LEGO robot solves Rubik's cube in less than 12 seconds

Mike Dobson - AKA Robotic Solutions - is known far and wide for his genius at cooking up contraptions with LEGO bricks and the LEGO Mindstorms robotics packages. Dobson has now applied his mad skillz toward his latest creation: the CubeStormer.

This thing looks scary. Sorta intimidating like the Voight-Kampff machine from Blade Runner. But set your faces to stunned y'all: the CubeStormer can solve any Rubik's cube puzzle on its own in twelve seconds or less, and sometimes even in less than five seconds!

Check it out...

Read more about the CubeStormer here.

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How DUKE NUKEM FOREVER imploded

Clive Thompson at Wired has written an exhaustively-researched article that should give every software developer and game publisher pause: the twelve-year development cycle that plagued Duke Nukem Forever before the plug was finally pulled on the project this past spring. The tale Thompson relates is one rife with technical obsession, corporate money and motion-captured strippers (for realz, folks). If you want the lowdown on the biggest gaming fiasco since Ion Storm and perhaps of all time, here it is!

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Awright, 'fess up y'all

How many poor saps out there were waiting in line at midnight to buy a copy of the Windows 7 operating system?

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Chris sings the praises of HandBrake 0.9.3!

A little over a year ago I posted the how-to tutorial on putting video content from a DVD onto an iPod. The workhorse program that I found perfect for my needs was HandBrake. When it came time to convert Lost Season 4 for my iPod classic ('cuz I like having all the Lost episodes hanging on my belt... along with my own movies, the Star Wars saga, etc.) I found that HandBrake had upgraded to version 0.9.3.

So if you haven't checked it out yet, I heartily recommend giving HandBrake a looksee, because it has become significantly more powerful since the last time I used it en masse. HandBrake 0.9.3 introduces universal video input: it can now convert practically any format of video into MPEG-4, including DivX AVI files (very nice for putting those bootlegged Doctor Who episodes on an iPod or iPhone or any other portable video device). The video quality has been greatly improved, with many more presets and options available. Syncing of video and audio is said to be fixed, but I never saw any problems with that to begin with. I have however found that HandBrake 0.9.3 is far more stable in Windows Vista: previously, I had to re-install the program every time I wanted to convert a new DVD. Version 0.9.3 has fixed that bug: I've "fired it at the walls" (my own terminology for probing software for its limits) quite a bit over the past several days, and it keeps coming back and asking for more.

If you are using a Windows machine, you will likely have to purchase and install SlySoft AnyDVD, which does the actual work of decryption of a DVD. But HandBrake itself is free and open-source, and is available for MacOS X, Linux and Windows.

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For good old games, GOG.com delivers

About a month ago I heard about GOG.com. The site - its URL is an acronym for "Good Old Games" - is dedicated to promoting classic computer games from years gone by. So with a lot of folks raving about how good Fallout 3 is since it came out last month and because I never played the original, I purchased Fallout (shown at left) from GOG.com for $5.99 earlier this week. For that amount came not only the game as a 500 megabyte download, but also the manual and a lot of other Fallout-related goodies (like the soundtrack).

And after the last few days of traipsing around the blasted wasteland of Fallout, I now forsee giving GOG.com plenty more of my coin in the future. In addition to Fallout and Fallout 2 (also for six bucks) the site's catalogue features Descent and its sequel, MDK, Earthworm Jim 3D, Unreal Gold, and many others. All of the games sold through GOG.com are free of digital rights management (for which a lot of people will be happy) and they are guaranteed to work on Windows XP and Vista (I've been playing Fallout on a Vista machine and trust me: it plays perfectly!). The site is still in beta, but if GOG.com is as consistent with its word as it has been so far, I will certainly recommend checking them out on a regular basis.

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