The annual NetHack Tournament is among us. Unfortunately I’m nowhere good enough to compete. I’m kind of sad that I am yet to find anyone else who plays (I need to make some new friends with people that do). Seeing as how I don’t know anyone interested in it, there wont be any use in me ranting about it, but I’m going to do it anyways: Here’s an awesome public NetHack server, nethack.alt.org. What’s awesome about it is that you can telnet to it and see other people play live. Though I very much would prefer a tiled version, like I play on my PPC.

I have no more assignments or tests for a week and 4 days. Isn’t that fantastic? It is fantastic! Maybe I’ll do something productive, or maybe I’ll go play some NetHack.

My accomplishment for October: I watched all episodes of House, M.D.. Very good show, though I don’t know who I’d recommend it to, it’s very heavy.

By the way, the pricing scheme for PS3 is out. This is to settle an old bet with ol’ Mark:

- PlayStation 3 will start at under 40,000 Yen (or under $346 USD) (Source who can’t do currency conversion).
- XBox 360 will start at at least $299 (Source). Many sources speculate that it’ll rise beyond $350 by the time it actually launches.

Anyways, the point is, by the time they come to release, they’ll most likely end up being the exact same price, which is what I said to begin with. Only difference is that the PS3 is scheduled to come much later than the XBox 360. Oh well, gives more time for the XBox 360 to fail miserably and for ex-fans to seek refuge in their new saviour. (I’m somewhat biased towards the Microsoft-less alternative.)

I also noticed that I’ve been growing more Microsoft-hating lately, like a good little Linux fanboy ought to be. Why? I am dunno.

Quick analysis of Doom:
Budget: $70 million (+ $8 for the motion blur)
Opening weekend: $15.5 million (worldwide)
Second week in: $22 million
Rating on IMBD: 5.5/10 (preliminary, likely to shrink)

Quick analysis of Serenity:
Budget: $40 million (No motion blurs were harmed in the making of this film)
Opening weekend: $13.8 million (worldwide)
Second week in: $22 million
Rating on IMDB: 8.3/10 (21k votes, not likely to budge)

Serenity wins. Humanity escapes eternal damnation by small margin. (It’s still very depressing that it only won by so little, but better than nothing.)