Just in case any of you have missed it, there have been two major releases for Blender ( 3D modelling app, with built in game engine ), and OpenOffice ( free Microsoft office basically, handy for game design docs etc ).
For anyone using VLC, v1.0 has ( finally! ) been released.
It has a cool feature where you can play a movie back with a cartoon look, something similar to "A Scanner Darkly" ( check out the video playback options )