Most of us here at TTB are at the 24 Hours Of LeMans race this week, but don’t abandon us just yet, as we’ve got loads of exciting (but not so current) posts queued up for the enjoyment of all 3 of our regular readers. Most of the posts have a motor racing theme, too, because we’re like really clever and stuff.

First up, we have the 24 Hours Of LeMons, a 24 hour endurance race for cars that cost under $500. That means the cars have to be bought and race prepped for under £250(ish), but thankfully they don’t have to be road legal. There are 6 events this year, starting with LeMons SF on May 10-11 in, er, San Francisco, and ending with the awesomely-named Arse-Freeze-Apalooza on December 27-28.

In a particularly interesting twist, the race features “The People’s Curse Award”, where a car is chosen to be crushed during the race due to cheating or other douchebaggery. Also to prevent cheating, the organisers reserve the right to buy any car deemed to be worth over $500 from the participiants involved, for, of course, $500.

There are loads of pictures of past participants on the official page here, and some great pictures of a 2007 event in DiLow333′s Flickr set, where I got the above image from. More info is available on the 24 Hours Of LeMons site here.

Someone should bring this to Europe – sooner rather than later!

No, I’m not talking about ‘dress up’ in a kinky sort of way. Just because our Lords and Masters have upped and left for foreign climes doesn’t mean that we can all be silly. Calm yourselves down!

I am of course referring to the recent (well, March, it’s fairly recent right?) World Record set by 80 crazy folk in London. The Book of Guinness World Records contains many crazy feats of brilliance, but us ordinary folk are often left out. I can’t lift boulders or run a mile in a minute or whatever, I need something relevant. Lo and behold, the Guiness World Records Gamer’s Edition book, which contains more gaming-centric records and achievements, was born.

So what did these 80 people do? They dressed up as 80 games characters and stood on the Millennium Bridge, looking foolish. Looking foolish wasn’t part of the world record attempt, more an unfortunate consequence. The record was used to promote the Gamer’s edition book.

The image above is a mere snapshot of the greater picture. Here they are, all 80 of them, in their world record breaking glory. I’ll be honest, the majority of them look bobbins. Naff. Crap. I don’t recognise some of them, so I could be doing them a great disservice; let me know if I’ve belittled someones amazing outfit.

Special credit has to go to the chap on the left hand side of the picture, three people above Spyro the Dragon, who’s come dressed as Mario. Except he’s in pink, so either he’s Super Camp Mario or he’s Super Put The Washing Machine on the Wrong Setting Mario, I’m not sure which.

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It’s a little-known fact that us here at TTB are big motor racing fans – well, not that big, but we do enjoy a good excuse for a piss-up and a spot o’ camping, so most of us are off to the Le Mans 24 Hour Race this year. That means that it’ll be a bit quiet round these parts, although we do have some stuff queued up (a lot of it motorsport-and-gaming themed, you’ll see), and we do have Evoroth and Penge holding the fort for us.

Plus, we’re planning on having some internet access going on while we’re there… Does that really surprise anyone?

We’re taking a particularly big crew this year, with 15 of us in total, so I’m sure we’ll all be having lots of fun with cars, beers, and fireworks, while you’re all sitting at work. We’ll be thinking of you. Really.

So bon soir, mes chers lecteurs, and au revoir until a week tomorrow!

Stargate SG-1 fans, join me as I tremble in fear and ponder what this video truly means to the future of the human race – the replicators are here, and we created them.

These tiny robots were created by UK and European scientists and can join together to perform tasks such as searching collapsed buildings for survivors. Well, they don’t quite do that yet, but that’s the eventual plan. I suppose we can always rely on the fact that, as a British invention, these probably won’t actually work anyway.

CrunchGear, who are usually pretty reputable and reliable, have a story up with some supposed leaked info from a “friend at Microsoft” regarding an Xbox 360 with built-in Blu-Ray. Supposedly, they will try to upstage Apple by announcing it an hour before WWDC starts, at 9am PDT today. It’s also rumoured to be cheaper than the current Xbox 360 Elite.

Interesting stuff, and we only have a few hours to find out whether or not this is true. I’m erring on the side of caution, personally – especially as Robbie Bach, President of Entertainent & Devices at Microsoft, categorically denied it in a recent interview.

Way back in 1994 EA dropped Skitchin’ on an unsuspecting Megadrive market. For those that don’t know, skitching is the art of being pulled along by a car when wearing rollerblades or on a skateboard. The game was very much like the Road Rash games in both looks and gameplay, the difference being your on rollerblades and not a motorbike. The game largely slipped under the radar of most gamers at the time, as the concept was not the greatest, but the gameplay was as good as anything Road Rash had to offer.

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Well it’s been relatively quiet here at the ‘bag lately, partly due to Rock Band, partly due to us planning for holiday next week. But that has not stopped me gaming, so here’s a breakdown of whats kept me (in)sane for the last few weeks.

Ninja Gaiden 2 (Xbox 360)

I never played Ninja Gaiden Black on the original Xbox, it just didn’t seem like the kind of game I would enjoy, and I originally felt much the same about Ninja Gaiden 2. Yeah it looked slick with all the limb chopping and decapitation, but as my father always says ‘you can’t polish a turd’. But then I played Ninja Gaiden: Dragons Sword for the DS, and loved it, so when the demo for NG2 was released earlier this week I downloaded it just to see what the fuss was about, and I was astonished. Apart from the stunning graphics and gratuitous amount of blood, the gameplay is smooth and the control system beautifully simple. The sticking point for most will be the difficulty. It is brutally tough, even on the easiest difficulty setting (of four!) I am having my ass handed to me regularly, and some of the later bosses are just ridiculous! But that doesn’t bother me, in fact I’m relishing the challenge compared to a lot of newer games that seem far too easy… I would seriously recommend everybody download the demo and check this game out for themselves! Truly Epic!

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Yep, it seems that The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air is the new Rick Astley.

Is it video week here or something?

Here’s a short film produced by the Blender foundation, to show off the capabilities of the open source 3D animation package of the same name. Yes, this was entirely produced on free software – not only is the source code available so animators can tweak and change and add any features they like, but Blender costs absolutely nothing.

I bet the big-time commerical 3D animation peeps like the makers of Maya, After Effects, and 3D Studio Max are feeling a little nervous after seeing what this software is capable of.

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Omigod omigod omigod! DNF is indeed real, or so it seems, as some guy called Jake Hall shows us in this video. Yes, he’s a douchebag, and yes, you’ll have to skip the first 4 minutes to see those 20 seconds of gaming gold, but it’s real, it’s looking really nice, and it’s in this very video right here.

Shake it baby!