FPS family tree (click to enlarge):

Some more reading on some of the first FPS engines:

Doom Engine

Quake Engine

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…we now have the technology.

From “Concert Pianist Gets World’s First Bionic Fingers“:

Maria Antonia Iglesias, from Catalonia, Spain, said the motor-powered devices allow her to pick up a glass, hold cutlery and write for the first time since she lost her digits after an illness. The fingers were made by the inventors of the bionic i-Limb hand when they realized more could be done for the 1.2 million people worldwide who have missing digits.

The loss of two fingers can reduce hand function by up to 40%.

Ms. Iglesias, 42, lost hers after developing pneumococcal septic shock in 2003. She is among the first to get Touch Bionics’ custom-made devices, called ProDigits, which cost between $57,000 and $73,000.

“I am very pleased to be part of this project, and the benefits my new hand is giving me are like a dream,” she said. “Even a simple thing like holding and lifting a glass of water to drink from was impossible before, but with ProDigits I can do it easily.”

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From “Hands Off with Google Goggles“:

Basically, think of Goggles as object recognition, but with your phone’s camera serving as your eye. How might you identify an unfamiliar object? Perhaps by shape or by context. Does it have text printed on it? That’s also helpful. And it might also help if you had millions of photographs in your memory to compare objects to, as Goggles does.

How is this useful? Well, for shopping, perhaps. Identifying an object that isn’t properly labeled is certainly useful, especially if you’re overseas. There’s tourism, too: Goggles was smart enough to identify a painting in a demonstration, which linked, of course, to a variety of supplemental information. And some noteworthy objects can be found outside of a museum: the Transamerica Pyramid, for example, or the Golden Gate Bridge. Even home repair might be assisted by a computer-generated search for an otherwise unidentifiable widget.

Goggles can perform facial recognition, but it hasn’t yet found a business case that would justify it, according to a product demonstrator who didn’t identify himself. Although an obvious solution would be tagging, Google is still wrestling with how permissions would work and who would be allowed to tag photos, he said.

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There’s a story hitting the news about a nightclub fire in Russia.

Here’s a link to an article and video.

More links:
Perm nightclub fire witness ’shocked but not surprised’
Tragic fire in Russian nightclub leaves 112 dead
Russia: A Blogger’s Account of the Rescue Effort in Perm

Just as an extra thing:
Some of you might remember the nightclub fire which happened in Rhode Island a couple years ago. Read more about that one here.

Moderately disturbing video:

I’m sorry.

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