Tracking your Euro notes

Yesterday I got my 6th hit at Eurobilltracker. This is a website dedicated to tracking the paths Euro bills take around the world (derived from the US-counterpart Where is George?.) It works simply by entering the serial number of the note into the online database. Once somebody else receives your bill and enters it, you’ve …

Where “Gun Control” Means Using Both Hands

Two days ago, the United States Supreme Court toppled the gun ban in Washington DC. I am probably a bit naive, but I was shocked at how the mostly US-residents at a games forum I frequent reacted to this. They had pretty much nothing but applause for the result, even those who didn’t care much …

Postcards from Alien Worlds

I’m checking NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander website daily to get updates on the mission and new photos to look at. I find it really fascinating and quite a technological feat to shoot a complicated machine into space, have it travel millions of kilometers over periods of months or years and then land it on another …

Boom Blox, Omega Five and the Best 3D Shoot-em-ups

So I was able to play a couple of rounds of Boom Blox yesterday. First results: my arms hurt. Well, I guess I’m just not used to physical activity, the same thing happened to me the first days after playing Wii Sports back when I got the console. Boom Blox has several modes of play, …

Half-Life 2 Deathmatch Tutorial III: Triggerable Trapdoors

In this tutorial I will demonstrate how to create a deadly trapdoor triggered by throwing physics objects at a certain point. In our HL2DM mod Babel Babel, the teams playing against each other have the option of throwing boxes lying around the arena at targets on the other teams’ side of the level that trigger …