In my ongoing quest to find the best cover versions of Jonathan Coulton’s song from Portal, “Still Alive”, I’ve turned up these five additional videos:
1. Hipster chick on guitar. (She can also RickRoll you.)
2. RIT Surround Sound student a cappella group. (Also, their version of Star Wars.)
3. On piano.
4. Two guitars and a sweet rhythm section.
5. A band called missFlag. Keep an eye on the video if you expect to get any cake. (Bonus rehearsal session.)
You may recall when I wrote up something about the game Portal and its song, “Still Alive.” If not, there’s the link to refresh your memory. This weekend, we find that the song is going to be made available for the game Rock Band. Here’s a short video of the song’s writer and three blogger/podcasters performing the Rock Band version of the song.
And if you just can’t get the song out of your head, here are the top 12 cover versions of “Still Alive.”
I recently played the game (old folks might say “video game”) Portal, which is a singular experience in computer gaming (old folks might say “wasting time”). If you followed that link to the official page, there’s a trailer which gives you some sense of what the game is about and also introduces you to GLaDOS, the omnipresent computer voice who guides you through the tests. If you didn’t watch the movie, the basic concept is that you play as a test subject who must navigate various puzzles using your portal gun. A portal gun creates two portals (duh!) so you can move to different points in the rooms. For example, to get across a room which has a deep chasm in the center, you can create a portal in the wall behind you and then create the second in the far wall. Stepping through the near portal, exits you from the far one. Or, you could create a portal in the ceiling at the far side, then create a portal directly under your feet, so you drop down out of the ceiling at the far side. The puzzles quickly become more complex, many of them relying on 
conservation of momentum through the portals. If you need to cross a long horizontal distance, you can jump down into a portal in order to exit one facing your desired trajectory– Exiting it at the full velocity you gained by jumping down in the first place, thus flinging yourself across a room. Does that make sense? Now you see why I suggested you see the movie. Here’s a YouTube link to make it easy (old folks might say you’re lazy). You can also put portals above and below you so that you fall endlessly from one to the next. Wheee!