Despite our shameless, snot-filled pleading, today is Addy's last day here at Gizmodo. Somehow she got the idea in her head that she wanted me to be the one to write her goodbye post. Coming from the best writer (by far) on Giz, that's quite a compliment. Seriously, the top five list looks something like 1) Addy 2) 3) 4) 5), which is only part of the reason why we'll miss her so.

Not only did she bring a unique presence to Giz in that her boobs could be described without being prefaced by the word "man" (she's a lady, get it?), she was a normal person. That's a pretty hard quality to find when you're talking about people who asphyxiate themselves with tech news for the majority of their day. Features like why she's an ultra late adopter served to balance out the rest of our "gimme gimme now now" outlook on gadgets. In fact, her favorite Christmas gadget ever wasn't even a gadget. Luckily for us, she agreed to keep on writing her Sunday columns, so you'll still be able to soothe your Saturday night hangover with her charmingly seductive words.

The shitty part of having a virtual office connected by chat rooms and instant messaging is that unless you're traveling for an event, you don't actually get to meet and interact daily with your coworkers. Based on Addy's posts, isn't she someone you would like drink five bottles of wine after work with? We're forcing her to do a cross-country US tour later this year so we can all (maybe even you readers) feel her presence in person.

Here's one of her earliest IMs to me. "Breastion. Ever seen anything USB with tits?" That, my friends, is Adelaide Dugdale. So long, queen of Gizmodo.

And now a note from Addy:







Guys. Guys. Momentous indeed, today is. Right, that's the Yoda impersonation done for the Star Wars fans, now TFSU. I'm leaving Gizmodo for pastures bare. Yes, that's right, as the world teeters on the brink of a recession, someone is stupid enough to wave goodbye to her current job with nothing lined up. And that stupid someone is me.

I've had 17 months at El Modo de Giz and I've loved it all (apart from a few teething problems with HTML to start. And then there was Flickr uploadr. And Photoshop. Oh, all of it at first, you know me well enough now.) But that's all changed—no virginal blogger me any more. Oh no. Well, a bit, I suppose.

Leaving the site has not been an easy decision at all. In fact, I ummed and aahed about it for a couple of months, before taking a deep breath and writing to Blam. He, bless him, gave me a couple of weeks just in case I wanted to change my mind, and I confess that my resolve wobbled a couple of times.

But I need a break. Pro blogging is pretty relentless, and it takes a toll on people. I think it should come with a mandatory week off every two months, but then I'm a soft European pussy and I should STFU, I guess. So, rather than burn out, and end up with that sad little dead-iPod face, knackered, squinty-eyed and suffering gadget blindness, it's time to go and do something else. I'm going to have a month off, get our house sorted out as much as possible, then think about the alternatives.

But, my lovelies, I won't be gone forever. I'll be back in August with a brand new shiny fabulous column (er, still haven't worked it all out, but trust me, it'll be the embodiment of the bastard lovechild of Addy and Giz. That is, if a website could have sex with me. Or if it would want to. Or I with it. Um, like I said, I need to work on it a bit).

All your gorgeous comments, especially those of you who have defended me against my detractors (scarbrtj, Drewdraws2, ANoel, SonofMagicFact andFreddicvsMaximvs especially spring to mind) have been brilliant—there's nothing like a bit of encouragement to make you really want to write your socks off for your readers.

And as for the guys I work with—Blam, Wilson, Chen, Mark, Kit, Benny et all —I can't thank you enough for helping me go from really shit blogger to not-so-bad one, really. But most of all, it's down to the Jeezy Weezy, who got me into blogging in the first place. He's the one who deserves most of the credit, the Debbie Allen to my Leroy, or something.

Oh, and one more thing. LindsayJoy, easy on the nearly-nekkid pictures with just a bit of LEGO to preserve your modesty that you keep sending to Jesus. It's not pissing me off. Yet.

See you all in August, and my first cocktail tomorrow night will be raised to you all. Cheers!

Here it is, the definitive Bill Gates timeline. It may contain some bugs and lack some features, but it works: from his parents to the last day of his work at Microsoft, the Bill Gates timeline shows his personal and business adventure—on the top—in relation to the tech industry—on the bottom—as his company takes over it all.

Click on the image above to access the full high-resolution version. [Bill Gates' Retirement Party]

Other Gizmodo timelines

• Sony Trinitron Timeline Shows Why It Will Live Forever In Our Hearts

• The Analog Cellphone Timeline

• LEGO Brick Timeline: 50 Years of Building Frenzy and Curiosities

• 100 Years of Tech in the Times Square New Year's Ball

The guys over at Phone Mag managed to get their hands on the HTC Touch Pro "Raphael" and its sweet slide-out QWERTY keyboard. Unfortunately, there was no battery and the device could not be turned on—but no significant changes are expected in this new release over the previous first Touch handset. All in all, Phone Mag felt that the device would satisfy HTC owners and keyboard lovers alike.

Hit the following link for a full gallery. [Phone Mag]

Every other week it seems that the bar for foosball tables gets set higher and higher. The new mark to beat comes to us from a group of engineering students from The University of Adelaide. As part of a final engineering project, the students utilized a 96-pinhole camera and LED sensor grid, custom-written software and a precision actuation system to create a table capable of beating the pants off of a human player. Seriously, if we put as much effort into other things as we do making cool foosball tables, we would probably have cured a few diseases by now. [Rockwell Automation via Born Rich]

Dudes in the Institute of Multidisciplinary Research for Advanced Materials in Tohoku University just developed a 42GB DVD that's backwards compatible with nothing. The new tech uses a V shape in the pits—current pits are just pits—which allows nine times more information to be held on the same sized disc. The downside is that current CD and DVD drives cant' read it, so you'll have to purchase all new tech in order to use this. It's also not capable of being adapted to Blu-ray drives, so there's little to no incentive for the industry to add this in to this generation either. But nice work (in theory), Japanese researchers! [Crunchgear]

Were you thinking of building your own Wall-E out of LEGO? Pfft. I mean, no, go ahead. Just don't ever put it next to this model by Angus MacLane who actually helped animate the film. Because, as good as yours may look, he can always play the "well, the way we do things at Pixar..." card on you. So how does he rate his own performance?

I’m proud of the overall proportions, but the eyes are still a bit too off for me...Having stared at this robot for 3+ years, I was extremely familiar with the proportions and functionality of Wall•E. It helped to know his design, but that made it hard to make the usual compromises when converting items to LEGO form.

But from our untrained eyes, it appears that MacLane is being far too hard on himself. [The Brothers Brick via bbGadgets]

Bill Gates puts up with us, having granted us three interviews in the past three and a half years. It's an intense experience: Bill isn't always fond of making eye contact, and is known to snap at reporters who ask dumb questions. After all, he's not just the Andrew Carnegie—or Emperor Palpatine—of his time. He's also a guy who gets interviewed a hell of a lot, and doesn't stand for bush-league Q&A. But we have always enjoyed the guys company and even have had the opportunity to make him laugh a few times. Here's a quick look back at our three Bill interviews, in a Retromodo re-run fashion:

Joel Johnson at CES 2005:

I didn't quite know what to think of it, but I wasn't going to turn it down. I would ask the hard questions: Does Ballmer really eat children? Can I swim in your Money Bin? I didn't quite muster the balls to ask those, though, and instead acted like I had real questions or something.

[CES 2005

]

Blam at CES 2007:

I'd asked him about the mug shot [from his Albuquerque arrest] and at first he looked a bit apprehensive, but answered. Apparently, Bill loves fast cars. In 1978, he told us, he'd gotten 3 speeding tickets on his drive to move up to Seattle. Two from the same cop. It was a Porsche 911 from that era.

[CES 2007]

Wilson at CES 2008:

When it came to be my turn, I had the warnings and admonitions of Blam to guide me. And sure enough, he didn't look me in the eye at first, and though he was accommodating with my nervous stuttering, I could tell he was judging the substance of my questions. Mercifully, he little by little began looking more directly at me, and he lit up with answers, even letting his guard down enough to comment frankly about Windows, and the difference between Apple and Microsoft.

Here's the vid itself, plus various excerpts, shot and digitally mastered by our own Chris Mascari:

Excerpts:

Part 1 - On the difference between Microsoft and Apple

Part 2 - On his changing public image

Part 3 - What he worries about most

Part 4 - On Windows Vista maybe, just maybe, sucking

And yes, maybe this Retromodo isn't "retro" like your dad's pants or your mom's TV, but in the blog world, even 5 minutes ago counts as old. It's just a label—get over it.

Don't worry, folks: Our trusted representatives in government just saw the movie Armageddon, and they aren't going to take the threat posed by this mediocre 1998 action movie lying down. They're going to pass laws to make sure we're prepared to face any asteroid-related threat without having to send a bunch of oil drillers into space.

The House of Representatives just passed bill H.R. 6063, directing NASA to come up with plans for a cheap mission to send a craft to the Apophis asteroid to attach a tracking device. Apophis is on route to come closer to Earth than geostational satellites in 2029, and if it smacked into the planet we'd be a little bit screwed.

In addition to paying close attention to Apophis, the bill requires the Director of the White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy to come up with a policy for notifying Federal agencies and other emergency response groups of an impending near-Earth object threat. Hopefully they'll come up with better plans than whatever it is they have enacted for natural disasters now, because their track record doesn't really inspire confidence. [KurzweilAI]

We've all seen wires coming out of potatoes to power lightbulbs, but the design has always been a crude science experiment, not something with the polish of a real product. This Lemon Light is just an artist's work, but it's a brilliant design all the same. Simply cut off one end of the lemon and replace it with this lemon-shaped bulb. The result is a light that mimics nature while it glows only dimly, reminding us of the value of energy...and making us really want to buy one of these neat Lemon Lights. [Yurisuzuki via MAKE]

You probably already know that both we and Lifehacker enjoy running Windows on our Macs using Parallels. Well, MacHeist has a deal today where you can pick up a copy for just $49, which includes a copy of MacPilot. That price gets even sweeter ($10 sweeter) if you previously bought a MacHeist bundle. Get yours now if you like good deals. [MacHeist]