We’ve got some football items out for Super Bowl Weekend. First up we’ve got some brand new football helmets. Be sure to check out the Pemberley Punishers Football Helmet and the Barton Bruisers Football Helmet. Show your support for your favorite team by wearing their helmet! We’ve also got a ferocious new face for you. Celebrate the big game with our Glory on the Gridiron face.

You can talk about our football items and everything else here!

-Brighteyes
We’ve got some fascinating new items coming out this weekend, so be sure to check our catalog frequently!

We’ve got some fresh new items for you this Wednesday. They win and when you wear them you do too!

Cyrofreezer - Standard issue for the Intergalactic Council.

Ronald McNinja - He delivers super-sized pain.

Leather Skullcap -Stylish and practical! If by practical you mean totally not practical.

Fire Fighter - Are you brave enough to wear this hat?

Sapphiresea Battlehelm - Not for the faint of heart.

Black Fur Cap - In Soviet Russia Black Fur Cap buys you!

Space Monkey - He believes he can fly. And he’s right.

Eagle Crested Woodsman Cap - For him everyday is a walk in the park. Probably a national park.

Talk about all of our hat in the forums.

-Brighteyes

It’s that time again. A new hat and gear of the week have arrived. This week’s gear item is the Paper Airplane. Control your paper airplane as it guides through the air. The advantages of a virtual paper airplane over a real paper airplane? You don’t have to chase after it when it crash lands and you want to fly it again. It magically reappears in your hand. Awesome!

Our hat of the week is the Silver Kaiser Helm. It’s the gold standard of Silver Kaiser Helmets.

As always, the items of the week are only available for a week. That means these will go offsale on 2/5/10. Be sure to keep your eye on the catalog this weekend. It’s going to be geartastic!

Talk about this week’s items here.

-Brighteyes

Telamon started singing this song and I couldn’t get it out of my head. So here it is - everything you need to be Mr. Tambourine Man - or at least everything that you need to be the Mr. Tambourine Man that I see in my head whenever I imagine him.

Chocolate Milk - Playing the tambourine is a hard job. You work up a powerful thirst. To quench the powerful thirst - chocolate milk! Why chocolate milk? Chocolate Milk = Awesome and Mr. Tambourine Man = Awesome, so it’s an obvious choice.

Tambourine - Another obvious choice for a Tambouine Man. Without it he’s just a man.

Moonflower - This is exactly what I would wear on a jingle-jangle morning. Too bad I don’t have too many of those.

Clown School Dropout - Because like the Tambourine Man, you should follow your dreams. Clown school has got to be somebody’s dream. Right? Okay maybe not…

As a final reminder - tomorrow we take the ROFL Waffle and the Pancaik off sale. So if you want to own our very first Hat and Gear of the Week - get them now!

You can talk about this on the forums.
-Brighteyes

Exciting news! We’ve lowered the price of the Viking Plundercap from R$ 125 to R$ 90. This sale is only going to last for one day so act now!

Also, feel free to check out some of the other cool new items we’ve got in the catalog.

Talk about the sale here.

-Brighteyes

–RobloTim

As some of you may have noticed, we recently released some new items - the pancaik and the ROFL Waffle.

The ROFL Waffle is our very first Gear of the Week! So what exactly is a Gear of the Week? I’m glad you asked. Gear of the Week is an item that will only be sold for one week. After that the item will no longer be for sale, although we might make some of the Gear of the Week items collectible. So you guys have until 1/29/10 to buy the ROFL Waffle. On 1/29/10 we’ll put up a new Gear of the Week.

Pancaik is our first Hat of the Week. Hat of the Week works the same way as Gear of the Week except instead of a gear item, it’s a hat. Get the Pancaik before 1/29/10 to show that you’re on Team Pancaik.

Talk about our Gear and Hat of the Week on the forums.

-Brighteyes

Last week we started our now hugely successful “Hats for Haiti” donation drive, and this week we are mailing our first check out to the American Red Cross. The “Hats for Haiti” drive will continue for another week, after which we’ll write a second check for the remainder of the proceeds.

January 21, 2010

Dear American Red Cross:

Attached is a $5479 check for the International Response Fund. This donation was collectively raised by more than 16,000 players of ROBLOX, an online virtual building game. These players believe in your mission and wish that the money be used to benefit the people of Haiti after the terrible disaster there, in whichever manner your organization deems best.

Regards,

David Baszucki,

CEO ROBLOX Corp.

The ROBLOX Team is thrilled to be able to make this contribution to the efforts of the Red Cross, and we salute our very generous player base, more than 16,000 of whom directly contributed to the donation drive. You guys are great!

- Telamon

With all of these storms, it’s really starting to feel like winter here in California. Maybe that’s why we’ve made so many winter hats lately!

Chill Classic - When I’m cold, my ears are the first thing that freeze. With these warm earmuffs that is no longer an issue!

Musclehead - Lolz - we mean musclehead literally!

The Raven- Quoth the Robloxian, ‘Nevermore’.

Blinky the Cyclops - Because sometimes two eyes is one eye too many.

A Dark Presence - Even the name is scary!

Classic Alien - He’s kickin’ it old school in classic alien green.

MLK Cap -”Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal.”

Sweat It Out - Man that was a lot of stairs.

You can talk about the new items here.

-Brighteyes

Q:  What is your favorite thing about working for ROBLOX?

A:  It’s two things together: really smart people working on really hard (but fun!) problems.  It’s endlessly rewarding.  Right up there is the astonishment that comes from seeing all the things our users build from the raw bits of stuff we put out there.  We are constantly amazed!

Q:  What are you most proud of so far that you worked on at ROBLOX?

A:  Some of the things I’m most proud of are small pieces of technology that make the big ones possible — stuff that the users never see or know about.  Those aside, I’ll always have a special fondness for the RoblEX.  That was a fun, challenging project.  I just wish it would’ve had more support from Telamon along the way.  ;)

Q:  Why did you join the ROBLOX team?

A:  ROBLOX was far and away the most interesting thing that I came across when my wife and I were planning our move to California in 2006.  At the time, it was a relatively primitive 1-player game, and the web site was nothing like what you see today, but I could envision so much of what was to come, even way back then.  The idea of ROBLOX excited my imagination!  Add to that the mighty brains and many talents of David and Erik, and I knew I had to be a part of that team and help make it all happen.

Q:  How old were you when you started programming and how did you learn to?

A:  I learned to program on the Commodore 64 and the Apple IIe, sometime around 1983 — which would put me in 3rd grade and around 8 years old.

It was something that my dad and I did together, and he of course helped a lot.  There was no World Wide Web back then, so we bought a subscription to the magazine Compute’s Gazette, which was a great resource for hobbyist programmers.

Most importantly, though, I learned to program like everyone else does: by sitting down and trying, failing, figuring out my mistakes, and then trying some more.  There’s really no way around that simple recipe for most of the things you ever want to get good at.

Q:  How did you get Telamon to make you the Dusekkar and then why did you take it off?

A:  Well, I didn’t really "get" Telamon to make it for me.  He’s pretty much the physical manifestation of elemental caprice.  He submits to no authority or compulsion save his own whimsy.  That said, we did strike a bargain of sorts; I built the RoblEX in exchange for it (see above).

Q:  Did you draw the flower on your smiley flower T-Shirt?

A:  No, I found it online.  It’s one of the very first user-created images ever uploaded to ROBLOX.  I used it for testing while developing that part of the system.  I never imagined it would become such a calling card.  :P

Q: Why are manhole covers round?

A: Elementary: A trapezoidal manhole cover wouldn’t very well fit with a round manhole, now would it?

Q:  What are your hobbies?

A:  Mostly I spend my free time vexing our cats with epistemological puzzles and logical paradoxes.  When not busy with that, though, I enjoy all of the following:

High performance driving/instruction.  Some race tracks I especially love (I’ve never met one I didn’t like): Putnam Park, Road America, GingerMan Raceway, Mid Ohio Sports Car Course, Infineon Raceway.

Hiking.  Some truly unforgettable places I’ve loved getting out and walking around: Glacier National Park in Montana, Yosemite National Park in California, Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming, Banff National Park in Alberta, and Mt. Pilatus in Switzerland.  Every time I visit I place like one of those, I become aware of how much larger and grander the world is than my concept of it.

Music.  After a bit of a hiatus, I’m back to soothing the savage beast.  My wife bought me a Seagull S6 acoustic guitar for Christmas, and I’m learning to play.  In days gone by, I’ve played the piano, organ, and even (a REALLY long time ago) the French horn.

Q:  What is a recent book you read?

A:  Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth by Apostolos Doxiadis and Christos Papadimitriou.

Some other random stuff I’ve been reading recently:  The Graveyard Book and Marvel 1602, both by Neil Gaiman; The Complete Guide to Capital Markets for Quantitative Professionals by Alex Kuznetsov; A Pirate Looks at Fifty by Jimmy Buffett; Outer Dark by Cormac McCarthy; Powers Vol. 1: Who Killed Retro Girl? by Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Avon Oeming.

Also, everyone should be sure to check out The Dragons of Ordinary Farm by Tad Williams and Deborah Beale.

Q:  What other games do you like to play?

A:  Social games: Mafia (a game so good, you may lose friends over it!)

Tabletop: Cosmic Encounter, Dungeons & Dragons

Electronic games: Racing sims, Smash TV, Geometry Wars Retro Evolved 2, Castle Crashers, Call of Duty: World at War

Q:  If you could be a superhero, what would you want your superpowers to be?

A:  If I could have any superpower, I would want it to be the power of the perfect one-liner.  I’ve been foiled far too many times by thinking of a great quip only after it was too late.  Or not at all….