Here's the promised follow-up on the Image of the Day from Wednesday. To recap, this was a screenshot on gXp showing a smiley face on a Unreal Tournament Flak Shell which a lot of folks suggested was faked because of it's inclusion of some Q3A-style textures, curved surfaces, and a jump pad. As it turns out, the map is indeed a real Unreal Tournament map, a user-made jobbie by Rich "Akuma(matrix)" Eastwood called DM-Brutality][ (said to be quite fun), with the jump-pads and such an homage to Q3A. Some correspondence with Alan Willard and GreenMarine at Epic Games confirms the existence of the smiley on the alt-fired flak shell, certainly an Easter egg that will almost invariably be the last thing you see should you be "lucky" enough to get a glimpse of it in a game.

Tonight, of course, is some holiday or another, exactly which one it is escapes me at the moment (I wish they'd publicize these things more). Remember, if you are partying, please don't drink and drive. On the Y2K front, we believe Blammo (our news database) is safe from potential date glitches through something like 2031, giving us a little time to come up with a workaround, so provided the missiles don't all fire at midnight (always good to end on a cheery note), we should be running fine tomorrow .

Link of the Day: The World Has Not Ended! A Y2K resource you can check first thing tomorrow. Thanks Mat Ward. "Will the World end? Has it ended already? This page has all the answers. It is hosted on a computer in Australia, which is many hours ahead of most of the rest of the world (and ALL of the important bits). So if the World ends, it will end here first!"
Bonus Link: QUAKE II ARENA. Who knew? Thanks Xoo.