Today marks the anniversary of quite a few historical events of significance.

Today, the American Civil War turns 150 years old, as we observe the anniversary of the April 12, 1861 attack by Confederate troops of Fort Sumter near Charleston, South Carolina. Although a grim occasion on its own right, this attack does have some silver lining, as it began the conflict that would eventually set in motion this nation's steps towards racial equality.

50 years ago today, on April 12, 1961, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human being to travel into space and orbit the Earth.

Today is also the 30th anniversary of the 1981 maiden voyage of the space shuttle Columbia, the world's first reusable spacecraft. It was a momentous and cheerful day for space exploration. The shuttle itself met a tragic end, when it disintegrated on re-entry during a mission, killing its seven crew and passengers over 20 years later. I'd like to take this moment to thank the brave men and women of NASA for the heroic work they do expanding the horizons of human knowledge and experience, and to offer my sincerest condolences to the friends and family of all such heroes who did not return.

Earlier today, I published my first actual Civilization V mod!

This mod is titled: "A Better Civ Experience", and is described as:

"This mod allows players to transform their Civ experience, providing greater depth, balance, and realism."

The mod can be found by searching for its title in the Civilization V Mod Browser. Download, install, and then enable the mod (as shown below) in order to play it.

UPDATE (August 8, 2012): Mod no longer available

This mod is no longer available since Civilization V has switched to using the Steam Workshop for mods. Since this mod was originally an April Fool's joke, and doesn't add anything of any worth to the game, I have no plans to update the mod to be accessible through the Steam Workshop.

As a fan of the Sid Meier’s Civilization video game series (particularly, Civilization IV - which I argued on Geek Fights is the best video game ever made!), I was skeptical - but also excited - at the prospect of a Civilization board game based on my beloved game franchise. Could the feeling of building a civilization to stand the test of time and the one-more-turn addictiveness of the video game be replicated in a board game without the game itself becoming too long and boring? Well, put simply, it can! And Sid Meier’s Civilization: the Board Game is proof!

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In a paper published by physicists at the Fermilabs Tevatron particle accelerator in Illinois, researchers claim to have found evidence for a new fundamental particle outside the traditional Standard Model of Particle Physics that may represent a fifth fundamental physical force beyond gravity, electromagnetism, strong, and weak nuclear forces.

The paper, titled Invariant Mass Distribution of Jet Pairs Produced in Association with a W boson in ppbar Collisions at sqrt(s) = 1.96 TeV (arXiv:1104.0699v1 [hep-ex]), is a reporting of findings from a research project involving the smashing together of protons and antiprotons in an attempt to create new particles. The paper shows some results that are not predicted by the existing Standard Model of Particle Physics, and which (if confirmed) would mean that theory would need to be revised or thrown out altogether.

Portal 2 is due out in stores in about 2 weeks. I'm looking forward to it. I loved the first game. I bought the Orange Box for it, and didn't even bother finishing Half-Life 2 or even touched Team Fortress.

GladOS's voice captivated me. The puzzles twisted my mind. The clever story that tells itself entirely through background details in the gameplay and environment rather than expository cutscenes or dialogue immersed me in the world. Johnathan Coulton's end credit song, Still Alive, is still one of the most requested song whenever I get together with friends to play Rock Band.

It was a triumph. I'm being so sincere right now.

But I can't help but wondering: Do I really want a sequel to Portal?

Do you?