The holidays loom large, and with them so does that most venerable of Nuketown traditions: the Geek Tree.

It's true. My Xbox 360 really does have its own blog, thanks to the magic of Xbox Live and my publically available stats there on. The 360 Voice throws some meat onto those statistical bones, providing an accounting of what I did the day before in narrative form. Thus, on the first day of my 360's blogging life, it wrote:

Like a king on his throne, NukeHavoc said 'awaken' and for him I did comply. 450 points represents the size of our growing kingdom. Ok, enough of this King Arthur stuff. That is a gain of 10 points over last time! He rallied Gears of War picking up 1 achievement, and after that powered me down without even saying good night. I mean what the heck?

Practical hydrogen powered vehicles are something that most geeks would love to see within our lifetimes ... and preferably much sooner. BMW's Hydrogen 7 series offers a glimpse of that future with a gas/hydrogen hybrid that puts a hydrogen fuel tank (actual liquid hydrogen, not fuel cells) and allows the drive to switch between gas and hydrogen at the bush of a button. Wired test drove one of the Hydrogen 7's in Germany and offers its insights into the prototype including the good (very low emissions that are mostly water vapor), the not-so-good (the eventual boiling off of the hydrogen over the course of 10-12 days) and the potentially nervewracking (refueling said hydrogen fuel tank).

Gaming blog Joystiq looks at the health and fitness mode of Wii. Like BrainAge for the Nintendo DS, the Wii's fitness mode runs you through a series of tests (in this case physical, using the Wii's motion sensitive baton-like controller), gauges the results and then awards you a "fitness age" based on your scores. Seems like a pretty cool use of the Wii platform, and all the more reason for me to get one come springtime.

Uncle Bear officially turned 10 years old last week. The venerable ursine is one of the few geek zines/blogs/sites/whatever-we're-calling-ourselves-now to have survived from the year of Nuketown's own genesis. Congratulations to Berin, and here's to another 10 years of geekdom and gaming goodness!

I spent the last week coughing and hacking (and taking care of equally sick kids) instead of going to the gym. The upside to all the phlegm though is that I didn't have much of an appetite, and as usually happens when I'm sick, I lost some weight. In fact, I'm now down to 208 lbs., which officially puts me at halfway to my goal of 190 lbs.

Usually I tend to regain the weight I lost while sick over the course of a week or two, as my body reaches equilibrium, but I'm hoping my return to the gym this week will allow me to keep some of the loss, and provide at least the slightest silver lining to the last week of hacking.

Reason recently redesigned their web site, making it smoother, easier on the eyes, and more modern looking. They've also added a new podcast category, and posted their first entry to it: "Scott McConnell and Daniel McCarthy: The American Conservative's editors on the big Democratic win".