The Great Geek Manual

All I can say is, it’s about damn time! After over half a century of empty promises, we’re finally going to have a genuine flying car on the market by 2010.

CNN featured a story about the future rescue vehicle just Wednesday. The design is being called the X-Hawk. What makes the X-Hawk really stand out from past flying car prototypes is the fact that it’s being designed specifically for urban environments. The design is motivated by the need for a new rescue vehicle that was demonstrated on 9/11.
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Get your Mooninite T-Shirt commemorating Boston’s complete over-reaction to Cartoon Network’s recent guerrilla marketing campaign. But buyer beware, Boston PD have been detonating lightbrites all around the city, and the District Attorney sounded pissed this morning on NPR. Wear one of these and you may be mistaken for a terrorist.

In the Medieval period, artists and scribes often used a metal stylus in order to draw on a specially prepared paper surface. Generally known as Metalpoint, or Silverpoint when the stylus was made of silver, artists such as Leonardo da Vinci, Dürer and Rembrandt all used this technique. http://www.silverpointweb.com/index.html gives a lot of information about how it works.
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There are only twenty days to Christmas, and it’s time to gear up, if you haven’t already! And of course, being a hardcore Geek, you have to do it right!

Decorations

• Circuitboard Christmas Tree Ornament
  Star Wars Christmas Ornaments
• The Steinbach Star Wars Darth Vader Nutcracker
• The Steinbach Star Wars Yoda Nutcracker.
• USB Powered Snowman and Xmas Tree

Music

• A Very Scary Solstice and An Even Scarier Solstice – a delightful yet hideous combination of over-commercialized holiday tunes and the unspeakable horrors of the Cthulhu Mythos. These collections include such classics as “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Fish-Men” and The Carol of the Old Ones.
• “Christmas In The Stars” The Star Wars Christmas Album!

Stories

• A Geek Christmas Carol
• A Podcast Christmas Carol
• Star Was: A Christmas Carol

Wrapping Paper

• Geeky Wrapping Paper

1. Optimus keyboard – The Optimus keyboard is a completely customizable keyboard with lcd displays built into every key. Users can assign different languages or symbols to show exactly what it is controlling at any moment. Like a video screen, there are no constraints on what images are shown. The function of the keyboard is designed so users can switch from HTML codes, to Quake – to the Latin alphabet, within a few strokes, taking just a matter of seconds.

It’s not on the market yet, but Art Lebedev Studios will be taking pre-orders for the Optimus-103 beginning December 12, just in time for Christmas. The Optimus-103 will not feature the double column of function keys shown on the left of the keyboard in the site’s photos, but the later release, called the Optimus-103 will. The price hasn’t been set yet, but Art Lebedev has said the keyboard will cost ‘less than a good mobile phone.’ Early reports estimate that the price will land north of $200. After you’ve finished drooling over the product shots, you can check out the blog which documents their year and a half of public development at their blog: http://community.livejournal.com/optimus_project/

2. Das Keyboard – Das Keyboard’s claim to fame is that it is entirely blank. There are no labels on its keys whatsoever. The theory is that if you aren’t looking at you fingers all the time, you’re going learn to type faster. In addition, Das Keyboard II features mechanical key switches with “sonore feedback,” which is a fancy name for “clicking.” Das Keyboard is based on IBM’s old model M keyboards, which are what anyone who lived through the eighties pictures whenever the word “keyboard” is mentioned. Supposidly, model M’s have better tactile feedback than modern membrane keyboards. (Seriously, Google “model M keyboards,” people are fanatical about them.) The Das Keyboard II, which is marketed to Ubergeeks, retails for $89.95.