These are my links for December 23rd through January 4th:

• Best Buy Masters Computer Science & Information Technology | Ratings & Rankings | GetEducated.com –
• CSU CS Online Masters Degree –
• Portalarium – Game Developer in Austin (Richard Garriott has joined this team)
• Car2Go Sweeps Austin Off Its Wheels – Car2Go to hopefully expand its area, and definitely expand its fleet with new cars
• bunnie’s blog –
• TF2 Backpack Examiner – Blueprints –
• Musican killed in home burglary attempt, authorities say –
• James Jean | Home –
• Chumby Spare Parts at Sparkfun –
• The animal world has its junkies too – Animals that get high
• MakerBot Industries – Robots That Make Things. –
• chumby sphere forum –
• Chumby hacker board beta – ChumbyWiki –
• chumby hacker board wiki –
• Texas State History IMAX Theatre –

Although I prefer the stilts on Chell

http://www.minecraft.net/

A game where you can build anything out of an array of elements… anything, rollercoasters, castles, lava moats, etc. It’s like a world building game, but, every night it gets taken over by zombies and you must survive.

Honestly, it’s a hard game to describe, it has elements of Dwarf Fortress, zombie games, super mario, portal, legos… and many of it’s own unique ideas.

The TF2 dev team seems to be enraptured with it:

http://www.teamfortress.com/post.php?id=4130&p=1

And, it is pretty fun. I set up a server, and you can join it here:

http://www.minecraft.net/play.jsp?server=bac3b007f5dd5ab5caf7c20f4c1a5ec9

(or you can find it in the list of servers here, named CoFR Minecraft Server: http://www.minecraft.net/servers.jsp )

It is browser based, so no install needed. If you wish to be admin on the server, send me your registered playername and I will add you (if I know you, that is).
If you purchase the game you can play the alpha versions, which have all the new features, but the server is running classic version, which should be free to play.

From the people that brought you Portal: The Flash Version, comes all the levels from the flash version converted to actual portal maps. The Portal: The Flash Version Mappack isn’t just a bunch of levels strewn together, but has level continuity, added dialogue, and surprises. Plus extra levels. Even a “boss” fight at the end.

Highly recommended

Portal was a game that went beyond the actual playing. It is one of the few action games with a great story and atmosphere supporting it. In fact, as good as the puzzle play was, it was eclipsed by the game’s wonderful personality. I enjoyed Narbacular Drop immensely, but the idea really came into it’s own with Portal.

The ending sequence was an oddity. The rest of the game had funny, sometimes subtle, nuance to everything the character did, and the reaction provoked from GladOS. Then we get to the end and it seemed like a cut-and-dry end-boss robot battle. Abruptly changing the gameplay from the rest of the game. It was hard to believe, and although I wanted to understand and try to study the physical form of GladOS… the fact that you only have a few minutes to kill “her” kinda puts a damper on smelling the roses.

I have replayed many of the levels, but I honestly never felt an impulse to replay the ending scene. But a the game-ism blog has stumbled on something that rings true. As I had not replayed the end sequence, I had not heard the developer commentary within it. It reveals that Valve tried to give GladOS a female form, but not exactly which. Game-ism proposes GladOS wanted you to find her all along, to free her from her bondage.

• What are your obsolete gaming skills? » Has the advance of time rendered any of your videogame abilities redundant?
• Lest We Remember: Cold Boot Attacks on Encryption Keys » Contrary to popular assumption, DRAMs used in most modern computers retain their contents for seconds to minutes after power is lost, even at operating temperatures and even if removed from a motherboard.
• ‘Perry Bible Fellowship’ Comic Is Ending »
• Google Lunar Xprize » Google is offering $30 million to the first people to put a robot on the moon.
• Portal 2 Confirmed » On tonight’s episode of X-Play, lead designer for Portal, Kimberly Swift, confirmed that there will be a Portal 2. Video of interview at the link.
• Gene research may help explain autistic savants » Mice lacking a certain brain protein learn some tasks better but also forget faster, according to new research from MIT that may explain the phenomenon of autistic savants in humans.
• Austin Czech Historical Association »
• Self-healing rubber bounces back » A material that is able to self-repair even when it is sliced in two has been invented by French researchers.
• GetByMail » Remote Access & File Sharing by Mail
• Making your windows folder smaller!  »
• LitePC Technologies » trim Windows operating systems
• HDDVD is Dead – Toshiba Press Release » Toshiba Corporation today announced that it has undertaken a thorough review of its overall strategy for HD DVD and has decided it will no longer develop, manufacture and market HD DVD players and recorders.
• Samuel Adams Hop Sharing Program » Samuel Adams beer is selling their hops to microbrewers at just above their cost, to help alleviate the strain of the hop shortage on microbreweries.

Portal may be old and tired in game-life terms…

wait… if you agreed to that, get out.

Here’s Portal done lovingly with some Legos.

• How to make ANIMATED Sprays » for source games (Half-Life Team Fortress 2, etc)
• Ghostbusters 3… the game » The whole team of Ghostbusters actors will be reprising their roles in a Ghostbusters game by Vivendi/Sony to be released in 2008 on consoles and PC.
• Portal Papercraft »
• Photography: Digital Camera Reviews, Learn Photography, Photo Galleries – photo.net »
• How to solve a maze with Photoshop »
• Chowhound » food forums
• Black Friday Ads – The Official Black Friday 2007 Website »
• Java Applet Tutorial »
• Newsvine – Leonardo Painting Has Coded ‘Soundtrack’ » An Italian musician and computer technician claims to have uncovered musical notes encoded in Leonardo Da Vinci’s "Last Supper"
• Definition Changing for People’s Privacy »
• Open Handset Alliance » Google and other partners strive to create an open source cellphone platform.

• LCD monitor test images »
• wide screen gaming forum »
• The Good Life Barber Shop » Austin downtown barber
• Humping Dolphin »
• Portal: The Skinny » Jonathan Coulton talks about writing the end-title song to Portal.
• Pokemon.Marriland.com »
• PS3 supercomputer » Dartmouth astrophysicist Dr. Gaurav Khanna has rigged up an array of eight PS3 systems to help him crunch numbers in his study of theoretical gravity waves.
• Poll: Some Germans see good in Nazi rule – Yahoo! News »
• Half-Life 2: Portal » Use the Portal gun in Half-Life 2 and it’s episodes
• The Grandmaster Experiment » The queen is the most powerful piece on the chessboard. Yet in the ultra-elite ranks of chess, a woman who can hold her own is the rarest of creatures. How, then, did one family produce three of the most successful female chess champions ever?
• Halfwit-2 : Half-Life 2 Bits and Pieces »
• Main Page – Valve Developer Community »
• Valve’s Portal Mapping »
• Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories – Making the World a Better Place, One Evil Mad Scientist at a Time »
• Solid freeform fabrication: DIY, on the cheap, and made of pure sugar »

I’ve been lax. I haven’t posted on anything relating to the Orange Box. I guess I really couldn’t say much more than the 5 bazillion other people who are playing it. I loved TF2, Episode 2 was short but a blast, and Portal was even better than I expected.

Especially the story… and the culmination in the end song. But again, this is definitely not a unique opinion.

But when I found this combining two things I really like… well, that’s enough impetus to post:

For those of you who already pre-ordered the Orange Box, Valve has unlocked the TF2 beta. So get thee to the servers!

Well, it looks like the release of Team Fortress 2 after being initially announced in 1997, is upon us. I am pre-loading as we speak, and the beta release will be on Monday. It looks to be a hell of a game, and a worthy successor to the original mod.

In retrospect, I think fondly on my most favorite Quake mod and what it has become today. And this video will show what most of you never experienced in the glory of the original Team Fortress. (Please please do not say that you thought TFC was the first Team Fortress!)

Team Fortress 2. Used to be the butt pocket joke for whenever a game took forever to be released. Now it is tantalizingly redone and looking better than ever. They did a few films before where the classes spoke about themselves, and now the soldier gets his turn. I never thought a cartoony game would make me think “amazing graphics” again, but this one does.

The dream pack of Half-Life 2, Team Fortress 2, and Portal has a new confirmed release date: October 9, 2007. Of course, we all know Valve’s track record with release dates, including these titles. And c’mon, TF2 was on the Vaporware list for years!

But anyways, this is the official word Shacknews wrangled out of them.

Red Orchestra was born a mod for Unreal Tournament 2004. I played it quite a bit back then, when the total numbers of people playing per night was less than a hundred. But, as I’ve said before, I’m a glutton for obscure mods.

The game came out of obscurity somewhat when they worked a deal with Valve to develop a standalone version. The new game was called Red Orchestra: Ostfront 41-45. I didn’t purchase it when it was released, but I did participate in the beta before. The addition of vehicles, and improved physics were nice, and the gameplay only got better. I can’t remember exactly why I wasn’t interested enough to purchase it, so I will blame it on a random MMORPG.

About a year ago I was goaded into finally picking up the game by some CoFRs. While my heart belongs more to PRMM, I have varied my gaming diet with influxes of RO.

As usual, I don’t get to the point of the post right away. Here it is: The Red Orchestra team hosted a contest for custom maps, and the result is a new map pack of 32 maps approved and released. I got mine from fileplanet but the main Red Orchestra site lists some alternative download sites. Fileplanet does have a great writeup on each of the maps in the pack.

These maps look great and the fact that there are so many probably means I will spend time that I should be using to study or code to play all of them.

Valve’s Doug Lombardi says: Half-Life 2: Episode 2 is now delayed to summer of 2007.

It should have sent off bells and flew all sorts of red flags when they announced TF2 would be simultaneously released with HL2:E2. But no! All us gluttons for punishment just cheered, thinking our almost decade long wait was over! What fools we let ourselves be!

So, I guess this is the “episodic content makes shorter release schedules” that Valve was talking about. Oh, and what happened to Steam Friends again? Nevermind.

More sreenshots and a mini-interview with Gabe Newell coming from CNN Money of all places:

CNN Money talks to Gabe Newell

“You are once again Gordon Freeman,” described Gabe Newell, managing director and co-founder of Valve. “You are awakened in the future. Several of the characters from [the original game] are back, including Barney the security guard, the G-Man, about whom you learn more and in whose employ you now are, and several of the scientists. There are new characters as well, most prominently Alyx, whose mother was killed during the events of the original game. The story is once again conveyed entirely within the course of playing the game.”