Catexia

Just a short update: it appears that in the past two weeks, Nintendo has sold 650,000 consoles. As a reference point, in October Sony sold 121,000 consoles. That means for each of the past two weeks, Nintendo has sold more than double the number of consoles Sony sold for the entire month of October. Congratulations to Nintendo for keeping their consoles flying off shelfs a year after release!

I've recently gotten drawn into the game Dwarf Fortress, which is an incredible Dungeon Keeper-esque fantasy game. You oversee a group of 7 dwarves, trying to build a new dwarven Mountain Home. The game does an incredible job with trying to simulate and detail every last aspect of the world - every dwarf has an individual personality and thought process, including likes, fears, and personal habits. Weather and temperature are modeled as fluid systems and kept up to date. It's an incredible amount of detail and thought put into a single game.

For those who are not so interested in playing a game with ASCII art, you should at least read the saga of Boatmurdered, which tells the legendary (and comical) story of the fortress of Boatmurdered, which is handed among many different players. Absolutely hysterical - I strongly suggest reading at least until you hit StarkRavingMad's turn to see what I mean.

Tartan Racing posted a press release regarding taking first place in the DARPA Urban Challenge. What's intersting is the paragraph contained within, which reads:

Tartan Racing just took home first place in the Urban Challenge, picking up $2 million and a spot in the history books for navigating a complex course, complete with other robots, traffic drivers, and other real-world complications. Congratulations to all the teams who also competed, and good luck in the next competition?

thanks to TG Daily for the video

Bored with waiting for qualifiers to finish and the finalists to be announced, UCF decided to have a bit of fun for Halloween, and dress up their robot, Knight Rider, as fellow Urban Challenge semi-finalist TerraMax for a quick trick-or-treat parade around the pits. The costume was completed with playing Ride of the Valkyries and a recording of TerraMax's siren while travelling about the course. Teams quickly joined in the fun, following the parade snapping pictures and eventually pulling out the real TerraMax to pose for folks.

IVS' first run through Course A, which scared the living bejesus out of most folks. one of the chase drivers called out "Help me Jesus!" during this run.

Us watching Course B yesterday, waiting for Gator Nation to launch.