There isn’t much to add to the headline, for fear of spoiling the fun, except to suggest that you watch for cameos by Muppets you probably wouldn’t expect to see. And a warning to put down your beverage while watching, so as to spare your computer a bath.
Photo: Flickr/laurgasms (CC)
While we were preparing the menu for our upcoming feast, my wife asked how many guests we’ll be having. Being the geek that I am, I answered: Half are from out-of-state, one quarter are from in-state but out-of-town, one seventh are from across [...]
Fan-submitted model at the Hartford LEGO Kidsfest
This weekend, my 6-yr-old and I caught the last day of the LEGO Kidsfest in Hartford, CT. The Kidsfest is almost exactly what it sounds like: a LEGO-orientated expo-style event, with tons of booths [...]
Image: Courtesy of Sparkfun Electronics
Mark your calendars now ! On January 7th 2010 SparkFun Electronics suppliers of devices that make for Happy Hardware Hackers is having a Free Day. That’s right Free as in beer. It’s there way of celebrating their 7th anniversary in [...]
Image: Michael Harrison
One year ago you were reading this by Michael Harrison.
If you head out to your Friendly Local Game Store and observe the tabletop gamer in his or her natural habitat, you’ll see that every gaming table is different. Some gamemasters are hunkered [...]
Lonnie's domain circa 2101 (copyright Alexander Preuss via NSS)
As Thanksgiving week begins and the winter holiday break follows close behind, millions of kids across America will be gearing up for late movie nights and marathon video game sessions. But [...]
Students from Oakton High School demonstrating the "Cougar Cannon" (Image: whitehouse.gov)
“We’re going to show young people how cool science can be.”
Those were some of the inspiring words by President Barack Obama at the launching of the new [...]
I love Playmobil as much as I love Lego. I grew up with both kinds of toys, side by side. I still have my Cowboy Playmobil set from a few decades ago. So as much love as Lego gets around here, I was more than happy to [...]
I’m always on the lookout for ways to introduce my son to music. We’re a musical family, and have been for some generations on both sides. But getting a three-year-old engaged in anything can be a sincere challenge, especially if it doesn’t somehow incorporate car noises or [...]
from Mythbusters twitter feed http://twitpic.com/qn35j
After seven years of promoting experimentation, education, and the scientific method on Mythbusters, Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman visited the White House today and received a direct shout-out from President Obama, who told them “I hope you’ve left the explosives [...]
Earth from the Rosetta Spacecraft (NASA APOD for November 23, 2009)
Good day everyone and welcome to the inaugural edition of “This Week In Space”. A place to check in on events happening within the world’s space programs [...]
We geeks love us our books. That’s why we had to split our picks into two lists! Check it out, there’s some good stuff here. Click on the gift guide logo on the right side column to see the aggregated GeekDad Gift Guides of this and [...]
Tauntaun Club Merchandise?
The geek hive mind was set to silly this weekend on Twitter, as the tag #starwarsbandnames ran amok. With many of the GeekDad writers contributing to the frivolity, we felt it important to record some of the results for our readers. [...]
Some of the Pumpkin Launching Contraptions Found at Punkin Chunkin (image: Discovery.com)
The staples of the Thanksgiving holiday are ingrained in our brains and we prepare accordingly year after year. The turkey in the oven, full of [...]
Interviews with kids’ humor writers like Norton Juster, Louis Sacher, and Daniel Handler (aka Lemony Snicket)
From the beginning, my kids liked funny. Funny movies, funny jokes (at least, funny to someone' [...]
Image © Wikimedia Commons
We geeks seem to have a peculiar attachment to quantifying things. It’s why our games involve complicated character sheets, or score sheets or little plastic thingies for putting wedges in. I’d go so far as to say that, were any of [...]
Image: Submitted by Emily G. by way of Cake Wrecks
From my experience, most geeks tend to marry other geeks. If you and your future spouse self-identified as a geek before you married, would you get a geeky cake? Would [...]
Image by Wes Anderson
We’ve been hearing some very good buzz about the stop-motion animated film by Wes Anderson (based on a Roald Dahl book), coming out this Wednesday. Now, we’ve gotten something even better - an extended clip from the movie (below), [...]
Randy & Rebecca Bresnik (Image From NASA)
A followup to the Monday GeekDad post (Atlantis to Rise on STS-129: Houston, We’ve Had A Baby) on Astronaut Randy Bresnik and his wife, Rebeccca, who was expected to deliver a baby while Randy [...]
Maximilien Brice; Michael Hoch; Joseph Gobin, © CERN
In a stunning piece of astronomical news, the planet Sol III — better known as “Earth” — has been completely obliterated. In connection with this sudden catastrophe, authorities have questioned a resident [...]
Based on the attraction of the same name at Disney theme parks, and featuring characters from the Disney/Pixar films, Toy Story Mania! is a multiplayer mini-game collection, available exclusively for the Wii. While many of the games are entertaining enough and the graphical presentation is top notch, even Buzz Lightyear [...]
OK, 51 is a few too many. I’ll make this short and just give you 5.
Will the whole family like it?
Yes. Like all good cartoons, Planet 51 has something for everyone. The cultural references are non-stop, the characters are fun and entertaining, and there are a [...]
image: MAGFest
While most of us will be doing little more than groggily breaking our resolutions on New Year’s Day, a fine collection of geeks and gamers will be gathering in Alexandria, VA for the annual Music and Gaming Festival. MAGFest 2010, which will go down January 1-4, [...]
Ticket To Ride (image:designer-notes.com)
We’ve had some great feedback for our family anecdotal video game reviews on Game People. So this week we’ve been trying our hand at reviewing board games in the same way. Rather than rating them, we want to inform [...]
Can you help Harvey’s Department Store plan their annual holiday sale? Quickly recognizing the known pattern of “Christmas Creep”, Matt S. correctly deduced the sale date of October 25th, 2009 and gets a holiday gift of his own, a $50 gift certificate from ThinkGeek! Congrats!
PuzzleEvery year, Harvey’s Department [...]
Image by Frank Frazetta
You know that unicorn & dragon original you picked up at the fantasy convention? Don’t throw it away, it might be worth a million bucks some day.
Grand Master Frank Frazetta’s cover painting for the Lancer paperback, Conan the Conqueror by Robert [...]
Photo by Steve Voght; used under CC license.
Next Thursday is, of course, Thanksgiving Day in the United States. While we celebrate the holiday with our families, along with turkey, stuffing and pumpkin pie (or whatever traditions you may have), [...]
Just a quick note to let readers in the Toronto, Ontario area know that the city is offering free admission for kids 12 and under to the city’s numerous historic sites. This includes Fort York, Gibson House, Spadina Museum and Colborne [...]
Sunday in Kyoto, the latest release from publisher The Secret Mountain, is a storybook and accompanying CD featuring songs written by Gilles Vigneault.
We pointed out a previous Secret Mountain offering called My Name is Chicken Joe back in April of this year and Sunday in Kyoto is a worthy [...]
Sand Viper (image: fusionhobbies.com)
Building and racing Radio Controlled cars is a strong and vivid childhood memory for me. Now my kids are getting a little older I’ve been keen to get them as enthused about these super-fast model kit cars as I am. It [...]
The success of GeekDad has come from community, from pointing out all the cool geeks around us so we can all revel in what we love. Back when we posted a silly little story called “100 Geeks You Should Be Following On Twittter,” we had [...]
Uncanny X-Men #137, the original end to the Dark Phoenix Saga, far superior to the move version.
Whenever there’s a new superhero film coming out, my friends who know my interest in superhero comics ask me if [...]
TM & Copyright 2009 LucasFilm Ltd. Used by permission
Considering it was pitched as “Rise of the Bounty Hunters,” it has been a while since Cad Bane and his ilk played a significant role in any episode. This week, in [...]
Photo by: Anton Olsen
The Geeklets and I recently had the pleasure of attending our first VEX Robotics Competition. We took our team, The Screaming Weasels, to the Hilton Anatole in Dallas for the WOC VEX Robotics Invitational.
It was an early start for us. I’m [...]
Back about 8 months ago, I reviewed a fun, free piece of software called Shape Collage. Long story short: it takes a set of image files and turns them into a collage - some kind of shape or, as you can see about, [...]
Books have an incredible hold on us. As kids, they are our first exposure to many strange and different places and unusual, fun (and sometimes scary) creatures. Reading sparks our imaginations and charges our emotions like nothing else. Just witness the incredible draw that the recent [...]
Image: Activision
The Holiday season must be upon us because I’m getting review copies of games based on very popular toys. The only time that happens is in the short months before major gift buying begins. One of the most popular toy lines right now is the [...]
I’ve always had trouble getting earbuds to stay in my ears. Maybe I have smaller-than-average ear canals, but for whatever reason, standard earbuds just don’t feel comfortable, and fall out really easily. And trying to listen to my iPod while running is incredibly frustrating. This is [...]
Image:Courtsey of Bug Labs
Bug Labs is the maker of The Bug, a modular open source system for building devices. With different modules you can add GPS, motion detection or sound to your gadget. They are always releasing new modules to help build the widget you’ve [...]
For God so loved the world that he gave us an excuse to overspend every year.
Remember Matt Blum’s lament, Why I Hate Christmas, from last year?
It drew a fair number [...]
By Sean McNally
Sean McNally is an artist and animator and came up with an original and memorable way to get his resume looked at by game studios: he made it look like an RPG character sheet. Genius, if you ask me, because what *is* [...]
Sometimes it can be hard to see the messages a movie teaches, especially if they’re unintentional. The best way to see a movie’s messages, the bad ones in particular, is to be a parent watching the movie with your kids. Suddenly you find yourself talking to your kids after you [...]
Toys and games — what an great category! Is that present for mom or dad, or one of the kids? Does it matter? A lot of these present suggestions really are good for the whole family, cliche or not. Click on the gift guide logo on [...]
But it’s not a truck this year.
It’s been a holiday tradition for my son to get a Hess Toy Truck under the Christmas tree every year. 2004 was a SUV with twin motorcycles in the back, 2005 was a firetruck with another firetruck inside, 2006 was flatbed [...]
Everybody knows the classic winter holiday movies, from older ones like It’s a Wonderful Life to newer ones like A Christmas Story, to ones that get remade over and over again like A Christmas Carol. Whether or not you like such movies, you must admit that it does get a [...]
Atlantis STS-129 Countdown (Courtesy of @MoonRangerLaura at the STS-129 TweetUp)
There are many stories among parents of a father being away while the mother of their children is in labor. Stories such as “he was on a plane from [...]
By Flickr user Caveman 92223
Recent psychological research suggests that we tend to remember the brands associated with, not just our youth, but our infancy:
Ellis’s team found that student participants were quicker to recognise brand names they had encountered from birth. This [...]
(image: Old Navy.com)
Can you help Harvey’s Department Store plan their annual holiday sale? E-mail your solution by 10:00 PM EST on Thursday for your chance to win a $50 gift certificate from ThinkGeek!
Every year, Harvey’s Department Store holds a holiday sale. Every year, [...]
(Image: Sparkle Labs)
Though I wouldn’t consider my dad to be the stereotypical Mr. Fix-It, I do have a distinct memory from my childhood of building a radio with him from scratch. I was probably nine or ten. He had gotten a kit, and we put [...]
Cover image © Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
There are far too few really unusual publications in the world of children’s literature. For geeky parents, especially, it can be difficult to find books that will appeal to their young readers without being retreads of [...]
Photo: Tom Conte
On November 14th The American Museum of Natural History opened a new exhibit called “Traveling The Silk Road: Ancient Pathway To The Modern World.” I had a chance to check the exhibit out along with a colleague, Tom Conte, who just came back from [...]
I spent a rather unusual weekend with my boys, Jon and Aidan. Unusual for two reasons: it was warm, short sleeves weather outside (very strange for London, Ontario where it’s more likely I’d be shovelling snow this time of year than sunning) and we spent the weekend camping in a [...]
Game Tree diagram of The Mystery of Chimney Rock.
You’re sitting at your desk at work. It’s another typical Monday: the kids overslept, you spilled your coffee and had to rush home for a [...]
God of War Collection (image: fanpop.com)
I hadn’t paid much attention to the upcoming God of War Collection on PS3. But recently my 60GB launch PS3 died, and with it my path to backward compatibility, so I started to see the release in [...]
Image: J. Edgar P.
John Edgar Park used Lego motor wires to create a wall-mounted power station for all his personal electronics! And there’s even space for his keys.
The first thing I did was to sift through my Lego Mindstorms and Technic bins. I grabbed some [...]
WordSpin on the iPhone.
A couple years ago, I picked up a game called WordSpin at a thrift store. I like word games, and I’ve always loved playing with magnets, and here was a game that combined the two! The game involves rearranging and [...]
Image From NASA/LCROSS
Is there water on the Moon? The NASA LCROSS mission has determined the answer to be a resounding YES! GeekDad has covered the LCROSS mission with an article prior to the LCROSS launch by Lonnie Morgan, a pair of articles [...]
Photo:Muffet/flickr (CC-attribution)
This week, we needed your help finding a bottle of alcoholic cider in a batch of 1001 mostly non-alcoholic bottles. Due to some poor wording on my part, I accepted several different answers as possible solutions. Congratulations to Lt. Griffith for having his correct answer [...]
Photo by jen light; used under CC license
If you’re a Muppet lab assistant or a cartoon bird pursued by a hapless coyote, you are no longer welcome at Danvers High School in Massachusetts. Or, at least, you’d better keep [...]
I had planned on leading with a joke about seeing a Christmas movie on the first weekend of November, but GeekDad is running it’s holiday gift guide already, so the glass houses rule applies. Onward! Fair warning: I teach Dickens regularly, and so am a bit obsessive [...]
The Krondor Krew at Nerd Invasion
Embracing your inner nerd (or geek) has always been a struggle in life. Some people have found it easy to be openly nerdy, and they have suffered the stereotypes and stigmas that come with doing so. Others [...]
My five-year old GeekSon has become interested in books about naval warships. So I thought I would take him to see some real warships. Luckily, we have a few choices in the Greater Boston area.
I remember visiting Battleship Cove in Fall River, Massachusetts when I was kid. Would my [...]
(Image: Oxford University Press)
Nothing is more gorgeous than nature at its finest. A total solar eclipse is a prime example of that. Even a partial eclipse is a memorable experience, if you get outside and witness it first hand. I remember during a partial [...]
TM & © 2009 Lucasfilm Ltd. / All Rights Reserved
Matt recently asked how we can help our kids become good adults, which is certainly a question any parent thinks about regularly. The familiar question contains a key [...]
When I bought my first car, I had my brother the mechanic come with me, and simply listened to his excellent advice. But if your daughter is not so lucky, this is the book you need.
The subtitle of “In the Driver’s Seat” is “A Girl’s Guide to Her First Car,” [...]
Image via amazon.com
For the past couple of weeks, my family has been testing out a review copy of Party Games 3. We’ve had some fun, laughed at the graphics, and seen our competitive edge come out in unusual ways.
Game Party 3 is a new [...]
Pixelh8 (image Fact.co.uk)
Friend of GeekDad and internationally renowned chip tune musician Pixelh8, is appearing at the curiously named exhibition Space Invaders: Art and the Computer Game Environment. The event is FACT’s winter exhibition, and Pixelh8is taking part in a chip tune DS Marching Band.
17 December, [...]
Poster from U.S. Dept. of Veterans Affairs
We’d like to take a moment to commemorate Veterans Day in the U.S. We ordinarily deal with far less serious matters, but as most of us are American, we felt it was important that [...]
Image: John Quigley
Over the years, there have been a few artists who have used Rubik’s cube as their medium and have illustrated everything from portraits to 8 bit videogames as their subject mater. The latest to be recognized for this decidedly geeky art [...]
Hair Salon (image: icnetwork.co.uk)
Having purchased a DSi at launch I’ve been eagerly awaiting games that make use of it’s new features. Hair Salon is the first. Games Basement provided us a copy of Hair Salon recently, so I thought I’d share our [...]
Back in the old days, we had one of those sad little CafePress stores that no one ever went to. But now that GeekDad is, um, less-unpopular, something else was in order. And that something else has been provided by our good friends at [...]
Neil Gaiman (image: mhpbooks.com)
Today, a great geek, literary and comic book icon celebrates a birthday. There is not much that cannot be told about Neil Gaiman that you can’t find on his brooding website or his Wikipedia entry. There is a lot [...]
The Portable Galactic Empire. Photo: Jonathan Liu
The Portable Galactic Empire (PGE) is the first game from Castle Games, released at the beginning of October. I requested a review copy and tested it out in a three-player game. It’s [...]
The Album Cover (image: Third Man Records)
Here at GeekDad, we’re big fans of Carl Sagan, the GOAT when it comes to making science understandable for the masses (IOHO). In September of this year, Mr. Sagan went viral posthumously with the [...]
There are many, many laws having nothing to do with government that are useful to know because they tell you something about how the universe works. There are Newton’s laws of motion, the laws of thermodynamics, Boyle’s Law, Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, among many. Most of these laws have been known [...]
Image From NASA/LRO
For just over 21 hours in July of 1969, two men became the first humans to take a stroll around the Moon. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked around the surface of the Moon supported by Michael Collins orbiting in the Apollo 11 [...]
Magnetic Force Field (image: NASA)
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the large news outlets with an internet presence (CNN.com, MSNBC, etc.,) have pared back certain types of news coverage in favor of more popular stories. It’s much more likely you’ll see a [...]
Photo by eyeliam; used under CC license
Here on GeekDad, we spend a lot of time focusing on raising our kids to become geeks like us. That’s a fine and wonderful pursuit, and I can’t say I wouldn’t be disappointed if [...]
Edward Eager’s Half Magic is a fantastic book about four kids who discover a magic talisman and then have all sorts of adventures. (You may remember Matt Blum’s excellent review, which inspired me to read it.) It was followed by Magic by the [...]
What GeekParent doesn’t love his or her gadgets? This year’s Gadget Gift Guide is replete with useful and semi-useful electronica. And if you can’t find what you’re looking for, click on the gift guide logo (right) to see the aggregated GeekDad Gift Guides of prior years.
MakerBot
[...]
With the Sansa Clip+ MP3 Player, Sansa takes another run at the low end portable music market. While the first generation Clip didn’t quite dethrone the iPod Shuffle despite the inclusion of a 1,000 song slotRadio card, thanks to a more colorful presentation, plenty of on board storage and a [...]
If you’ve been following us on Twitter or listening to the podcasts, you’ll have heard the news that we’re working on rolling out a bunch of new community-focused tools for GeekDad. We’ve always felt like we’ve built a good community here, but we never had the [...]
Photo by Ken Denmead
Our friend Terry turned a certain age this weekend. My wife went out to get him a cake and candles. The only fun cake she could find at the grocery store was Iron Man - not inappropriate for Terry. But [...]
COOKIE!!!
Cookie Monster is no doubt the least good-for-you part of Sesame Street but it was always my favorite. And then there’s Oscar the Grouch, who’s already been the subject of a Geek Dad post.
One of us.
Likely the Cookie Monster is the favorite of many [...]
Photo: Chris Breeze (Creative Commons-attribution)
Last week, we needed help determining which of our witnesses was involved in a bank robbery. We got it! Congratulations to Shane for having his correct answer randomly chosen from all of the correct answers we received. Shane will receive [...]
Photo by Jay Reed; used under CC license.
We all know LEGO bricks are the best reusable toy building material in existence. So why, you may have wondered, aren’t there more holiday-themed ideas for decorating with them? What, aside from [...]
Disclaimer: my wife, who is a high school teacher, came up with the idea for this article. As a fairly geeky person herself, my wife is often saddled with technology projects. Currently she is the Lead Teacher for the Information Technology Academy at her school. Her academy [...]
Programming 101 (image: desktopnexus.com)
I’m always keen to get my kids into video gaming, although I’m not sure why. Perhaps because of this, I was really taken by a story told by a friend (@Pixelh8) who reviews games on Game People with me. He tells of [...]
Cooking Mama 3 (image: mercurynews.com)
Being married to a cook makes my ears perk up whenever I hear of a new cooking themed game. It’s fascinating to hear what she makes of them, but also a great way to rope her in for a [...]
Image: John Baichtal
You know what a ducted fan hovercraft is — it hovers by shooting air down just strong enough to keep itself to keep itself off the ground. A second fan(s) pointing backwards propels the craft forward. There are toy hovercraft out there, but they [...]
Image From NASA MSFC, Artist Pat Rawling
The legend that is Sir Arthur C. Clarke is formidable. As a science fiction author who knew how to mix imagination with scientific reality, Clarke left the world a legacy of wonderful stories as [...]
My 3-year-old is impressed.
If you’re like many modern parents with little kids, you’ve probably got two cars, but one car seat per child, which you move back and forth depending on who’s playing chauffeur for the day. If you’re lucky, you might even have a [...]
Image © Hallmark Cards, Inc.
If you’re a parent, and especially if you’re a geek parent, you’ve probably made your share of funny voices. We all do it, whether it’s to make a baby laugh or to sound like a particular character while reading [...]
Image by Lori Adams from the book "Triops: A Very Unusual Creature"
If you’re in the market for a low-cost, low-maintenance, low-commitment but high-interest pet, you can’t do better than triops. What are triops? Also known as tadpole shrimp, triops are a kind of [...]
(Image: Oxford University Press)
Fairy tales fill our childhoods. Story after story, all just a little bit different, make up the books we read, the movies we see and the modernized versions we are exposed to. Sometimes it is just nice to go back and [...]
John Baichtal, Z, Matt Blum, Jason B. Jones, Curtis Silver, Dave Giancaspro, Brad Moon, Brian McLaughlin, Ken Denmead, Paul Govan, Anton Olsen, Todd Dailey, Dave Banks, Chuck Lawton, Jenny Williams, Natania Barron, Lonnie Morgan, Moses Milazzo, Kathy Ceceri, John Madden, Corrina Lawson, Doug Cornelius, Jonathan Liu, Russ Neumeier, Tom Angleberger, Jacob Russell, Andrew Kardon, John Booth, Daniel Donahoo, Kevin Makice
