Being called a geek used to be an insult, but we all know it as a badge of honor. Fostering geekiness, however, often has to be an intentional choice to get out of the way of our innate joy of learning. Here are eleven things to consider with your own young geeks.
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Weekly Dungeons & Dragons gaming sessions with my sons and their friends took an experimental turn recently. Using Minecraft Pocket Edition, we now have an interactive map for our current adventure.
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Five years ago, Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog streamed on the Internet. If catchphrases are the true measure of cultural impact, here are five suggestions to put into everyday use.
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Almost a year after a record-setting 50-second flight by the University of Maryland, a team from Canada made a successful claim on the 33-year-old Sikorsky Prize for human-powered helicopter flight. They earned $250,000, thanks to a $34,000 Kickstarter campaign.
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A big part of being a geek includes understanding the shared culture we experience when working with technology. Here are 16 things geeklets should know (but probably don’t) that can help form a base understanding of Internet Culture.
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A recent study by Cornell University demonstrated a correlation between planning skills and education achievement, suggesting a potential avenue to mitigate low-income disadvantages: Be geeky. Community mentors talk about the benefits of being geeky.
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Finish Day is an event where designers, coders and startup types come together and spend the day helping each other finish their projects. Geek Camp held our own Finish Day, resulting in over a dozen video projects. This is a report from the field.
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After paging through Keri Smith’s latest journal offering, The Pocket Scavenger, my kids and their friends conducted an alphabet scavenger hunt. You have a chance to win a copy of Smith’s book and matching smartphone app by conducting a scavenger hunt of your own.
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Days 3 and 4 of our family Geek Camp included a trip to a nearby hackerspace and playtesting a water tag game. This is a report from the field.
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The second day of Geek Camp is in the books. With 15 campers, three pets and at least one bum knee to manage this week, our carefully crafted schedule became more of a Disneyland map than a flight plan. Yet to come is a hacker space, comic book day, and a game involving alka seltzer and duct tape. In the meantime, here’s a report from the field.
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Our family Geek Camp is a couple years old, originating as a way to kill some time while watching a friend’s kids for the week. We’re turning it up to eleven this year with a dozen-plus kids and multiple tracks for project work. The week of making, gaming and coding will be accompanied by daily articles on our progress.
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This month, fans flocked to see the much-anticipated second installment of J.J. Abrams reboot of the franchise, Star Trek: Into Darkness. I was not among them. Why would a lifelong Trekkie not see what is widely considered to be a good action film? It failed the Bechdel Test.
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The geek cult around Discovery’s Mythbusters extends beyond the urban legends and movie magic that hosts Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage bust each week. Through their science and creativity, the lessons learned on that show may also serve as insights into good parenting. As the crew celebrates the show’s 10th anniversary, GeekDads mines parenting tips from familiar quotes.
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The Star Trek actor and social media darling turns 76 today!
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Director Joel Schroeder made sure to elicit the appropriate emotional responses from viewers of his Calvin & Hobbes documentary with a soundtrack provided by Washington, D.C. band, We Were Pirates. The original film score, now available online, can’t help but conjure images of boy Calvin romping through the woods with his tiger, or fighting evil space aliens as his alter ego Spaceman Spiff.
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The Moon is a spectacular, if not all too familiar landmark of our night sky. For artist and author Ron Miller, it’s also inspiration for some compelling science art.
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Music videos are nothing new to the Internet. However, it is rare when a video changes based on how people interact with it. With Do Not Touch, viewers are given instructions on what to do as the music plays, creating a living art that depicts demographics, collective wisdom, and human behavior. The video — which […]
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Launched on Kickstarter last month, Tiny Games is still trying to go digital with a fundraising campaign that runs through this Saturday, April 13. The app-to-be will provide access to a rules library for simple, easy-to-understand games by asking probing questions that attempt to match your current situation (place and props) with a social activity.
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Rollers of the Realm is a new Steam video game by Phantom Compass that incorporates RPG elements into classic pinball play. The group has created some videos to show how the combat works.
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The curators of the Museum of Soviet Arcade Machines are displaying some of the first arcade games created in the U.S.S.R.
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When faced with solving a problem common to workers everywhere, David Neevel picks up his guitar.
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As Rod Stewart used to sing, every picture tells a story, don’t it? Graphic artist Murea took this to heart when creating infographics to tell a tale that spans six major motion pictures, an animated movie, and two novels.
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Fifty years from today, the flight of the Phoenix will capture the attention of nearby Vulcans and prompt their first contact with Earth.
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Michael Lee Lunsford, creator of webcomic Supernormal Step, has completed a series of artistic redesigns of comic book heroines, depicting them infuller attire than they are accustomed in print. Included with the re-imagined wardrobe are Zantana, Black Canary, Electra, Power Girl, Wonder Woman and Supergirl.
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One of my favorite sources of information visualization is Jeff Clark, a Canadian programmer who has been using Processing for a few years to reveal interesting attributes of Twitter content. When a YouTube project ran all six Star Wars films simultaneously in 2×3 matrix, Clark took the opportunity to snag some material for an interesting visualization of the movie series.
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Yet another adventure with The Doctor gets underway tonight with the second half of series seven of the new Doctor Who. Having had time to grieve the loss of past companions, fans are ready for a slate full of episodes where we expect to lose the current one again and again. In anticipation of this […]
Continue ReadingLast year, a UK game and experience design agency created a series of small, quick-to-understand games that could be played anywhere. Those 99 local games are headed to the App Store if a new “Tiny Games” Kickstarter is successful. It …
Continue ReadingGerman entrepreneur Rob Rebholz notes that dressing young kids can be a difficult proposition for parents. Premium clothing is expensive, especially considering how few uses a shirt may get before the child grows out of it. Enter KinderStuff.
Continue ReadingPhysicists at Brigham Young University have developed techniques to strengthen nanostructures to make them stable. A research group led by physics professors Robert Davis and Richard Vanfleet recently completed a special holiday project to test their process: the Nanocupid.
Continue ReadingThis week, my first-born became legal. Not to drive, vote or drink, though; that comes later. My son turned 13 years old, making him eligible under terms of service to have his own social media account. That isn’t to say …
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