Geekfoolery

There is perhaps no stronger early childhood memory than that of coming downstairs on Christmas morning to behold a treasure of wrapped gifts under the Christmas tree, larger by at least an order of magnitude than the anemic pile of boxes and packages placed there the night before by family members. There, staring you in the face, clear and incontrovertible proof that the stories repeated to you for weeks by parents, teachers, and of course, the sacred altar and guiding light, the television, are true. Read more…

Today, Mr. Alex invites a dear old friend as a guest blogger for the 12 Geeks of Christmas series. Jean Thomas is based in Boston, and has endured the annual gift exchange with Mr. Alex for more years than anyone should have to endure. Here we discuss the aspect of what a non-geek thinks when recieving a gift from a geek like me.

Gifting the Non-Geek: Tips for Holiday Shopping
Hello, and Happy Non-specific Holiday Season! Mr. Alex has invited me to offer the non-geek perspective on geek gift-giving. I will state upfront that I am not familiar with all 12 Geeks of Christmas. (Apparently neither is Mr. Alex, or he wouldn’t have weaseled his way out of one by inviting me to write a guest blog.) My qualifications extend to my being the non-geek recipient of gifts inflicted on me by friends of geek persuasion over the course of many years.
Read more…

There is no shortage of lists of gadgets that geeks want to receive for Christmas (or to be more inclusive, Chrismahannakwanzakuh). Gizmos for Geeks, Geekfoolery’s parent site, is just one of many that review and highlight the many shiny electronic objects that we geeks desire, which in the interest of time, can be summarized as “all of them.” So this post is not about what to get for a geek on your list, but rather, some suggestions on what you as a geek can give your non-geek friends and family. Gifts that will not only appeal to your nerdliness, but will also be received with more joy by your non-techie Aunt than she expressed last year when you gave her an HDMI cable (which, seriously dude, was completely thoughtless of you. What she needed was the HDMI to DVI adapter, not the cable). Read more…

Amazon announced their Kindle eBook reader this week, joining Sony’s Reader in the relatively uncrowded market for electronic book devices. Sony’s latest is a slicker 2.0 version of its first offering from a couple years ago. Kindle is Amazon’s baby, what I assume they are hoping will be a killer app, the iPod of the book world.

Read more…

From the sands of New Mexico, my good friend Bob Steinke’s Lunar Lander, the Laramie Rose, is still in the running for X Prize money offer by Grumman. Here follows the official press release: Read more…

Mr. Alex has been traveling on business for the last two weeks, and there’s nothing like business travel to test the limits of one’s always-on wireless connectedness to the virtual office and online network of cow-orkers.

I had with me on my two week trip:

An IBM laptop (work).

A Mac laptop (personal).

A Sprint wireless broadband card for the laptop.

A 3G smartphone with Internet access, instant messaging, GMail, access to my work Exchange mail, GPS and Googlemaps.

An iPod shuffle.

With all that stuff, a rental car and a hotel room, I’m a freakin’ technomad road warrior. I barely need a change of clothes, I am a wired up whirlwind of productivity.

Here’s a quick rundown of what works and what doesn’t: Read more…