by In case you are in the market for a games console (or games themselves) in the run up to Christmas, Tesco are doing 25% off all such articles this weekend only (October 30th to November 2nd 2008). I just got myself a Nintendo DS Lite for €119.99 which is a good bit cheaper than any of the other local (or online) stores.
Gaming
Triskit Project
Triskit is a fascinating project that takes the form of a self-generating toy system. If you own (or have access to) a mini laser cutter or acrylic sheet stock then you can use the Triskit software to design pieces for your very own toy system (called a Triskit). You can use the data that is produced by the software as input data for your laser cutter and the result is your very own, custom-made toy part.
One of the benefits of this is that, if you are trying to build a toy and find that you don’t have a particular part that does what you need, you can just make one to suit your needs. With the likes of LEGO and K’nex, you are limited to what pieces came in the original box.
Rubik’s Cube Proof Cut to 23 moves
In March 2008, I commented on a Stanford-trained mathematician (Tomas Rokicki) who proved that it was possible to solve any scrambled Rubik’s cube in just 25 moves. The equipment used to do this was computer with 8GB and a Q6600 CPU.
Now a mere 3 months later, he has returned with an updated proof that shows it can be down in just 23 moves. He traded his previous computer for the supercomputers at Sony Pictures Imageworks and carried out his testing in the idle-time between productions.
I sense it will not be long before we hear from him again.
Source: SlashDot
Indiana Jones meets LEGO
With the long awaited release of the fourth movie in the Indiana Jones series, Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, hitting Irish big screens next week, the creators of LEGO have pulled off another master stroke in the form of a new series of video games called Indian Jones: The Original Adventures. Here’s one of the trailers for the new game (and the new movie) that’s currently doing the rounds. If like me, you grew up on a diet of LEGO and Indie, you will love it!
What’s amazing to me about this is that it’s basically computer-generated animation that’s been made to look like LEGO. It’s normally the other way around. In any case, it is quite brilliant and an extremely clever move from a commercial sense.
Dan Haspert also has a short review of this same topic and you can see more trailers of LEGO computer games here.
Irish Rock-Paper-Scissors Champion
Never was the statement, “you learn something new every day” truer than today. Ireland has a new Rock-Paper-Scissors champion, Mark Cleland from Belfast.
Source: RTE News
Rubik’s Cube Proof Cut to 25 moves
It still amazes me how the ingenious Rubik’s Cube puzzle (invented in the 1970’s) still provides such a good basis for some of the world’s most intriguing mathematical research.
It only took a computer with 8GB of memory and a 1.6GHz processor around 1500 hours of time to prove that a scrambled Rubik’s Cure can be solved in just 25 moves.
Source: SlashDot
It’s Just a Game
Incredibly, another Chinese man has died from playing computer games. Apparently, he was attending some sort of online gaming marathon in an Internet cafe and fainted from exhaustion after 3 days playing non-stop. I knew there were some serious gamers out there but didn’t think they would actually risk their health and, more importantly, their life for the sake of it.
Source: TheStar.com