Down two ill-stricken nerds just before Challenge weekend, A+ Team captain Chris Wilkinson pinged The Nerdery to assist in finding qualified replacements. Jason Crocker, who’d asked to fly stand-by should such an opportunity knock, promptly drove in from Cleveland to contribute to the winning effort.

Rounding out the Final Four of development teams and their respective nonprofits:

• Cloudbot (and Friends), serving Midwest Young Artists
• Drop Shadows Not Bombs, serving Crossroads Adoption Services
• Drupal Rocks, serving A Safe Haven Foundation

Honorably mentioned runners-up/co-winners:

• Awesome Dolphins and Friends, serving Near Northwest Arts Council
• Chamois Butter for Lunch, serving Peace Care
• Chicago on Rails, serving Kids Have Hope
• Greater Pixel Consortium, serving Institutio Del Progresso Latino
• Nerdery Bigfoot Research Consortium, serving Hemophilia Foundation of Illinois
• Team 13, serving Northwestern Settlement

Comprised of leaders from Chicago’s nonprofit and interactive communities, this independent panel of judges performed the double-duty of assessing applications of eligible nonprofits and judging the work of development teams during the last few hours of the 24-hour all-nighter:

• Melanie Adcock, tech blogger
• Joshua Brown, program manager, Taproot Foundation
• Randy Dill, founder and CEO, Chicago Non-Profit
• Cynthia Putnam, professor, College of Computing & Digital Media at DePaul University

Huge thanks to all who were a part of Chicago’s first-ever Nerdery Overnight Website Challenge. We’ll be back. Big thanks also to event sponsors DePaul University – College of Computing and Digital Media, and to our hosts, Resolution Digital Studios. Our in-kind sponsors were indeed kind as well, and they are: Chipotle; Dominos; Ergotron; Groupon; Peace Coffee; ThinkGeek; XS Energy Drink.

Good night, and good luck.

Pentathanerd Procession, Winter 2011 from The Nerdery on Vimeo.

Not gonna cry at the always incredibly moving opening ceremonies (above), I promised myself, but Pentathanerd comes but twice a year and lasts just a week each time, and these are precious moments savored by sports fans everywhere – or at least here. Let’s get right to the crowd-pleasing action of Floppy Disk Golf:

Pentathanerd Winter 2011: (Floppy) Disk Golf from The Nerdery on Vimeo.

Floppy Disc Golf Medal Stand:

• Gold: Suite CC (Minh, Ali, Jon R)
• Silver: Frak Yeah QA (Matt E, Sean, Sara)
• Bronze: Ad Hoc (Paul, Brett)

Also notable, Justin from !Cheaters took liberties with the rules. Weird.

Here were the made-to-be-bent rules:
Participants will use 5 1/4” floppy disks to navigate two (or three, depending on time and participation) courses within The Nerdery as per the rules for Disc Golf. Teams may switch out participants between throws, but are limited to three participants in the event. Each disk must be an authentic 5 1/4” floppy. Disks will be provided as necessary. A minimum 300 points for participation. Points will be distributed based on overall placement, scaled to participation.

Next up: Watch and wonder as competitors race to solve Rubik’s Cubes. Blindfolded. Skeptics, nothing is impossible at The Nerdery, especially during Pentathanerd week(s).

To celebrate the the return of TRON to theaters, we are hosting a TRONtravaganza here at The Nerdery and you’re invited.

We’ll start the night off at 8:45 p.m. racing lightcycles and zapping grid bugs on our TRON arcade cabinet. Leave your quarters at home because we have unlimited credits.

It’s been 28 years since the first movie debuted, so you may have forgotten the complex plot or, even worse, you’ve never seen it. Don’t worry. We won’t judge you. We’ll watch the original movie in the Nerdery Science Theater at 9:15 p.m. Snacks and beverages will be provided.

After the first movie wraps up, we’ll head over to the Great Clips IMAX Theatre at the Minnesota Zoo to catch the midnight screening of TRON: Legacy in 3D. You can buy your tickets online or risk it and stand in line. Don’t blame us if they are sold out and your hopes are derezzed. Update: Tickets for the midnight screening at the zoo are now sold out.

If you’re interested in coming, please RSVP in the comments so we order enough food.

One more thing, cosplay is not required but it is encouraged.

We’re looking right at you, graduates of Neumont University. There will be no “What’s your major?” icebreaking banter, either; we know full well Neumont only offers computer science degrees through an accelerated two-and-a-half-year program. Our current Nerdery class will tell you that the gig here is an accelerated learning program in-and-of itself.

By 2016, the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates the need for more than 324,000 new software engineers. All we want is half. However, the Computer Research Association reported that major universities awarded just 10,000 computer science degrees last year. This Red Bull’s for you, Neumont.

“We don’t have sports, we don’t have some of the extras. If that’s a compromise, it’s one that results in a fast launch into an exciting career,” says Neumont president Ned Levine.

Pssst, hey kids, if you missed out on sports in college, the Pentathanerd Winter Games are coming (beware of the Ides of January).

None of the glorious animation and audio goodness from the links above use any type of plugins. It’s all in the browser using HTML5. Animation, audio and data retrieval – all done using scripting. The drawing is done natively using the new canvas tag, which is exactly what it sounds like – a canvas that you can draw on. Only instead of a paintbrush you have JavaScript. Starting to get it now?

There is even a new video tag that could alleviate the need for Flash and Sliverlight based video players. There may be a slight conflict of interest there, explaining why Microsoft has yet to support the video tag in its latest version of IE8. Nevertheless, full adoption of HTML5 is bound to happen, and when it does get ready for an intensely magical web experience.

This is the stuff that Tim Berners-Lee couldn’t even have dreamed of back in 1989 while trying to help physicists at CERN reference research papers. How cool is that that we’ve come this far? HTML 4 has been out for 10 years. In those 10 years, we’ve seen a drastic move from web pages to web applications through the Web 2.0 movement. The web application is at the heart of HTML5. With the announcement of Google’s Chrome OS and the increase of cloud computing and storage, there is no doubt that the web will continue to have a greater influence on the way we live and work.