We posted an article one month ago that invited readers to do a little thought exercise. Here's what we said: "On the 5th of November we're going to post an article or two about video games, gadgets, technology, and general geekness ... the things about video gaming and technology that ought not be forgotten."

So here's our list of some video gaming and technology moments worth remembering. Hope this gets you thinking (and feeling nostalgic too!). And we look forward to your comments (and arguments). What do you remember and wish that the world will never forget?

Today is October 5. That means that November 5, Guy Fawkes Night, is one month away.

While we don't celebrate this day in the US (it's not even a public holiday in the United Kingdom - it's only a yearly celebration), many of us know of this day thanks to the DC Comics / Vertigo graphic novel (comic book) series V for Vendetta by Alan Moore and David Lloyd and its movie adaptation (with inimitable performances by Natalie Portman as Evey and Hugo Weaving as V).

Still, any "holiday" that gives people an excuse to light fireworks and go door-to-door begging for spare change sounds like something worth celebrating. So we at QJ.NET invite you to get into the spirit of things to remember, remember the 5th of November.

On the 5th of November we're going to post an article or two about video games, gadgets, technology, and general geekness - what moves us and affects us and touches us, and all the things about video gaming and technology that ought not be forgotten. Pretty much like the QuickJump QuickList articles in our Opinions & Analysis section at the front page and the other articles in the Opinions & Analysis sections of our many video game, science, and gadget blogs.

We invite you to plan ahead and consider what you want to remember on that day - because our articles obviously can't be the final word - that's what comments and the QJ.NET Forums are for. (Besides, now that we've turned off anonymous comments - and now that comments are smarter, funnier, and more meaningful - you have a good venue to share your reactions.)

We look forward to your thoughts. See you on the 5th of November.

Sony's PlayStation 3 is about 20 times more powerful at calculating the folding of human proteins than an average PC. That's what you'll hear if you watch the cool video about how the PS3 is contributing to Stanford University's Folding@Home project.

In other words, the PS3 (with its amazing processing power) is a powerful data-crunching tool for scientists looking to cure cancer and other diseases.

And you can watch and see for yourself how the PS3 is calculating and simulating the actions of reactions of the very molecules that give us life or cause our diseases! This screenshot, taken from the Folding@Home site launched by Sony Computer Entertainment Japan (SCEI), shows the PS3 studying a molecule:

 

SCEI's Folding@Home website has this to say:

The goal of this project is to research protein folding and misfolding to gain an understanding of how these are related to disease. Targeted diseases include (but are not limited to) Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and many forms of cancer.

Here's a quick overview of why the PS3 is a valuable addition to Folding@Home. A previous QJ.NET article has more interesting facts and screenshots of the Folding@Home process on the PS3.

• The PS3 system's Cell Broadband Engine (Cell/B.E.) processor will dramatically add to the computing performance of the Folding@home project.
• Folding@home for PS3 utilizes the RSX graphics processor to provide a real-time simulation of the folding behavior of proteins.
• The locations of PS3 systems that are running Folding@home are displayed on the world map that is visible in the background.

Folding@Home is an optional feature of an upcoming firmware update for the PS3 (Gamasutra reported that it's in FW 1.6).

If you want to help Folding@Home even more, you can also connect your PC to Folding@Home. A recent article about SETI@home had a shameless plug about "Team QJ.NET" (Jammie, modcase, etc.) and their Folding@Home effort.

This story from Newsvine has it all. A wife madly in love with her geek husband. A piece of clever detective work. And really horrid rap music.

The story starts with SETI, the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence. SETI is a group of projects all over the world that try to detect intelligent aliens. Data received by the huge radio telescope at Arecibo, Puerto Rico, is sent to institutes and universities to be processed by computers.

To help with the number-crunching, the University of California, Berkeley, created the SETI@home program. Volunteers from all over the world join SETI@home to donate computer time: when their computers are idle and enter screen saver mode, they start to process the Arecibo data from Berkeley.

Hey, if you're not using your computer, you might as well let it crunch numbers for science.

James Melin got his laptop stolen from his Minneapolis home on January 1. The laptop contained the drafts of his wife's novels and screenplays. Melin wanted the laptop back. He monitored the SETI@home database and waited. Sure enough, the laptop automatically checked in with SETI@home. When the laptop "talked" to the Berkeley server, the IP address of the laptop became plain for anybody to see. Melin sent the IP information to the Minneapolis Police Department. Melin got his laptop back.

"I always knew a geek would make a great husband," said Melin's wife. "He always backed up all my data, but this topped it all. It became like 'Mission: Impossible' for him, looking for hard evidence for the cops to use. ... He's a genius - my hero."

Maybe they're messages from aliens, but it's highly unlikely... It doesn't look like the thieves broke into the email or personal folders of Melin's wife, but they did leave behind something interesting. The laptop had "20 tracks of rap music with unintelligible lyrics."

"It's really, really horrid rap," Melin said. "It makes Ludacris look like Pavarotti."

---

Update (actually, it's a shameless plug): Try FOLDING@HOME. This Stanford University project looks at how protein molecules fold - and it's discovered lots of useful stuff in medicine and biology. Help out humanity; sign up now.

You can check out how Team QJ.NET is doing at the Folding@Home stats page. Team QJ.NET ranks 4198 out of 47630 - not bad at all!

And here's a shout out to the QJ.NET forum members behind this awesome volunteer effort, especially Jammie (who really should demand an award for this), modcase, Josey Wales, gracz54, marv101 (who studies folding proteins for fun), and cyanide. (Anybody we forgot?) And Mr_Stanley_Dudek of the ATi group; let us know how you're doing when you can.

A study conducted in Africa and published in the "New England Journal of Medicine" shows that women taking the medicine valacyclovir had less HIV in their blood. Valacyclovir is a drug used to treat herpes.

Many people with HIV (human immunodeficiency virus, the virus that causes AIDS) also have the herpes type 2 virus. Herpes sores on the genitalia will triple the chance of getting infected with HIV and of transmitting the virus to somebody else (we previously reported that circumcision lowers the risk of getting infected).

This is good news for doctors with poor patients. Many patients, especially those living in poor countries, can't afford AIDS medication. Also, the social shame associated with AIDS prevent people from buying AIDS medication.

This is also good news because a lower HIV count generally means a lower risk of infecting somebody else. In other words, valacyclovir may slow down the spread of AIDS. According to Excite News (where we found this news item), there are 40,000 new cases of HIV infection in the US each year. Worldwide, there are 4.3 million new cases.

However, it seems unlikely that valacyclovir will be used as "the first line of defense". There are better medicines available; but in poor countries, valacyclovir is something they could use.

The study was conducted by researchers from France, the United Kingdom, and Burkina Faso. It was funded by ANRS (Agence Nationale de Recherches sur le Sida), the French national AIDS research agency.

In other news, the b12 antibody may lead to an AIDS vaccine, and researchers continue to look for a genetic switch for HIV and herpes. Of course, all this work can only bear fruit if companies and foundations continue to donate funds (like the AIDS research and treatment foundation founded by Bill Gates).

Over at Astronomy Picture of the Day, they have the time-lapse movie below along with an explanation written by a professional astronomer (it's a bit technical, so we'll try to explain some things further). The movie shows stars in the central part of our galaxy. These stars have moved a lot in the past eight years. Stars don't usually move so fast, but these do.

If these stars are being moved and pulled that fast, then there must be something there that is massive (has a lot of gravity) but compact. This image shows only a small portion of the central part of our galaxy. In other words, there's something that's over one million times the mass of our Sun squished into a region less than one-fifth of a light year. That's really strong evidence for a black hole.

These stars are near a strange object that emits unique radiation. That object, called Sagittarius A* or Sgr A*, is marked with a yellow cross in the time-lapse movie below.

The radiation is consistent with theories about the energy that is released by matter when it falls at very fast speeds as it gets torn apart by a black hole. The subatomic particles get pulled at such high speeds - near the speed of light - that they scream out radio waves.

A rival theory is that there is no black hole. It could just be a very dense cluster of millions of stars. As we take better and better pictures of the center of our galaxy, it's up to professional astronomers to argue if there's still room in the picture for millions of stars.

Nerdcore hip hop and geeksta rap. Hip hop music about nerdy topics (like soon-to-go-to-space Stephen Hawking and relativity) and geeky topics (like Star Wars, computers, the Internet, and video games). While we enjoy the lyrics of MC Hawking (with songs like "The Big Bizang")...

I explode like a bomb. No one is spared. My power is mass times the speed of light squared. (from "E = MC Hawking")

You ever drop an egg and on the floor you see it break? You go and get a mop so you can clean up your mistake. But did you ever stop to ponder why we know it's true, if you drop a broken egg you will not get an egg that's new? (from "Entropy")

...the geeks of QJ have to bow before MC Frontalot who coined the word "nerdcore" and whose "Penny Arcade Theme" warms the heart:

nerd-ho! warm the mic up (yo) we 'bout to strike up
this band of nebbishes who cultivate nebulous fetishes
the FPS, RPG or MMPOG, any obsession to blather over by blog
or BBS. Step and possess, hone thy geekishness
your frame rate and frags to date both impress

Pure genius. "Nerdcore Rising: The Movie" is a documentary of nerdcore. It features MC Frontalot's first major US tour as well as interviews (including Weird Al Yankovic, who was instrumental in the creation of the nerdcore scene).

Finally, let's thank the geeks and nerds. We wouldn't have computers, consoles, and video games if it weren't for them.

Hemiplegia (or hemiphlegia) means one side of a patient's body is paralyzed or weaker than the other side. The trouble with trying to treat kids with hemiplegic palsy is they don't want to exercise their weaker limbs, and the result is that the weaker side becomes even more underdeveloped. In comes the solution: video games that force the patient to use both hands.

University of Toronto who made a video game therapy for kids with hemiplegia">William Li, a fourth-year engineering student at the University of Toronto, under the supervision of Professors Tom Chau and Darcy Fehlings, basically borrowed aspects of existing video games and created a set of fun, interactive challenges for children.

The kids have to activate the game by holding down a button using their "strong" limb while their "weak" limb interacts with a motion-sensing web camera to manipulate and solve challenges on the screen. (At least that's how the game was described; we have no idea what game William Li is playing in the picture we got from the University of Toronto site, although his professors certainly look like they like what they see.)

The kids don't know they're getting physical therapy. They just think they're playing a video game. An added bonus: this setup can easily be done at home, so kids can get their treatment in the comfort of their living rooms. How about a button-mashing fighting game on the Xbox 360 or PS3? Or a game that requires Nunchuck and Wii remote?

Patch Adams would be glad. In related news, what do you think about supporting Child's Play, the Seattle-based organization that gives games, books, and toys to sick kids?

By the way, the University of Toronto has six Nobel-Prize-winning graduates (more than any other Canadian University). And even though the U of T professors are only 7% of the population of professors in Canada, they get almost 25% of all Canadian national awards go to U of T professors. It's Canada's largest and most distinguished university.

Look up in the sky! And make a wish! Our beloved planet Earth is going through a region of debris in space. When all that junk hits our atmosphere, they burn up when they fall very fast against the hot friction of our atmosphere. That's when they become "falling stars" or "shooting stars" or meteors. Sometimes they hit the ground as a meteorite (like the meteorite that fell on a house in Freehold Township, New Jersey, on January 2).

We enter this patch of junk every January, so you might as well enjoy the show!

Please IGNORE anything the Fox 31 weatherman says. He was misinformed (maybe his source was faulty). The Fox weatherman in the video talks about an "extinct constellation". Constellations don't become "extinct". And since he didn't say what the Quadrantids are, we'll explain:

1. You know how railroad tracks look like they converge onto a single point on the horizon? Well meteors (if you watch all of them), look like they come from the same part of the sky. So, a meteor shower is named after the part of the sky they seem to come from. The Leonids in November look like they come from the constellation Leo (the Lion), and the Perseids look like they come from Perseus.
2. The January meteor shower we're having right now is called the Quadrantids. They're named after Quadrans Muralis, a constellation that no longer exists because it became grouped into the constellation Bootes.

For the record, NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command) reported that the lights over Denver wasn't a meteor shower after all. It was an old Russian rocket (an SL-4) that burned up when it fell back into our atmosphere.

Thanks to TheSpiritofTruth for uploading the video to YouTube. And if you want lots of laughs, check out the Digg comments.

"We don't know the meaning of life, but we're pretty sure that we were put here in this world to enjoy ourselves."

Are we right? So thank goodness for gaming, and have a great new year, everybody!

Thanks for spending 2006 with us. We wouldn't be here without you. We're thankful that you make us your "quick jump" into what's happening in the gaming world. In 2007, we'll do our best to be an even better one-stop-shop for your news needs.

That's our Number One New Year's Resolution.

Also remember that sometimes happiness is something you have to make yourself (that sounds biologically painful and improper, but it's true). So we're going to do our best to generate happiness for our readers this year. We've got some big plans for you, the QJ.NET community. For example, you know that you can now filter news on the "BoB" (the "Blog of Blogs" or QJ.NET main page) if you're a member, and becoming a member of the community is fast and easy. Some changes are taking place at the QJ.NET Forums. We'll continue introducing more improvements this year.

By the way, our other two New Year's Resolutions are easier to keep. We'll be more carefull with spelingg. We'll also edit out bad puns (that'll be tough because new year resolutions go in one year and out the other). Have a great 2007, dear readers!