For the last week I’ve been browsing gloomily though the new edition of Gerald North’s “Observing the Moon: The Modern Astronomer’s Guide.”

Gloomily not because the book itself is depressing, but because I don’t have a telescope or camera that will let me take advantage of its instructions. Yet.

For anyone with an inclination towards amateur astronomy, and a few dollars to spend, this book reads like a geeks’ dream.

It’s not light, but it has detailed, clear instructions and explanations covering everything from digital camera’s CCD chips to finding and understanding specific moon formations. A user’s manual to the moon, if you like.

My favorite bit so far is a plug for using sub-$200 webcams to get extraordinary clear lunar images. From the book:

A webcam costing less than a couple of hundred dollars and a computer of post-1998 vintage, perhaps most conveniently a modern laptop, fitted with a USB port, will be enough for you to potentially get nearly diffraction-limited images from your telescope… Add a bit of final image processing and voila: a picture of a planet or small part of the moon that could have astounded even the best amateur or professional astronomers of not that many years ago.

The book is hardcover and pricey, but beautifully illustrated with professional and amateur lunar photos. If you’re a moon buff, and don’t mind the dense style, it’s worth picking up.

I actually knew this a few days ago, but Capcom has officially announced that Lost Planet, previously a Windows PC and Microsoft Xbox 360 exclusive, will be coming to the PlayStation 3 early next year.

The PS3 version benefits from the delay by including 16 different multiplayer maps and new playable characters that weren’t available in previous retail versions.

Overall I found Lost Planet to be so-so, but tooling around in those Vital Suits was a bundle of fun.

If you missed the Nintendo conference because you’re not a member of the media and don’t live in Japan, never fear.

The ever-thoughtful folks at Nintendo have translated the whole thing into English and posted streaming video on their web site.

Tune in to hear Iwata speak as if he is in a bad old dub of a Godzilla movie, and watch videos of the Wii Ware games, Mario Kart, Monster Hunter 3, and everything in between.

It clocks in at about 45 minutes. You can even click through the slideshow that Iwata had behind him.

Someone who goes by the nickname “blueblythe” on the Craftster Community website thought it would be a good idea to sew a complete Nintendo gaming system:

You can click the above picture to see more up close and personal pictures of this embroidered plush Nintendo system.

Apparently Blythe Church hand dyed the felt, hand sewed it and embroidered all the details. It took her 2 full weeks to create this geektastic masterpiece.

The felt Nintendo system has an opening cover so that games can be put in and removed and she even made felt Mario 3 and Duck Hunt games:

Who knew that crafting people came up with such cool geeky stuff? I’ve seen some cool things before but this Nintendo system takes the cake.

Hat tip to Blythe Church for making some cool stuff out of felt.

Since I’ve now got Nintendo on the brain, it’s time to dig my Nintendo (NES) system out of the garage so I can play some Mario 3 and Duck Hunt.

The largest Whole Foods Market in California opened literally just around the corner from Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino.

This is great news for CEO Steve Jobs, who is a famous health food nut of the pescetarian variety.

Here’s a little fun fact for my readers: Pescetarian is a vegetarian who will eat fish.

Source: San Jose Mercury News

Heads up arcade gamers, version 0.119 of MAME32 and the Windows command line version of MAME were both released today and are now available for download in my MAME section.

In the coming days MAME OS X (Mac), MacMAME (Macintosh) and XMAME (Unix) should be updated too. Enjoy!