When Megan was short on time for her costume for Otakon 2012, this is what she came up with. Hipster Chell. So good. The glasses and beanie may be what first draw the eye, but the kicker is the can of PBR that's powering the portal gun.

Hipster Chell Cosplay- 01 [DeviantArt, via Super Punch]

And by that I of course mean silliest. Do you ever just randomly talk to the games you play? Poke fun at characters playfully? That's essentially what BlackLightAttack does with his 60 Second Let's Play series.

60 Second Let's Play: Half-Life 2 [YouTube]

Last week, my misidentification of a laser engraving on a space part suggested the wrong personality core from Portal 2 was symbolically being flown to space (a fate echoing the game's story.) A team of 18 teenagers from Nevada stepped in to restore order, and properly send the Space Core—or, well, a plushy version of him, anyway—to near space.

That image above is of Space Core (and an Energizer Bunny) at about 91,000 feet, which were launched yesterday by the University of Nevada-Las Vegas' Summer Advanced Gifted Education Academy—aka smart kids. One, named Jake, enrolled in a class called "Project: Space!" whose goal was to send up two weather balloons. "In the first week, I found out that the majority of the class were huge Portal and Portal 2 fans when we sung both 'Still Alive' and 'Want You Gone' from memory," Jake writes.

After seeing the story last week, Jake proposed the idea of launching a Space Core into space, which was immediately supported. He wrote Valve, which quickly sent back its thanks and encouragement and the Space Core plushy. (The Energizer Bunny was the group's hat-tip to the battery maker, which supplied the power source.)

"After much preparation and anxiety, we sent up the weather balloon [Saturday] morning and retrieved it in the afternoon," Jake wrote. "The balloon ended up going up about 91,000 feet (we could have done better, but the wind decided to make our lives harder)."

The photo above is blurry because the balloon's camera lens still was fogged by a cloud it had passed through. The image is of the balloon just before it burst.

"Lots of things have been sent into space before, but I think this is the first time a space core was sent up," he noted in conclusion. Indeed.

The project team, Flying Apple Space Technologies (so named because Newton's fell to Earth, theirs is going in the opposite direction) is working on uploading a full video of the Space Core's flight. They also have another launch coming up and are keen to find supporters so that they can send up more scientific instruments. Previous launches by the SAGE Academy have included Geiger counters, weather loggers and a flight predictor.

You're about to see what happens when a team of "speed-runners" knows enough about the progress and timing of a game that they can finish something that normally takes hours in just over eight minutes.

The run, with video slightly edited for your viewing pleasure, is above, while this online document is full of notes detailing how they actually did it.

For the doubters, there's this:

There were no cheats, hacks, or modifications made to the game while the speedrunning took place. Everything you see in this video can be done on a current Steam version of Portal without using any console commands. Any part where the video "stutters" or when a "console box pops up" signifies a segment. The console box is a demo artifact, and we couldn't fix it from popping up.

And if that's not enough, there's a link to download a demo of the run in full below.

Portal Done Pro-er - Portal Speedrun - 8:31.93 - WR [YouTube, via Beefjack]

You're about to see what happens when a team of "speed-runners" knows enough about the progress and timing of a game that they can finish something that normally takes hours in just over eight minutes.

The run, with video slightly edited for your viewing pleasure, is above, while this online document is full of notes detailing how they actually did it.

For the doubters, there's this:

There were no cheats, hacks, or modifications made to the game while the speedrunning took place. Everything you see in this video can be done on a current Steam version of Portal without using any console commands. Any part where the video "stutters" or when a "console box pops up" signifies a segment. The console box is a demo artifact, and we couldn't fix it from popping up.

And if that's not enough, there's a link to download a demo of the run in full below.

Portal Done Pro-er - Portal Speedrun - 8:31.93 - WR [YouTube, via Beefjack]

It's not that the current offerings have been terrible, far from it, but ever since Valve released the Source Film-maker there's been the quiet expectation that it would really start to shine once professional animators, and not just dedicated fans, got hold of it.

Well, here's what it looks like when a professional gets their hands on it.

This lengthy short, detailing the daily problems faced by an Engineer, is the work of James McVinnie, a cinematic designer at BioWare. If you think the animation looks a little better than what we're used to seeing with these clips, that's because he used two Kinects to grab motion-capture data.

Sure, it took him 130 hours, but the fact something this impressive can now come from just one man...

The add-on campaign created by the loyal Left 4 Dead community was supposed to launch about a year ago. It's finally hitting Windows and Mac platforms today as a free update. The official site teases that the DLC will land on Xbox Live soon.

Cold Stream [Left 4 Dead 2 official site]

Oh, Source Filmmakers, is there anything can't you do?

That's a relative term, of course, as these are video game celebrities, but still. If you've ever wanted to see Minecraft creator Marcus Persson, Valve's Robin Walker and internet superstar Freddie Wong go at it over Team Fortress 2, here's your chance.

To cut out the fluff, the actual game - which also includes other devs from Valve and Bethesda - starts at 8:18 in the video above.

Watch Notch, Freddie Wong, Valve, Bethesda, and us fight for charity, honor in Team Fortress 2 [PC Gamer]

That panel is a part of some sort, to be flown on a resupply craft to the International Space Station this coming Friday. "An anonymous tech at NASA," is responsible for laser-engraving Wheatley, the antagonist of Portal 2 the Space Core on the part, Valve said in its official Portal blog on Friday. "And please note that when we mentioned an 'anonymous tech at NASA' we weren't kidding," Valve added. "NASA in no way officially endorses secretly laser-engraving characters from Portal onto their spacecraft."

I'll refrain from making jokes as they carry a spoiler hazard (it's a year after release, but so what). You either know why this is ironic already or have the means of finding out for yourself. It's a clever tribute to the game and the character. The full size picture is available at the link.

[Correction] It's the Space Core. Both it and Wheatley end up in space in the game anyway.

Wheatley in Spaaaaaaace! [Portal Blog]