This holiday season, GeekDad isn’t content to just watch classic movies every night. We are powering up the festivities with a quest: Which of our beloved Christmas icons is the biggest geek? Eight movie characters filled the initial bracket — …
Continue ReadingSocial networking is the norm. Facebook now boasts 800 million active users, half of which check the site every day. Twitter generates over 300 million tweets each day. Even MySpace, though in decline, is still kicking as the 136th biggest …
Continue ReadingSomewhere between the sixth post-Thanksgiving viewing of Elf and the annual trip to Bedford Falls on Christmas Eve, it begins to sink in why these characters in Christmas-season movies are so beloved (or sometimes feared). They are makers and techies. …
Continue ReadingIt can be tough for a kid to experience community on the Internet. All but 5% of teens are online, and most are using social media platforms. However, for all the success experienced by websites like Facebook, these are not …
Continue ReadingEver need to explain the life and death of Darth Vader to a friend, but didn’t have time to sit through the 13 hours and 23 minutes of the Star Wars saga with them? Fortunately, some Italian designers have solved …
Continue ReadingOne of the joys of the Digital Age is being able to watch and re-watch our favorite television series in their entirety. Along with Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Arrested Development, the various incarnations of the Star Trek television series …
Continue ReadingThis past weekend, a few dozen gamers converged on Bloomington, Indiana for the 10th ARGfest-o-con, an annual conference for alternate reality game producers and players. While most of the discussion centered around the business and value proposition of transmedia storytelling, …
Continue ReadingThe Internet is such a big and wonderful place, it is easy for some cool things to slip by unnoticed. My Google+ feed recently excavated a great infographic from Flowtown depicting the evolution of Geeks, something GeekDad missed the first …
Continue ReadingWhile the self-replicating properties of these crystals are still an unknown, real-life scientists are trying to unlock the data storage capabilities of glass. The process has resulted in a storage capacity of 50 GB (the equivalent of a Blu-ray disc) …
Continue ReadingAfter a hike in the Catskill Mountains last winter, 13-year-old Aidan Dwyer noticed the patterns in the branches of trees. Investigation led him to an important insight about how the shape of the branches can be used by the tree …
Continue ReadingReal-life ink and virtual-reality animation combine for a high-tech tattoo.
Continue ReadingThis is the Summer of Fiscal Responsibility. Congress prompted a sovereign credit downgrade because of it, and at least two professional sports leagues ground to a halt in its name. Earlier this week, the geek community got official word that …
Continue ReadingUnless some anti-Hoarder purge destroyed your personal archive, there is a good chance that a stack of high-concept, low-quality artwork can be found in your home. It is the byproduct of countless hours as a kid turning blank sheets of …
Continue ReadingMy two-year-old daughter clearly loves music. She dances to everything, and she sings with abandon. Although I’m married to a musician and live nearby to one of the top music schools in the world, I have been blessed with only …
Continue ReadingLast May, my community assembled about two dozen interesting people to share what they know on stage. The theme in Bloomington, Indiana’s Buskirk-Chumley theatre that day was “Wisdom of Play.” Speakers included a mix of local, regional and national speakers …
Continue ReadingLast August, a bunch of Star Wars fans pestered NASA about a timetable for building a hyperdrive engine. Maybe someone was listening. In May, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) opened up the discussion by soliciting new ideas for …
Continue ReadingOne hundred years ago today, three companies merged to become the Computing Tabulating Recording (CTR) Corporation. At the time, the business manufactured and sold a number of different machines, ranging from time recorders to food slicers. Thirteen years later, CTR …
Continue ReadingHilary DeCesare made a career out of helping executives put strategic frameworks around their products and services. It wasn’t until her three children entered the tweens, though, that she realized how under-served that population is when it comes to social …
Continue ReadingThe journey to gain official status can be a long trip. Take Elements 114 and 116, for example. First created in a lab a dozen years ago, the isotopes were the focus of a few collaborative teams of scientists working …
Continue ReadingAs dictated by Sweetness Makice April 1, 2011 | 3:12 pm (dog time) | Favorite things: Squirrels I don’t have an iPhone, but I know where to get one. When the humans are asleep, I wake up to play a …
Continue ReadingAs dictated by French Fry Makice April 1, 2011 | 11:27 am (dog time) | Favorite things: Squirrels Owning one human is tough enough, but like most dogs I’m part of a bigger family. From the moment I wake up …
Continue ReadingAs geeks, we are encouraged to suspend our disbelief while simultaneously challenging everything we see and hear. In the words of Agent Mulder, we want to believe, but our geek roots are firmly planted in the scientific method. That tension …
Continue ReadingWhen Santa brought our family a Wii, my wife and I spent the first hour testing it out by punching each other’s Mii avatars. I broke a sweat, and woke up the next morning with sore shoulders from the experience. …
Continue ReadingWhen Santa brought our family a Wii, my wife and I spent the first hour testing it out by punching each other’s Mii avatars. I broke a sweat, and woke up the next morning with sore shoulders from the experience. …
Continue ReadingA pro-tip for TED fans: Watch the new talks by Morgan Spurlock and Salman Khan when they are released on video. Spurlock, the human guinea pig best known for a month of eating McDonald’s food, has a new project about …
Continue ReadingOn Sunday, I took my oldest son to a movie. While this has happened before, Sunday’s movie marked a first in our relationship: he willingly went to see a black-and-white silent movie. It is only a matter of time now …
Continue ReadingWednesday is the 44th anniversary of one of the top episodes of Star Trek. “Space Seed” aired on February 16, 1967, introducing to the science fiction world the passengers of SS Botany Bay. Fifteen years later, the war criminal on …
Continue ReadingVideo games sometimes get roughed up by parents, teachers, and academics as having a negative impact on kids. However, a study conducted by researchers at Brigham Young University concluded that playing video games is good for girls … if they …
Continue ReadingAs of 7p Eastern (or midnight GMT), the Unix time clock reached 15000 days, a significant milestone in computing history. Unix time tracks the time since January 1, 1970. We computer geeks are used to celebrating interesting second counts, but …
Continue ReadingGeekDad Tron Week, images from Disney Once upon a time, arcade owner Kevin Flynn journeyed through a virtual world to emerge the CEO of the largest computer company in the world. Before the decade had ended, however, Flynn was missing …
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