Artist, maker, electronics geek, DIY enthusiast, and builder are just some of the names we call ourselves, but, whatever your moniker, we all share a love for creating, building, and the warm sense of accomplishment. Recent advances in technology, and price of the technology, have been a boon to the maker and DIY movement. Below we list the tools, technologies, supplies, and projects that inspired us this year.
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We ended up with a few more gadgets than planned, so here’s a short list of the stragglers. Once again, here are some of our favorite gadgets of the year in no particular order. Next week’s gift guide will be DIY Projects and Tools; look for it Thursday morning.
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If I had a dollar for every gadget I’ve bought since Part 1 was published yesterday, I could buy four more gadgets! I’m almost done though. As we’ve grown GeekDad, so has the number of authors and the number of gadgets we collectively love. Here’s the next dozen gadgets we love, in no particular order. I’ll have a few stragglers to post tomorrow, so stay tuned.
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If I had a dollar for every gadget I’ve bought, I could buy more gadgets! As geeks, we have a special place in our hearts for elegant, useful, or just plain cool gadgets. In fact, we love our gadgets so much this year that we will have to split this guide into two parts. Read on for the first dozen gadgets that we have grown to love and treasure this year.
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Geek Culture is a many faceted thing with the term meaning different things to most geeks. This category highlights some of the things we feel define us as geeks. Music, movies, books, and games are all a part of the culture and here we try to celebrate that diversity. No matter the type of geek you are shopping for, there should be some great suggestions here. When shopping I always look for things that they would never buy themselves and this category if flush with them.
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We’ve been running with our Holiday Gift Guides, but this product is probably better fit for the Holiday Nope Guide.
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Hear ye, hear ye, the holiday season is upon us and shoppers everywhere are limbering up and staking out the best deals of the century. But are they really the best deals? Watch the fine print carefully for words that limit the quantity or duration of the deals. That amazingly cheap loss-leader TV might be limited to 5 or 10 per store, leaving your unsatisfied hunger for a new TV to chomp at a normally priced TV. Beware also of the trampling hordes and angry shoppers. Every year Black Friday inches closer and closer to in appearance to the running of the bulls.
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The Light L16 camera is a novel approach to photography. Each press of the shutter fires up to 10 of the 16 cameras simultaneously capturing a range of exposures and focal lengths that are then processed into a perfectly exposed photo up to 52 megapixels. This gives the L16 many features we’d expect from an SLR camera, like depth of field, great low-light performance, and more pixels. The L16’s features can also produce stunning HDR (High Dynamic Range) images where both bright spots and shadows reveal their details, something your DSLR will need 3 or more rapid exposures to accomplish.
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Today we take a peek at our favorite video games of the year. These are the games we’ve reviewed, played, loved, and sometimes hated. The games that spoke to us and pulled us in and kept us engaged for many hours. Most of these titles are suitable for all ages, but there are a couple that you may want to reserve for the older kids or parents.
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Most, if not all, of us here at GeekDad love to play games of all sorts. Digital or physical matters little to most of us so we’re splitting the games gift guide up into two parts. Today we’re featuring the physical games, ones made of cardboard, paper, and plastic. Tomorrow will showcase our favorite video games of the year. Read on for a list of our favorite games of the year.
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As GeekDads we have spent countless hours reading for ourselves and our kids, and sometimes we like a book well enough to recommend it to our readers. Read on as we feature some of our favorite books that we’ve discovered this year. Many of these have been, or soon will be, reviewed on GeekDad or GeekMom.
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Halloween is over, and it is once again time to turn our full attention to that which we call the Holiday Season! First up is a list of toys that we’ve played with, geeked out on, and raved about to our friends. Read on to see what we liked, why we liked it, and where you can pick one up!
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Marian Call is back with a Kickstarter for her next album. This is her first studio album with a band. I’ll let her explain the new project in the video, but I have to add that I know this will be awesome.
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BattleBots Week 5 – aka the quarterfinals. As always, Anton Olsen and Kishore Hari are here to breakdown the best bouts, worst moments, and everything in between. Spoilers galore, so just watch the embed bouts before reading the commentary.
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From Kickstarter to reality, the GeckoTek 3D printer build plate works very well and has changed how I use my printer.
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BattleBots is back for their third episode with the round of 16 and GeekDad will be doing weekly breakdowns of the competition. This week, we have Anton Olsen and Kishore Hari doing breakdowns of the best bouts. Spoilers galore, so beware if you did not watch.
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When people learn that I’ve built a couple 3D printers one of the first questions I hear is: “What do you print with it?”
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One of my favorite party games is Schmovie. It is easy to play, difficult to mess up, and can be suitable for all ages. It can also be a little racy and a lot of fun after the kids go to bed and the adult beverages start flowing.
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I haven’t used my 3D printers much since February, so most of my filament has been sitting on the shelf since. This has not been an issue in recent years as this part of Texas is reasonably dry, and unusually so the last 5 years. This winter and spring, however, have conspired to teach me a lesson about the proper treatment and storage of PLA printer filament.
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’12 Realms: Bedtime Story’ is the 4th expansion for the ’12 Realms’ cooperative boardgame series. ‘Bedtime Story’ adds four realms, four fortresses, eight new hero miniatures, and a lot of cards and tokens.
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Once again the lovely and talented Marian Call will be performing at Poor David’s in Dallas. If you are in the area this Sunday evening I encourage you to join us. Doors are at 6:30. In past years the show was finished by 9 or 9:30 so it’s not too terribly late to bring the kids. Poor David’s is a great little listening room with a modest bar a bit south if I-30 on South Lamar Street.
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I realize I probably spend too much time playing games, but this is getting absurd. According to the Xbox monthly newsletter I clocked 7062 hours of multiplayer in March…
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Are your kids into videogames, and do they want to learn more about making them? Then The Game Experience may be the perfect summer camp for them. All this week, we’ll be exploring different aspects of the Barely Noticeable summer video game development immersion program offered by our sponsor, Experience America.
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It’s a post-apocalyptic movie for kids! Find out what you should know before you take your family to see it.
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Everybody’s favorite budget audio equipment manufacturer from the ’70s and ’80s is making a comeback in Chicago. Aiwa’s first product, a large Bluetooth speaker, is ready to fill the void between portable speakers and less-than-portable home stereos.
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A few of the Muppets are auditioning for Disney Junior and the results are hilarious. Animal is always my favorite, but Miss Piggy as Sofia ir pretty good too. You can see more like this on the premier of ‘Muppet Moments’ on Friday, April 3rd on Disney Channel
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The Robox 3D printer is an attempt to reduce the finicky nature of the 3D printing process with a number of innovations. Some of these I’ve seen before, but Robox may be one of the first to compile them into one reasonably priced plug-and-print machine.
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As usual, Funko had one of the most interesting booths at Toy Fair this year. I didn’t take an official tour, but I did take a ton of photos. I managed to quickly snap photos of most of the figures. I had to delete a few that were blurry, and missed a couple small sections because a tour of buyers was in the way, but I still got over 240 photos of figures.
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As part of Acer’s Seize The Idea contest I’ve continued looking around the house for a good project, and my eyes once again came back to my 3D printer table. It is cluttered, messy, and much too small for the number of things I use it for. Soon after printing the stand for the Switch 11 and changing to Octoprint for printer control a new soldering station arrived. With its placement on the table here is little room left to actually solder anything, so something else has to go.
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As part of Acer’s Seize The Idea contest I’ve been looking around the house at my half finished DIY projects and thinking of innovative ways to use one of the Acer products to finally wrap a few of them up. Since nearly of all my recent projects involve one or both of my 3D printers, it seems fitting that I should take this opportunity to solve a little control issue I’ve been having.
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