Hi! Missed us? Suuurreeee you did. Right? We’ve had a busy past few week with birthdays, redesigns, sicknesses and work on some new projects we’ll be announcing through here over the coming weeks! Sound cryptic enough? That’s what I was going for.

For now, feel free to catch up on what happened in the world of the nerds in 2006 or get on our newsfeed bus and be updated via your reader whenever a new post goes up.

Sorry everyone for the ups and downs we’ve been having the past few days. Seems our nearly 3 year old dedicated server is finally showing signs of weakness. Over the coming week we’ll be upgrading to a new more powerful machine for your nerding out pleasure so for now, please bear with us and thanks for your patience.

Hoax from the land down under? You decide. Australia’s Courier Mail are reporting that the U.S. has recently begun enforcing a ban on the import of Vegemite, the salty food paste made from yeast extract that Australians seem to love spread on their breakfast toast. With reports of Vegemite checks at border crossings, import shops and airports, Australians reportedly are beginning to feel the crunch. Vegemite, a brand now owned by food conglomerate Kraft Foods, is said to contain Folate, an ingredient which is only allowed in U.S. breads and cereals.

Read more: Vegemite banned in the U.S. | Vegemite @ Wikipedia

Hi all. I wanted to write a quick apology for being so absent lately with Bunch of Nerds and Playthrough. Things are a bit chaotic to say the least as a few new projects related to us are in development. More news will follow on those. In the meantime, thank you for your interest and to all of you who care enough subscribe to our newsfeed. Things will return to normal soon, promise.

A group under the name of the New7Wonders Foundation have started a campaign to have the next 7 wonders of the world named, with results being determined via online and telephone voting. Nominations include the Eiffel Tower, The Acropolis, The Taj Mahal and the Statue of Liberty among many other of the world’s famous landmarks. The goal behind the foundation is to document, maintain, restore and reconstruct world heritage, alerting the citizens of the world to the destruction of nature and the decay of it’s man-made heritage. Winners will be announced July 7th, 2007 through worldwide television, internet and print agreements.

Read more: New7Wonders

Hola! For those who missed our previous announcement, we’re currently sitting in the back row of Blogtalk Reloaded listening to talks (some interesting, some not) on social networking, web 2.0, blogging and software development. I know, I know, we are a Bunch of Nerds after all. Anyone interested can visit the Blogtalk website and have access to much more information or you can visit Google Video and watch recorded versions of the presentations we’ve been sitting through.

Please excuse the light postings that we’re giving you this weekend (and early next). We’re currently at several meetings in Vienna, Austria, discussing blogging, social networking and exchanging ideas and information with a room full of nerds. Always a fun experience.

For anyone interested, we are at Barcamp Vienna (currently blogging LIVE!!!) and for the next few days, will be attending Blogtalk Reloaded, two very interesting meetings happening in Vienna this weekend, which we couldn’t resist bringing our special brand of nerdiness to. If anyone happens (by some small chance) to also be in town and attending, feel free to leave look us up, we have beards.

At first the inner environmentalist inside of me was screaming out, but then I read how the sticks for these cute little USB memory “sticks” were picked up from the forest floor, not taken from the actual trees and my inner nerd took over. The sticks come packed in a nice little white gift box and are available in 256 MB, 512 MB and 1 GB variations. Perfect for the architect who wants to have a little contrasting imagery in their clean, hip office.

Read more: Wooden USB “sticks”

Bunch of Nerds now has a family! Well, we always have had family, but, now our blog officially does. Playthrough.net used to be one of the crucial community sites for those involved in the games industry quality assurance field before a tragic, tragic database crash mid-Summer 2006. Shortly after Bunch of Nerds’ quite successful launch (less than 3 months ago WOO!), the decision was made to break off our nerdy posting about the games industry gossip that rolled across our tables daily and turn Playthrough into our outlet for all things gamey. So it’s here, kind of. We are still cleaning up some small bugs here and there, but, you get the gist. So all those interested in lots of gamer-centric jibba jabba from a couple of nerds, feel free to give a visit to Playthrough and give them a virtual wedgie for us.

Read more: Playthrough - Games industry gossip, news, yada yada and more

Missed something this week on Bunch of Nerds? Subscribe to our newsfeed to keep up-to-date on all of the goings around in the land of the Nerds.

Bunch of Nerds under construction
It’s been a slow week, mainly because we got the sick idea in our head to attempt not only updating all of our Wordpress plugins, but also update to the latest WP version AND clean up the layout of BoN. Naturally things went wrong and hey, here we are, 95% into changing the layout of this here monster.

High-speed photos of small items being destroyed
Porn for photo nerds, we found a nifty little gallery of ordinary items, like eggs and cigarettes being destroyed by golf clubs while being photographed using high-resolution, high-speed gear.

American McGee says Wii is the only truly next-gen console
American keeps reminding us that he’s a punk in the gaming industries circle-pit of life and damn if we don’t agree.

Giant archive of television theme songs and ringtones
We’re a sucker for classy ringtones and what’s more classier than classic television theme songs? Nothing, that’s what. We’re still looking for that Arrested Development ringtone, which I still haven’t gotten my hands on yet!

Grid Wars creator asked nicely to cease and desist
Sure it was a fine piece of homebrew gaming goodness and we love Geometry Wars over here, but, alas, it began hitting a little to close to home according to Bizarre Creations, the owners of the Geometry Wars IP. No legal blows were throw and relations remain good on both sides. Maybe we’ll see Geometry Wars on Windows Vista?? Hmmm hmmmm???