WEINERS! Aug 5, 2010
Okay, here we go...

After careful deliberation and having allowed several days for cajoling and bribery, I've arbitrarily picked the winners' names out of a hat... winners will receive a splendid commemorative RetroChallenge T-shirt as pictured (though it won't look that good on you – trust me!) and an equally splendid RC mouse pad – though what any true retrocomputist would need a mousepad for, I have no idea.

Anyway, without further ado, the winners (in no particular order):

• BEST PROGRAMMING ENTRY
  Urbancamo's Lunar Lander.
• BEST HARDWARE HACK
  Brouhaha's Cosmac Elf FPGA Clone.
• BEST LITERARY EFFORT
  Conceited Jerk's blogtastic ramblings.
• GEEKIEST PROJECT
  Mmphosis's implementation of LISP in AppleSoft.
• ALL ROUND NICE GUY AWARD
  Togart, for actually doing something useful and helping his Mom.

Honourable Mentions:

• Printstar's Musical Calculator just plain rocks!
• Paleoferrosaurus whipped up an essay on magnetic tape memory for extra credits.
• Oliver basically just played games, but documented his time-wastage in a charming and entertaining manner.

Wall of Shame:

• As usual, the RC High Command Staff came up way short of expectations, but no one put in a more feeble effort than Gavo. Well done!

Congrats to all the other entrants, successful or not... we had the highest turn-out so far. Hope to see most of you back in January for the Winter Warm-up.

...AND THAT'S IT Aug 2, 2010
We've wrapped up with a real mixed bag of results... more than one competitor rallied in the last week, while several others fizzled out in a blaze of shame. I'll announce the winners later in the week. Stayed tuned...

75% DONE July 24, 2010
With a week to go RetroChallengers are both dropping like flies and hatching out like maggots... some are even pupating. Conceited Jerk helps out my insect analogy by turning into a freewheeling retro butterfly flitting about the parks of Winnipeg; Urbancamo hides under a fly sheet (he's camping – see what I did there?); Brouhaha scurries about like a nest of ants, trying to lift ten times his own body weight in the last week of the challenge; Wgoodf is hatching Nascom-1 bugs at an alarming rate; Paleoferrosaurus has gone all bookwormy on us and started an essay on magnetic tape; Mmphosis colourfully metamorphoses; Dustin Cook has been swatted by life and is currently little more than a dried up husk waiting to be dusted off the window sill... Printstar decorates his Tandy with stripes just like a wasp! Adrian of MacMedic finally hatches out and has been busy as a bee fixing up several Macintosh Portables; Togart, on the other hand, couldn't give a gnat's ass (ahem!) about Macs... even free ones! Pukka would have posted a acreenshot, but is suffereing from a file transfer bug; Nathan despairs of accomplishing anything with the Apple/Arduino project and instead hovers about BBSes... and that's it, I've run out of not-so-clever bug-themed commentary.

DAY 00010000 - a bit of an update July 16, 2010
It all seems to be going horribly wrong: Conceited Jerk borked his Amigas and has to live without electricty or bananas; Luddite faces flooding after some inconsequential successes; Brouhaha has been saddled with Jury duty these past few week, but seems to be back in the race; Wgoodf has wgoodfed his ZX81's keyboard; Paleoferrosaurus has ominously gone quiet after messing about with biotelemetry; Anonymous Freak has borked his one-and-only 5.25" disk drive; Dustin Cook has killed off his entire expedition, through poor planning; Printstar is dissatisfied with Saturn assembly; Tachyon suffers from crappy weather and a Newton accessory addiction; Adrian of MacMedic, StrictlySega, Gavo and Osgeld seems to have gotten lost somewhere – it concerns me that our entire antipodean contingent is missing; Togart has managed to get his wife addicted to playing games on the Apple II, so no more nookie... Oliver is busy playing games all by himself, so no nookie there either; Nathan isn't having much luck with his Arduino project; and, most distressing of all, Scott Baret is using innocent children as guinea pigs!!!

On the plus side: Urbancamo gets a SPARCbook, and makes Wgoodf jealous; Mmphosis has made progress, but I'll be damned if I have any idea what it all means...

DAY $08 ROUNDUP July 8, 2010
Some pretty good stuff going on out there... Conceited Jerk got lucky twice! Urbancamo and Paleoferrosaurus are in a willy-waving contest to see who's the biggest NASA geek (I'm siding with Urbancamo as he hasn't yet insulted QEII); Wgoodf has managed not to crash his ZX81; Mmphosis has ported Coloroid to the Apple II+, but doesn't feel like sharing his code... Dustin Cook takes the moral high-ground and gets permission before posting stuff. Printstar channels Kraftwerk with his musical calculator; Togart's Apple II file transfers are so slow that he's forced to drink beer; Arfink takes his Tandy 102 BBS test live; Pukka posts pseudo 'plane programming progess... Oliver is just playing about; Nathan is thwarted and flummoxed, but nonetheless verbose; Osgeld does random stuff...

Did I miss anyone? Probably, but I need to lay down now...