Among my many other geeky duties, I help with system administration and system maintenance at the school where my wife works. Recently, their web server began to flake out — the system would reboot or hang for no obvious reason. It fell to me to investigate. I determined that the system motherboard was dying. The hardware was three to four years old, and the Linux distribution it ran at least a couple years older than that. It was definitely time for a new web server, top to bottom.

Students make ‘Donkey Kong’ window out of Post-It notes.

Students at the University of California Santa Cruz Baskin School of Engineering have constructed an image from the original Donkey Kong (Miyamoto, et al.) videogame on the windows of the Engineering 2 Building using Post-It notes to represent pixels. Ten people assembled the final image from over 6,000 Post-It notes in about five hours.

Students involved in the project are part of the UCSC Game Design Program, a four-year interdisciplinary degree program that provides a rigorous education in computer science, while introducing aspects of art, music, narrative, digital media, and computer engineering most relevant to game development.

For more information, see UCSC Engineering Building Attacked by Giant Gorilla.

8-core mac pros. 8-Core Mac Pros! 8-CORE MAC PROS!

In case you’re still confused Apple, Inc. has released an 8-Core model of its high-end Mac Pro computer workstation. The highest configuration of these monsters sport two 3.0GHz quad-core “Clovertown” processors, handle up to 3 terabytes of storage, and 16 gigabytes of 667MHz DDR2 memory. Yeah Baby!

I know what some of you are saying to yourself, They make computers? But aren’t they the iPod people? While it’s true that Apple recently rebranded their company from Apple Computers, Inc. to the more versatile Apple, Inc., those of us born before MySpace can recall a time when the words Apple and Computer uttered in the same sentence sparked nothing short of a Mac/PC war.

Yeah, so… Holy Crap!! I’ve been waiting for Apple to update their pro line for what feels like an eternity. And seriously, the way Steve Jobs skirted over Apple’s entire computer line during his lovemaking session to the forthcoming iPhone — um, I mean, Keynote speech at Macworld SF ’07 left my mouth agape, pants around the ankles, unsatisfied. Sure, there was that misfire a few weeks ago on the apple.co.uk/store that teased us, but that quickly sank to the bottom of the fish tank and was ignored by your algae eater.

And another Holy Crap!!! for a product launch on Wednesday. I can’t remember the last time Apple announced a product on a Wednesday. Seems like if it wasn’t a Tuesday, or some tech conference with a three-letter acronym, there was no new product.

Anyhoo, whether the news of these 8-core Macs inspire elation or revulsion in you, there’s no doubt that it’s gonna be the fastest retail-issue personal computer on the block for the next few go ’rounds — and I WANT ONE!!

Also, what may have gone otherwise unnoticed in the shadow of the 8-core announcement is a significant price drop in their Cinema Display line, which have been marked down to $1,799, $899, and $599 for the 30″, 23″, and 17″, respectively.

I think it’s time to reanalyze the G.o.D. budget.

Great Pyramid Inverted
French architect Jean-Pierre Houdin believes he has solved the mystery behind the construction of the Great Pyramid of Giza. Houdin (hmm, Houdin…Houdini…) will explain his theory of how Khufu’s Pyramid was built from the inside out in a spiraling tunnel.

Student persecuted for ‘religious’ beliefs
A teenage Pastafarian was suspended from school for attempting to attend while dressed in the formal religious garb of his ‘faith’– a pirate costume! Thanks to WWdN for bringing this one to the top of my soup!

Einstein Biopic Heading to the Small Screen
HBO Films and the BBC have teamed up to make Einstein and Eddington, a film starring Andy Serkis (Motion-Capture extrordinaire) and David Tennant (Doctor Who Mark 10) that takes a closer look at the creation of Albert Einstein‘s Theory of Relativity.

R u rdy 4 wrlds fastest txt msg?
Los Angeles will be home to the world’s first text messaging competition, with the winner scoring $10,000. The rub — no txt msg shrthnd. Contestants will be tasked to text sets of complete phrases. Gd LuK!

Apple iTunes offers ‘Complete My Album’
Great news for all of you piecemeal purchasing people! Apple has made it possible to buy the rest of an album from which you’ve already purchased a track or two on Apple’s iTunes Store, without having to pay for what you already own twice. Woo hoo! Time to complete that Amy Winehouse joint!

Astronaut Will Run Marathon – in Space
NASA astronaut Suni Williams will be running the Boston Marathon –from 210 miles in orbit — thus making her run the first satellite race of the Boston Marathon that they’ve ever had on an actual satellite orbiting the Earth. Fellow astronaut Karen Nyberg will be running the marathon traditionally, alongside Suni’s sister, Dina.

Game Faces
Yes, this is what you look like when you’re fragging and teabagging your best mate into the next millennium. Pwnd!!11one!1!

March 30, 1842: Ether Knocks Humanity Out!
One hundred sixty five years ago today, Dr. Crawford Long removed a tumor from one mister James Venable’s neck — marking the first time Ether, long known for its intoxicating effects, was used as an anesthetic. Too bad Doc Crawford was too busy indulging in ‘Ether Frolics’ to document it for another six years, nearly losing him the credit for the medical milestone.

Speaking of March 30 …
Born in 1853, today marks the birthday of famous Dutch post-impressionist painter Vincent van Gogh, best known for his Starry Night painting. Happy 154th, Vinnie!

• Profiles in History will be auctioning off on April 5 several famous costumes, including Christopher Reeve‘s from the first Superman, a Batsuit Val Kilmer‘s wore in Batman Forever, and Leonard Nimoy‘s Spock tunic from the first season of Star Trek. [Link]
• Columbia Pictures has optioned rights to The Green Hornet in hopes of making a big-screen adaptation of the classic masked crime-fighting hero and his martial artist sidekick Kato, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The Green Hornet adventures began on the radio in 1936 and went on to comic books and television, most notably the short-lived 1966 ABC series that introduced American audiences to Bruce Lee, who played Kato.
• Angelina Jolie has joined the cast of Wanted, the Timur Bekmambetov-directed action film based on the graphic novel, according to Variety. The film, which also stars James McAvoy and Morgan Freeman, starts shooting in Eastern Europe in May.
• Battlestar Galactica‘s Katee Sackhoff will guest star in The Bionic Woman, the NBC pilot from BSG executive producer David Eick. [Link]
• Empire reported that the fourth Indiana Jones movie might be called Indiana Jones And The City Of Gods, but there’s no official confirmation yet. [Link]
• Series creators Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant have decided not to make a third season of their BBC/HBO comedy Extras. [Link]
• Wilkes University in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, is making the switch. They’ve began swapping out all 1,700 of the University’s PCs for 1,450 Macs. [Link]
• Check out Rob Zombie‘s guide to the upcoming Tarantino/Rodriguez horror double-feature, Grindhouse. [Link]
• New Line has acquired the rights to Microsoft’s popular video game Gears of War and has screenwriter Stuart Beattie working on the script. [Link]
• Comingsoon.net has posted the official synopsis for Universal Pictures’ Hellboy 2: The Golden Army. [Link]
• Check out the United States Postal Service Web site, which has been updated with some Star Wars goodness [via Club Jade]. As previously reported, the USPS is participating in the Star Wars 30th Anniversary Celebration with R2-D2 mailboxes and other promotions to be announced at www.uspsjedimaster.com on March 28.