.

The first few times you run it, it'd be quite slow. As long as you give the algorithm a learning routine, and some way of storing it's 'gained knowledge' alongside the 'expert knowledge' (the database), it'll optimise itself pretty well.

[Master Gunner]

There already is at least one online Magic card database out there. You'd still have to somehow key in which cards you have though, hence my suggestion of tagging cards. If you had it automatically apply a barcode sticker to the front of cards as they pass through, it can skip the OCR step on cards you've previously sorted, speeding up recognition/sorting time drastically. Not to mention, having a database of all the cards in your possession, updated automatically every time you sort a new batch of cards, would be very useful. Especially with the rudimentary AI Paul was talking about (which seemed a bit overkill for the project, I just figured he had one sitting around that he could easily adapt for the OCR package/pattern matching/control system).

[Graham]

gatherer.wizards.com
That's your database right there.

[ThrashJazzAssassin]

Can't... comment. Laughing too... much.

[SPACExJUMPxJOSH]

i love CH, get paid in a week and for once i owe no 1 anythin xD gunna get a load of stuf from the store me thinks, was gunna do it right avter DB but got rsped by christmas....


...again

seriously y dus it always take me by suprise? not like it can move, always hiding in december waiting for me to get distracted then pounces on my inocent wallet : /

[AlexanderDitto]

Amazing episode! Favorite line was Jer's "It could be a sick cat..." XD

But... anyone else get the feeling that "Peace, Love, and Happiness" is what Morgan calls his junk?

[ThrashJazzAssassin]

Which testicle is Peace, and which one's Love?

[Alahmnat]

But... anyone else get the feeling that "Peace, Love, and Happiness" is what Morgan calls his junk?

That would certainly explain Matt's reaction to the idea of getting any of it .

[AC Drawings]

But... anyone else get the feeling that "Peace, Love, and Happiness" is what Morgan calls his junk?

I figured that's what it was by default.

[iamafish]

I found the end a bit predicatable - it had to be magic cards really, didn't it?

But the rest of the vid was just so damn funny that it didn't matter. I loved how everyone phones james.

Good to see morgan in a vid again, silly hair and all!

[Big Phil]

And that solves my problem of picking a present for a friend of mine who has his Bday on the 31st of December.

[Wolfenbarg]

Absolutely phenomenal episode. But more than that, I think it could be the beginning of a nice trend for the new format of commodore Hustle. While the episodes since the Escapist have been great, this is the first one that has struck middle ground that has allowed you to keep character integrity and in-show continuity despite the shorter length of each episode. If the Hustles next year are this good, I will be dropping emails by the hundreds demanding a DVD.

You guys are in top form, keep up the good work!

[BertZ]

I want to see More presidentbarackobamaalloneword (all one word)

[Kaiserin]

Watched it again.

New favorite delivery of a line.

"he's staring at me."