The boys and I spent a day at the Wisconsin Maritime Museum. An historical, hands-on, GeekFamily-friendly exhibit in Manitowoc, Wisconsin. A place to see a World War II submarine, to learn about shipping on the Great Lakes, and where the kids can experience water hands-on and it’s importance for agricultural and economic interests. The […]
Continue ReadingI was invited by a friend and geekdad-to-be to a showing of Bodies: The Exhibition in San Diego, and I have to admit I’m torn about the idea. It’s a display of plastinated cadavers in active poses, supposedly designed to teach about the different systems of the human body. "Celebrate the wonder of the human […]
Continue ReadingThe National Air & Space Museum Udvar-Hazy Center is having a free Become a Pilot Family Day on June 16. The museum, which I’ve mentioned before, is located next to Dulles Airport in Northern Virginia. The event is going to have a lot of airplanes and helicopters outside the museum for close inspection, and apparently […]
Continue ReadingJPL is calling all Southern California Geekdads and Geekmoms. May 19th and 20th, Saturday and Sunday from 9:00AM to 5:00PM both days. For those of you who aren’t lucky enough to be heading north to Maker Faire should head out to Pasadena for a glimpse at everything JPL is […]
Continue ReadingWhen I was a Geek Kid, I spent a lot of time building plastic model airplanes. World War II aviation was what I liked best, and of all the planes that flew during the war, the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress bomber was my favorite — I must’ve built a dozen of the 1/48 scale Monogram […]
Continue ReadingYou probably know the National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC, but in 2003 the Smithsonian opened another one, an expansion annex near Dulles Airport in Virginia, to display some of the aircraft and other artifacts it couldn’t fit in the main museum downtown. Known as the National Air and Space Museum Udvar-Hazy Center […]
Continue ReadingThis Friday evening, Chapel Hill Comics hosts Giants and Dragons, a great kid-friendly art show highlighting the work of Tristan Mead. Sure, there are lots of museums around the Triangle area of North Carolina to take your geeklets, but I don’t think any of them can boast original artwork by an 11-year old. Tristan Mead […]
Continue ReadingTo round out the Bay Area list of interesting places to take your kids, here are some cool spots around San Jose and the greater Silicon Valley area: The Children’s Discovery Museum The Tech Museum of Innovation Computer History Museum The Hiller Aviation Museum D&J Hobby And for the Computer History Geeks among us: […]
Continue ReadingThis Saturday from 10am to 3pm, the San Diego Air & Space Museum is hosting a free family day in honor of Space Day. There seems to have been some kind of official sponsored Space Day last weekend with lessson plans and a family day at the Smithsonian, but we San Diegans are the last […]
Continue ReadingBack on March 27, Thomas Hawk posted on 10 Great Places to Take Your Kids in the San Francisco Bay Area. Number six on his list was the USS Hornet, docked in Alameda. While the standard tours are terrific, if your kids are 12 and over, you can up the ante on the experience by […]
Continue ReadingMaker Faire is MAKE Magazine’s fantastic festival of cool projects and awesome technology. Or, as the official description has it: "A two-day, family-friendly event that celebrates arts, crafts, engineering, science projects and the Do-It-Yourself (DIY) mindset." It’s May 19th and 20th in at the San Mateo Fairgrounds in Silicon Valley, and GeekDad will be there! […]
Continue ReadingSpringtime? In Paris? Believe the hype. We just came back from a short visit to France, and though we didn’t bring any kids — my wife is expecting in July — we did spend some time with a lost tribe of our family who live in a suburb just outside Paris. And so I bring […]
Continue ReadingToday is national Take Your Kids To Work Day. Here at the Wired offices, we’ve got about a dozen kids, from 3 to 10, and the project is to make a magazine cover. First, they took the photos (below). Then they loaded the photos into an InDesign cover template and wrote lots of silly cover […]
Continue ReadingThis coming Sunday, April 29th, if you happen to live in the San Francisco Bay Area there will be a pretty spectacular show for Geek Dads to take their kids to. The show is the 17th Annual Pacific Coast Dream Machines show and runs from 10am to 4pm down at the Half Moon Bay Airport. […]
Continue ReadingFor someone interested in aviation, especially homebuilts, general aviation, and vintage aircraft (military and civilian), you can’t get much closer to nirvana than the annual week-long EAA AirVenture convention held at Wittman Regional Airport in Oshkosh, WI. From the miles of antique, classic, and vintage airplanes (10,000 of them), to the workshops on every aspect […]
Continue ReadingOur son became fascinated by the Jordan Spreaders and rotary snowplows (the “rotaries”) of the Union Pacific after watching The Battle for Donnor Pass. (Where else can you watch guys blast ice from tracks and tunnels with everything from shotguns to dynamite – or learn how they re-rail an engine in a blizzard…but I digress.) […]
Continue ReadingChris posted recently about MyMaps, the new Google Maps feature that makes it easy to create your own interactive maps. As it happens, I’d previously been playing around with a very similar non-Google mashup service called Wayfaring that does much the same thing. I haven’t used Google’s version yet, but by all accounts it sounds […]
Continue ReadingReader Scott Nagle looked at all our "Places to go with your kids" posts and did the natural geek thing: he made a GoogleMaps mashup of GeekDad field trips. He’s looking into how to let other readers add to this or create a similar one for other cities, and when he’s cracked it we’ll post […]
Continue Reading[More reader contributions, this one from Tom Comeau ("Teela’s Dad"), on cool things to do–and not to do–in Baltimore. -ca] For the last five years my daughter (now about to turn 11) and I have done a yearly "Dad Camp" at the end of the summer. We do all kinds of things, some of which are […]
Continue ReadingMore great responses to our call for cool GeekDad things to do in your city. Here, Mark Dye tells us what’s worth doing in Kansas City. Keep the submissions coming! (just email them to me; if you can include links to a good image or two, that’s great). -CA Science City They’ve got a Dino […]
Continue ReadingBecky Zoole Elkana writes in with a list for St Louis: "Sure, there’s the St. Louis Science Center with its IMAX theater and planetarium. But there’s a lot else for geeks to do in this city! Museum of Transport "Explore one of the largest collections of transportation vehicles in the world, including our star attractions […]
Continue ReadingLast week Thomas Hawk and Kevin Kelly posted their lists of cool GeekDad place to take your kids in the SF Bay Area, and we invited others to submit lists for other cities. Daren Lewis offered this one for the Portland Oregon metro area: You can find his photos (including the one at the right […]
Continue ReadingIn addition to the great list of 10 here a three more places to go to geek out with your kids in the Bay Area. (If you have a list for other cities, email one of us and we’ll post it.) The Bay Model. This is a working scale model of the entire San Francisco […]
Continue ReadingSan Francisco is one of the most visited cities in the world. And whether you live here or plan a visit in the future, there are some truly fantastic places to take your kids. For those of you who are camera geek dads like me, these spots also make great places to bring the DSLR […]
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