01 October 2006

if you live in the U.K.

Watch this show tonight on BBC2 at 8pm. In the U.S., you'll have to wait another month or so.

It's called Battle of the Geeks, and the premise is that in each show two crack teams of inventors/engineers (a.k.a. "geeks") compete to perform a different task in a different part of the world. This show takes place in the second largest canyon in the world: the Fish River Canyon in Namibia. Each team was given an egg

and their task was to get it as close as possible to a target on the other side of the canyon, about a kilometer away with a vertical drop of 200m. Without breaking it. The target in the photo is the red-and-purple X on the left. It's 10 meters across, which should help give you a sense of scale.

You can find a much more detailed description, with better photos, from my friend Jeff's account of being on the show.