Don't know where they got it, but PSP Hacker has the second Gamma Pack available for Wipeout. It's fucking brilliant - two new skins and two breathtaking tracks.

Q'Bicles is a puzzle game based on the odd rules and strange ratios of office politics. It was one of the games in the Slamdance independent games competition - check out this page of last year's winners to find some games you might not have heard of. I can guarantee that you'll see things you never expected.

The World of Warcraft website has a couple pretty interesting updates. The first is to their “under development” section. I am especially happy to see the new battlemasters that will allow you to enter Battlegrounds from major cities. I'm also happy to see the new improvements to the Honor System. The other interesting update was a forum post by Shane Dabiri. It mentions a few more ideas for future WOW content including assurance that an expansion is "in the works".

I have a bunch of stuff to announce, and more on Friday, but let's get to the matter at hand:

The votes are in.

The pilot I mentioned in Monday's post just let me know he grabbed a copy of BF2 at Freazy-E's for $37.99, which is a good deal less than I'll be getting it for at EB.

I'll try it out later today, but it's an exploit for your PSP that allows homebrewed apps (read "emulators and illegal ROMS") to operate on your PSP, without the memory stick swap that could potentially injure the stick or the device itself.

I'm fairly certain we've got all the bases covered in our most recent strip. The only thing we missed was Charles Schumer, but if he said something noteworthy I must have missed it. The game he's talking about - 25 To Life - also lets you play as cops, but it's hard to imagine the man truly perceiving the fact. When the scene plays out in my mind, the contradiction literally tears his brain apart.

Gabriel just made a post with a poll in it. This is what that poll is about.

I've made a kind of bargain that you were party to, unawares, but I think you'll agree that it was for the best.

If you live in the NYC I highly recommend you check out MC Frontalot’s show on June 23rd. The e-details of this i-event can be found on his own personal webtron site.

Two very good friends of mine happen to be teachers. When one of them told me that her kids don't get any art instruction I felt really bad for them. It's understandable, I mean she only gets so much time with these kids each day and she needs to teach them how to read and count. Teaching them how to draw silly pictures just isn't at the top of her list. Not to mention that in the words of her students "Mrs. Eriksen can't draw". So I told her that Tycho and I would love to come in one day and give the kids a lesson in cartooning. She liked the idea and on Monday that's exactly what we did.

I don't know how we were ever authorized to do it, but earlier this week we instructed the next generation in the construction of surprisingly inoffensive comic strips. Using Andrew Vestal's Penny Arcade Remix Project as a template, we wiped the text out of a few old strips and also made a blank set of frames to encourage their own trembling forays into the sometimes intimidating realm of raw potential.

I’ve mentioned before that PAX 05 will be crazy huge and it’s no lie. We need more volunteers this year to help us manage such an insane event. If you think you have what it takes I’d love for you to fire off an email to pax@penny-arcade.com.

So I’ve been back into WOW for a couple weeks now and I finally finished making my Stormshroud armor set. When I quit playing a few months ago I had just started it. Elemental leatherworking is a real bitch. The ingredients you need are either very rare or extremely expensive. I also needed help from high level alchemists to help me transmute materials. All in all it was quite an accomplishment to gather all the materials and patterns and get this armor made. The shitty thing is that when I left the game all those months ago the Stormshroud armor was one of the best sets a Rogue could get. Now that I’ve finally finished it I see all the high level rogues wearing the “invisible fucking murderer” armor set or whatever it is.

I do what I am told.