My wife hates Portal. Hated the first, despises the second. It's the whiny robot voices, and the whooshing of the portals, and especially the gravity-defying leaps that make her sick.

So she wonders what there is to love about the series. I show her this, and she laughs, and while not settling in to play the thing, she at least can finally understand.

I play Portal like I used to play Wing Commander, or Command & Conquer. I endure the meat of the game, in this case puzzles, not to defeat them, from which I gain little satisfaction, but to see the cool/interesting/funny shit in between.

Like this.

[thanks raider!]

Here's a lovely little Instructable that shows how to make a Portal turret out of our favorite plastic building bricks suitable for desk or headboard. Now you're thinking with elements.

LEGO Portal Turret Instructions [Instructables.com (Thanks, Kyle!)]

You'd think that Portal 2's co-operative levels were designed specifically so that they could only be completed by two players working together. Turns out that's only half right.

While you do need two players to complete each room properly, YouTube user Gocnak quickly found that you only really need the other person to open the doors. All the other bits could be completed by just one person.

As you can see, in the video above. Those crying foul at all the floaty bits, Gocnak says "yes I did use noclip", but that it "was ONLY used to get through the doors, as, who would've thought, the doors don't open with one person."

"Enduring Questions" is a mandatory class for freshmen at Wabash College. The syllabus? Gilgamesh, Aristotle, Goffman, Donne…and Portal. That's because it's taught by Michael "Brainy Gamer" Abbot, profiled in this piece by Patrick Klepek that's certainly worth reading on Giant Bomb.

When it came time to talk about the experience, there were surprising responses. Who didn't want to know the fate of Chell at the end of Portal, before we knew she was dragged away? As it turns out, a number of Abbott's students never managed to figure out they were playing as a defined character. They never discovered Chell, so when it came time to talk about their own feelings playing the game, it varied. Some identified as Chell, hoping to escape this bizarre, sadistic facility. Others figured they were escaping. The breakdown was roughly one-third identifying as Chell, the rest never bonding with the character.

Intro to GLaDOS 101: A Professor's Decision to Teach Portal [Giant Bomb]

We've already seen our fair share of Portal 2-inspired art around these parts, but this series of miniature personality spheres by Chris Myles certainly takes the, ahem, cake.

Using a 3D printer, he's built four excruciatingly-detailed models, which aren't just perfect in their representation, but also swivel realistically, and even have LED lighting should they somehow end up in a dark, cold place.

These aren't your everyday hobbyist models. Myles designed them using professional tools like SolidWorks, and had them churned out on a very fancy Eden350 3D printer.

And before you ask, no. They're not for sale, and he's not making any more, for sale or otherwise.

If you admire Myles' handiwork, know he's been featured more than once here on Kotaku before, with his impressive Mass Effect 2 cosplay and, more recently, working Assassin's Creed hidden blade.

The gallery above shows the personality spheres in all their finished glory; head to Myles' Flickr page (linked below) to see how they were made.

Random Props [Flickr, via Joystiq]

This is an A Capella version of Cara Mia, the "turret opera" from late in Portal 2. I don't really know why you'd sing this, but vocalizing music as beeps and boops is a big part of A Capella, so it works just fine.

If you want to see the original, you can watch it here. It's a spoiler though, so only watch if you don't mind seeing something from late in the game.

Nice effect out of a paper-mâché portal gun, but where'd the car in the back go? (Thanks, Zach!)