I've had a pet project I've been working on for years, three of them if my memory is right. It started as a simple idea: You can judge a lot from a person's desk. I bet you could judge just as much from their home entertainment system. So I decided it would be fun to try and track down some pictures from the work desks and home gaming set-ups of the people who work in and cover the video game industry. Simple right? Not so much.

Turns out that many of the people are either too busy or too private to want to participate in such a project. To make matters worse, there's always fear that something sitting on someone's desk, that ends up in a photo, could actually be news worthy. Like a secret project or the next big thing. But I didn't give up and about once a year I'd harass a bunch of game developers for photos. Finally, this year, the harassment paid off.

What started as a trickle of photos turned quickly into the collection of galleries you'll find on the jump: More than 40 different photo galleries from 17 studios, seven publications, two industry movers and shakers and a couple of fun surprises.

You'll get to see the desk of such greats as Sid Meier, Peter Molyneux and Tetsuya Mizuguchi along with plenty of others. Remember you can comment both on the next page and on each individual photo if you click on them.

If I find there is interest, I will try to periodically update this gallery of galleries with more developers, journalists and industry movers and shakers. Have fun.

DEVELOPERS
2K Games

ASTRO Gaming

Buzz Monkey Software

Capcom

Eat, Sleep, Play

Electronic Arts

Firaxis Games

Flying Lab Software

Gearbox Software

Harmonix Music

Incognito Entertainment

Insomniac Games

Kojima Productions

Lionhead Studios

NanaOn-Sha

Naughty Dog

NCSoft

NetDevil

Neversoft Entertainment

Ninja Theory

Pandemic Studios

Petroglyph Games

THQ

Q Entertainment

JOURNALISTS

Blue's News

BoingBoing

EGM

The Escapist

GameLife

Joystiq

Kotaku

MTV

Slashdot Games

VE3D

VH1

INDUSTRY FOLK

MISCELLANIES
I AM 8-BIT

Penny Arcade

Whorecraft

Video Games Live

Nerdy, but still scrumptious sister site points to the Xbmc Fox Firefox extension that adds an entry on the right-click menu that lets folks send internet video to the Xbox Media Center. It keeps media playing on your TV, rather than having to switch the over to the computer screen every time you wanna watch an internet vid. Hot.

More Here [Lifehacker]

On March 28th, 2006, a strange Venusian satellite streaked an eerie fluorescent parabola across the sky, irradiating the world's cemetaries, funeral parlors and abattoirs with an extraterrestrial radiation. Four days later, the dead walked, slavering for human flesh and tasty brains. And we were here covering it.

Just in case you missed Saturday's day-long coverage of the zombie apocalypse on the Glocker sites (the agglomeration of vaguely tech-oriented sites on the Gawker network, containing Gizmodo, Lifehacker, Consumerist and Kotaku), here's a round-up of all the posts made on April 1st. Gizmodo became Gizombo. Lifehacker became Deathhacker. The Consumerist became The Flesh Consumerist. And Kotaku got a zombified subtitle.

The full list of Z-Day posts across all sites is after the jump:

• Kotaku: Making Your Last Life Count [Kotaku]
• Gizombo: Keeping Readers Living [Gizmodo]
• Deathhacker: End of the world? Yeah, Right [Lifehacker]
• Announcement: The Flesh Consumerist [Consumerist]
• Miyamoto Announces Nintendo DSkin [Kotaku]
• American McGree Announced American McGee's Hansel and Gretel [Kotaku]
• WoW Alliance Dwindles As Players Transition To Undead [Kotaku]
• After Z-Day, Sony Confident There Will Be No PS3 Shortages [Kotaku]
• Will Wright's Spoor [Kotaku]
• Morning Deals Round-Up [Consumerist]
• Wal-Mart Big Boxes Serve As Zombie-Invulnerable Forts [Consumerist]
• McDonald's Can't Keep Up With Undead Demand [Consumerist]
• Companies Replace Indians With Zombie CSRs [Consumerist]
• Use Google Maps To Track Zombies In Your Area [Lifehacker]
• Ask MetaFilter Roundup [Lifehacker]
• Picking the right tool for the job [Lifehacker]
• Zombism obviating social networking services [Lifehacker]
• Geek to Die: How-To Date The Dead [Lifehacker]
• Zombie Survival Guide [Gizmodo]
• Winchester XXX-Magnum Zombie-Killing Shotgun Shells Flying Off Shelves [Gizmodo]
• Hemopurifier: Human-Powered Blood Filter [Gizmodo]
• Crowd Control: Toro Lawn Boy 10367 [Gizmodo]
• Jetlagged? Turn into a zombie [Gizmodo]
• Zombie Hand Holds Leash, Flips Bird for You [Gizmodo]
• Chomp! MDS Silver Bullet Rock Bucket [Gizmodo]
• Essentials: Snowpeak Titanium Spork [Gizmodo]
• Neptunic Bite-Proof Sharksuits [Gizmodo]
• Crowd Control: Stihl HT 100 Pole Pruner [Gizmodo]

We hope all you guys dug it!

Depressingly, Gina's feature does not recommend donning a bright red hat with your first initial stitched across the front, ingesting a plateful of hallucinogenic mushrooms and then flushing yourself down the toilet straight to the magical world of the Mushroom Kingdom. But it's still filled with her usual brand of great, practical advice.

Make it to the next level

Break your task down into chunks and track your progress to completion with a level-o-meter. Similar to a fundraiser thermometer that rises with red marker the more money raised, draw yourself a personal progress bar to track your own progress.

Say you ve got a 10 page paper due for class. Before you start writing, on a nearby whiteboard or poster board, draw out a progress bar split into 10 sections. Each time you write one page, color in one section of the bar. It s completely mental, but getting to the next level can be a huge motivator.

Gina's so cool. We love her from afar.

Geek To Life: Turn To-Dos Into Game Play [Lifehacker]

Nerd-chic sister site Lifehacker brings word of a Windows-only Freeware program that lets you cheat. Called "Poke," the freeware doesn't let gamers fudge at multiplayer titles, but is perfect for single-player titles like The Sims. How does it work?

If you are an avid gameplayer, you probably have a basic understanding on how computers and computer games work.

In a computer game, all numerical values are stored 'as is' in memory. We'll use a great game, The Sims, to show you how easy it is to take advantage of this fact using Poke.

Lifehacker explains that the program lets users go in and change all those numerical values to whatever you want. Rad.

Download of the Day [Lifehacker]

Smarter, nerdier, but still hot old sister-site Lifehacker has the lowdown on hacking your original Xbox to run the free open-source Xbox Media Center, which streams TV shows, movies, mp3s and pictures. Product Wiki (God Bless 'em!) has a quick thirty minute guide up that "is written to help you get from a standard Microsoft Xbox to a Xbox Media Center in a relatively short time with the least amount of headaches."

Full Story Here [Lifehacker]