A while back I went to a fun overclocking event held by AMD, where there was a lot of vapor, some exploding burritos, and some overclocking that got tantalizingly close to 7GHz. It was just an arbitrary number, and they broke a bunch of other records, but they couldn’t quite hit that last target. But a few months and I can only guess how much liquid helium later, they nailed it.

These days, when people aren’t talking about the Apple Tablet, they’re talking about how Apple’s next target is the Big Three gaming companies. The iPhone will topple them! The iPhone is a revolutionary gaming device! Well, certainly a little optimism is warranted; the iPhone has inarguably changed the landscape of mobile phones, personal media players, and to a lesser extent personal computers. Why shouldn’t Apple extend its holy sovereignty to gaming?

It already has, in fact. But Apple has come kicking and screaming the whole way. The iPhone, you understand, was not meant to be a gaming device, and in Cupertino, Apple’s intentions are paramount. Apple could never accidentally create a platform for gaming; if it wasn’t meant for gaming (or enterprise, or medical use, or reading e-books, etc.) from the beginning, Apple doesn’t want it happening at all. Because if Apple didn’t intend it, it’s outside of the bounds they set into the platform (regardless of how well it works, much like tethering) — it breaks the mold and, ironically, that’s the last thing Apple wants. And there are plenty other reasons not to expect Apple to jump into the gaming arena any time soon.

Some leaked screenshots from Sony show a PS3 interface with what looks like a native Facebook client configurable. There’s also a new photo browser and the ability to change the color of your gamercard, but at those features I make a dismissive gesture. A Facebook app would be handy, though a constant stream of status updates from heavy players might be lead to mutings by less gaming-orientated friends. “Devin found a new item!”

Boy, I remember the days of play spy gear in the past. Crappy motion detectors, fingerprint kits that were nothing more than flour and tape, and mirrored sunglasses — never anything like this. And I remember thinking, too, when Ethan Hunt had those camera-glasses in the first “Mission: Impossible,” I scoffed, thinking yeah right, there’s no way. Now, a mere decade later (actually that’s quite a long time, but bear with me), you can get one for pocket change. And by pocket change I mean quite a bit of money. And by quite a bit of money I mean $150, which really isn’t that bad.

This could be awesome: Aspex, a company that makes scanning electron microscopes for those among us who need them, says you can send in stuff and they’ll put up pictures of it. Pictures they took through their scanning electron microscope. Ever wondered what coffee looks like up close? How about dustballs? Bananas?

Blockbuster, observing the popularity of services like RedBox (a DVD rental kiosk), has decided they’re going to skip a step and start offering movie rentals that come on an SD card. The new kiosks would load a DRMed movie onto your own SD card, and the content will expire after X viewings or days. They’re hoping that the better quality of the movies (vs. streaming ones or regular DVD) will bring users back. You might have picked a format that’s actually supported by media devices, guys.

Don’t get me wrong. I love Razer stuff. But this Abyssus mouse hearkens back to their earlier days when they were hocking two-button, ambidextrous ball mice for premium prices and only a few people took them really seriously. Now, obviously, for some, this super-basic mouse might be a good thing, but really, for $50 you can get a Death Adder (recently upgraded), G500, or any number of premium mice that are probably just as comfortable, and far more capable, than this one.

When I first saw Eyefinity demoed, I thought “that’s pretty awesome, but aren’t you going to have to pull some shenanigans to get that many monitors hooked up? I mean, daisy-chaining monitors isn’t science of the rockets or anything, but it does mean certain restrictions need to be observed, and certain accessories bought.

But what if your graphics card had as many outputs as you had monitors? Or, say, a lot more?

That’s what this particular ATI Radeon 5870 is doing. Can you say six DisplayPorts?

Generally speaking, I’m not a fan of virtual currencies. They certainly have their place, but usually they’re just an obstacle between you and the object you want. Why do I have to buy points if points are just your version of dollars?

There are exceptions: here in Seattle there are a couple alternate currencies being traded for goods and services which work on a different level from dollars — and GamersGate, the direct-download games site, appears to have something of a good deal in their blue coins.

This is an interesting little futurist tease of a movie that’s “a fast paced preview of a larger effort — I’m guessing where they fill in the gap at the end. The idea is that computing right now is at one of those thresholds where we can’t quite grasp the idea of the “next generation.”

Watch. It’s only three minutes long, and hey, you might learn something.

Yes. It is finished. We can shut down NASA, DARPA, all the arts and sciences, and stop trying now. The pinnacle of human achievement has been reached. Robot vacuums have been hacked to play the parts in a real-life game of Pac-Man.

Video inside.

When someone says “portable,” what do you think? I think “fits in a bag or pocket,” but some people would go the “portable” generator route and say “is not physically fixed in position.” That seems to be the “portable” that the creators of the SNEGENES had in mind when they said their device was so. Now, I don’t want to detract from the obvious glory of what has been created here: a (technically) handheld device that will play cartridges from NES, SNES, and Genesis — but really, that thing is about as portable as my bathtub.

Watching this video, it doesn’t seem very much more than a demo for a rather anonymous-looking little touchscreen device, a PMP prototype maybe. Then you find out that the whole thing is running an 8-bit processor with 4KB of RAM. Touchscreen tricks like scrolling momentum are implemented perfectly well, and there appears to be little or no lag. Pac-Man runs at 60fps, which is more than I can say for the version on my G1.

Sometimes, the medium is the message. In this case, the medium is Rubiks Cubes. The message is that there’s an Irish guy named John Quigley who has too much free time. I mean, I suppose you could say the same of many artists, but this is some seriously time-consuming stuff. And while it’s impressive, it seems rather… algorithmic, doesn’t it? I notice there are no original compositions.

It’s not that we want to rush Nintendo in the creation of their next opus, but it might have been nice to have it in 2010. Perhaps the biggest of the “big three” Nintendo franchise games in the works (along with Super Mario Galaxy 2 and Metroid: Other M) is “tracking” for 2010 but Nintendo isn’t committed to the year. I’m guessing they’re not going to push for a holiday 2010 release, but may have preorders available then so they can get in on the season.

I amaze myself sometimes. You see, I have so much power as a writer on this invincible and influential blog that sometimes I can change an entire industry with but a word.

Case in point: apparently my recent post on Eee’s decision to change the touchscreen to resistive on their Eee Keyboardwas so crushing that they’ve altered their entire business plan and delayed the device to accommodate it. O Mighty Blogger! Thou humblest the world!