You are currently down to the proverbial wire. You’re in a gift-shopping crunch, and likely the folks remaining on your list aren’t still they’re because they’re your least favorite; they’re likely just difficult to shop for. With that in mind, here are a handful of helpful suggestions.
Continue Reading
From home automation, to mini home construction, we have bring you some of our favorite DIY projects, tools, and home improvement products. Read more to find out which products we recommend to make your life easier.
Continue Reading
Once I returned from the vacation where I tested these surveillance pieces, I decided I was going to invest in something more secure. I picked up the self install kit from SimpliSafe and have been very impressed.
Continue ReadingBack in 2010 I built a cabin bed for my daughter’s room (see the plans and build), then, when we launched the GeekDad Community, I reposted it as a project there too, and it even featured as part of our …
Continue ReadingA while back I posted up my plans for the cabin bed I was going to build for my daughter and promised to follow up that post with one detailing the actual build, so here it is. A bit later …
Continue ReadingI wonder if there is a mathematical formula describing the rate at which children accumulate toys and junk? It seems to grow at an exponential rate round here and when you factor in a small house and bedroom, you soon …
Continue ReadingIf you’re in the Portland, Oregon area and want to learn how to Laser Cut, Weld, Sew, or (soon) use a 3-D printer, you’ll be happy to know that TechShop Portland just opened up this past weekend in a spiffy …
Continue ReadingBack in the day, it was a luxury feature in new homes to have a little wet bar in the family room or the build-out basement where the pool table and poker-dogs resided. It was a fixture of the suburban experience. Well, now we’re all grown up, with our own homes, and darn it, we […]
Continue ReadingTime passes, kids get older, and the wicked-cool bedroom you built for them becomes too young. They start banging their heads on the ceiling from their platform beds, the fireman’s pole goes unused, and they never use the desks that fit underneath. It becomes time for a change. The GeekWife had last week off, and […]
Continue ReadingNo, there’s no such thing as a Fixer Faire. But there should be. It’s an underserved market. How many of you get to spend more time creating gigantic Tesla coils than repairing broken stuff around your house? Exactly, some of us have to fix boring stuff around the house. We should have a place to […]
Continue ReadingWhen we moved into our new house last year, we faced an interesting dilemma: most sane adults, upon introducing children to their lives, increase the square footage of their homes, but we were contemplating the opposite. We said goodbye to our hulking ranch home and hello to a townhouse. This involved a downsize of nearly […]
Continue ReadingSteve Norris, a 49-year-old father of two from Kitchener, Ontario has set the bar rather high for GeekDads everywhere. He spent 15-months and roughly $5,000 to built a play structure behind his home for his two young boys. This is not your typical kid fort. Built 4 meters above the ground in a 58-year-old silver […]
Continue ReadingThere must be a quick and dirty way to do this. I’d settle for about 35% of the visual appeal and still be pleased with myself. But the folks at Kidtropolis are professionals. Just don’t think about the price. More photos after the jump.
Continue ReadingWe have mentioned the really cool decals put out by Blik before, but seeing these required that we repeat ourselves. Yes, how cool would it be to decorate you gamespace with classic Nintendo? Or your kid’s room. Yeah, do it for the kid! Link to Blik.
Continue ReadingBy now, most of us know we must get rid of plastic baby bottles (among other things) that contain the compound Bisphenol-A. (For some of the most exhaustive reporting out there on the presence of BPA in baby products, check out GeekDad Jeremiah McNichols’s blog Z Recommends). But what to do with all of those […]
Continue ReadingI know, I know. I bragged about how cleverly the little guy handled the TV remote with his cute little fingers. I deserved what I got when he learned how to operate the on/off button on the TV. But did I deserve it so many times? On. Off. On. Off. Saying "No!" didn’t work, all […]
Continue ReadingSome Saturdays I have projects to do around the house and find that dealing with a toddler while getting something done can be pretty difficult. But with simple projects that don’t involve spinning blades or other major hazards, it may be easier to involve your child than you think. You’ll get some quality time with […]
Continue ReadingThese could be the coolest curtains ever. I mean it. First, they’re really pretty: But the image is actually built out of ASCII characters! Sadly, they are not for sale… yet. Hopefully someone is talking to the Dutch artist who designed them, because there is a HUGE market for these! I’d put them up in […]
Continue ReadingWhen it came time to decorate our newborn’s room, the wife and I were faced with a couple of issues. First of all, we were renting, and the idea of painting over a carefully crafted mural was heartbreaking. Second, a big DIY project seemed like the last thing to pile on our already-overflowing plate. If […]
Continue ReadingThis is a cool project: a DIY doorbell using some simple parts and a little programming know-how. My homebrew doorbell circuit. ATMEGA8 with 2 L293D push/pull driver chips running each of 12 solenoid-driven christmas bells. Songs are stored in EEPROM, and selected randomly when the doorbell is rung. Okay, that’s a pretty geeky application, and […]
Continue ReadingThe first time I saw this story pop its head up, I thought it was cute and geeky, but maybe not quite right to bring up on GeekDad. Then, after the second that third times, it stuck in my brain, and after it came up on Neatorama the other day, a new angle on the […]
Continue ReadingNote: This is a re-post from last year of the project where we chopped up an Ikea bunkbed and turned it into two platform beds to economize space in the small bedroom our boys share. I’ve received enough questions in the comments to that post that I thought I should expand a little on it. […]
Continue ReadingHere’s one for the GeekDad who is told "sure, you can wire the house with your gigabat etherwhatsie, dear, just as long as no one can see it." They’re spacers designed to let you hide your cabling behind regular crown molding. WireTracks CM kits turn regular crown molding into removable wiring channels that you can […]
Continue ReadingWe get a lot of emails from folks pushing their products at GeekDad, and more often than not, we nod our heads, smile, and say "kthxbye!" But once in a while something comes along that’s interesting. For example, the TwistTogether Lamp. They basically appear to be interlocking light-blocks that you can assemble into any shape […]
Continue Readingxkcd.com is an online webcomic with a huge following in the geek community. Back a bit, its creator, Greg Munroe created a comic about someone turning a room in their home into a ball pit. Then one of his fans did it for real. And so, now, has Greg. Link to his blog. From Neatorama.
Continue ReadingWhat happens when one of us (“us” being one of the GeekDad community) and his kids try a slightly different weekend project, a Geek meets This Old House mashup kind of thing? Well, I thought it was about time to give it a try. My “office” has been a somewhat sad little corner in the […]
Continue ReadingSaw this on Neatorama this weekend. This fellow seems to be something of a dome-geek, building Buckminster Fuller-inspired homes with plywood, and other basic materials. Take a look around his website, and especially see the process that went into crafting his home that ended up looking like a jack-o-lantern. Link.
Continue ReadingA multimeter is an instrument that, true to its name, measures a number of different aspects of electricy and electronics: voltage, resistance, capacitance, frequency, conductance, inductance, and others. If you are a geek, and don’t have a multimeter, you need to get one. Beyond insuring that you maintain your non-techie friends’ and family members’ awe […]
Continue ReadingYou know you’re an expecting GeekDad when your wife is due in less than two weeks, and while walking to work, you find yourself thinking about stroller design. "It would be great to find an urban stroller with three wheels and a pole-grip for stable, one-handed pushing," you say to yourself. And then, about ten […]
Continue ReadingWhat a great idea: The Lego Key Rack‘s keychain fobs are made of actual Legos, which snap to the wall-mounted rack for storage. $20, and you can buy extra keychains for $4 apiece. Discovered via Apartment Therapy: Nursery.
Continue Reading