Need Special Effects for Office Party

Buy a cheap stun gun and try to tone it down a little? :-) -->

Technology and special effects are cool...especially in the eyes of the one building the toy. BUT My experience with parties suggests that $50 spent on booze will do more for the "spirit" of the party than any special effects you can build. ;-)

On a darker note, anything that "shocks" a person is a BAD idea. Putting the boss' brother into cardiac arrest is not a good thing. Call up your insurance company and see if they cover the wrongful death lawsuit. Think of it as a divide by zero. It's not likely to happen, but the result gets VERY BIG if it does. You don't shock people for the same reason you put divide by zero checks in your code. mike

That might work, but I probably would have to cannibalize it. Some places consider stun guns and tazers as weapons, and prohibit them. We are prohibited from bringing anything that is a weapon to the office, even as a prop for a costume. We cannot bring real machetes, axes, swords, etc.

Did you ever scuff your feet across a carpet and then shock someone? Do we put kids in jail for doing that?

Did you know that if you hit someone in the chest at just the right time, you could easily kill them? The blow does not have to be very hard, and the person could have been in good health. I read about a basketball player that died simply by being hit in the chest by a thrown basketball during practice, which just happened to hit his chest at a vulnerable moment. So, do we ban all physical contact and all sports?

A very brief, very low current shock is not going to kill someone. It has never happened in all of recorded history.

I don't agree with the last statement, particularly since your description of how you thought you might do it shows you know nothing of the subject, but leaving aside the probably manageable risks of shock, I assume from your description of the workplace that you are either a data centre or the data/computing centre for your business. A risk analysis of the damage that might be done does not stop at the possibility of a blown $50 hard drive - it looks at the consequential damage; customers turning away, suing for lost data, etc. If you're an outsourcing centre and I used you and found out you were screwing about like this around my data or computer services, I'd be moving my business. If you only serve your own company and I found out you were doing it, I'd take it up to CTO/CEO level. Your boss should be saying "No!" to this to if he has a clue. Don't do it.

Cheers.

Ken

Not really relevant, but when I was a student apprentice at English Electric-LEO-Marconi Computers Ltd, Kidsgrove, in the 1960s, I and a friend decided to build a sex detection machine for one of our frequent parties at the company hostel where we lived. The person being tested had to stand with his/her legs apart with their feet on a pair of Al plates. When a button was pressed the machine sprang into life - relays clicked, a uniselector rotated and lights flashed for about 30 seconds, then one of two lamps labelled MALE or FEMALE came on. It was about 98% accurate over the 100 or so people who were tested.

Can anyone guess how it worked?

Leon

Wasn't that baseball, hardball? The ball is much harder, goes much faster, and is much smaller, to induce a higher pressure when it hits, than a basketball could ever create when it hits.

If those are real maces, back out. If they're styrofoam balls with plastic pins, painted black, then just a lucite sword stuck on a flashlight, maybe a multi-color flashlight. It'd look like a "lightsaber", but Gladiatized, so to speak. :-)

Do NOT use a fluorescent tube as a lightsaber! Or for anything else, except to install in a fluorescent fixture, for that matter.

The only other thing that springs to mind is flashing LEDs all over, and by nowadays, they've probably already got something like that at the costume store.

If you want a Jacob's Ladder on your hat, (where the Romans wore that whisk-broom thingie - and so did Marvin, I think...) just look up "Jacob's Ladder" on google, and adapt one of those designs. :-)

Good Luck! Rich

But the PHB can bring a _mace_? Let alone, _two of them_???? - Oh! I erred! Sometimes people use the term "mace" erroneously while referring to something more apppropriately called the "flail":

Sue the bastards.

Good Luck! Rich

On Tue, 18 Oct 2005 17:22:03 -0700, pooua wrote: ...

Of course not. But those people put themselves at risk voluntarily, of their own free will. Sneaking up to someone and tasing them is quite a different thing.

Now, if the guy had called for a "no holds barred, bring your bazooka" kind of knock-down-drag-out, then if I couldn't bring an actual pistol, it'd be taser city all the way. Expecially[sic] if he's got a flail! (which I thought was called a "mace" - silly me!)

Thanks, Rich

On Wed, 19 Oct 2005 15:12:38 +1300, Ken Taylor wrote: ...

I thought the boss instigated it.

Thanks, Rich

Weight?

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

Duh - the operator had pressed the appropriate button.

Duh. Rich

IR

That sounds like the Carl & Jerry story "The Girl Detector" from the early '60s where they used thermistors in a bridge circuit to look for a skirt. Girls had bare legs, and boys didn't. Its on the web at:

It is called commotio cordis. See

etc etc etc

Michael has got it right; we used a light source and photocell rather than detecting heat. It got the sex wrong for two people, a male wearing light-coloured trousers and a girl wearing a long black dress.

Leon