Wall Mounted PC’s
Published November 4, 2010 | 
Now here’s an interesting idea. Put a small PC inside an electrical plug. What a cool idea. Well, it looks like it has been done. No idea of how good of a PC it is, but it would be great in the guest room or in the kids room at least. A lot harder to damage it. Enjoy.
Avatar Days
Published June 2, 2010 | Gavin Kelly directed a short film named Avatar Days that brings World of Warcraft avatars into the real world. It isn’t really done as a parody of WoW, but as rather a touching video that shows the avatars as real people, but those that sometimes need to kill other characters. I think he did a great job of highlighting the relationship between a real player and their avatar, and how an avatar is often just an extension of the person’s real personality.
10 Geeky Habits
Published March 17, 2010 | Wired had a great article on 10 Annoying Habits of a Geek.
Here’s my score:
- Punning – Absolutely, nothing is better than a good pun.
- Using “frak,” or Klingon, or both, instead of regular swear words – Yep, I frakking do.
- Weird or over-the-top ways of celebrating mainstream holidays – Nope, not my style.
- Dissecting movies – Of course I do, and by the way… why didn’t the bad guys in Avatar just bomb the planet from orbit… no, had to fly in close and get frakked by the good guys.
- Wearing obscurely geeky T-shirts to “normal” places – Yes, but she bought it for me. I’m sitting here in a hotel lobby with a t-shirt with an open pea pod on it, with several peas labeled squared root of negative one, with the caption “the i-Pod (it’s unreal)”. A geek friend of my wife had to explain it to her when she bought it.
- Requiring extra room in th ehouse for geeky things – Not really, I’m not a pack rat, so I don’t have sufficient geek stuff to require a separate room… yet.
- Geek toys and decorations can be hard to explain to kids – Not yet… no kids, but you can bet that our kids will be in geek heaven regarding toys.
- Looking up information while a discussion/argument is still in progress – Yep, guilty as charged.
- Needing to watch certain TV shows ASAP to avoid spoilers – Nope, don’t have a TV so we only watch when something comes out to Hulu or other places on-line.
- Geeky projects that take over the house and whole weekends – No, but sounds like fun… currently our dogs take over our lives on the weekends. My whole job is geeky and I am not that interested (never say never) of building my own server farm over a weekend.
So I did well enough to qualify as a Geek, but not so well that I wouldn’t have a chance at getting married. Balance is good.
Catholics vs Video Games
Published March 16, 2010 | PC World published an article regarding a Catholic marriage adviser claims that video games are ruining Catholic marriages. They cite an article from the Irish Times which stated that “internet use” caused a surge of 87.5% in martial problems.
The reasons cited are work, playing games, pornography, and gambling.
They claim that game addition is a causal factor in the issues. As someone that has in the past played computer games, and have seen how it impacted my relationship, I can understand why they are making an issue out it. It can be addicting, and it can make you ignore your spouse.
The problem I have with the linkage is that it doesn’t address why they are playing games. Do they play for enjoyment, or do they play to get away from the spouse? If they play to get away from the spouse, then the game is an outlet, not a cause. The martial problems may be the cause to the gaming addiction, not the other way around. To blame video games without looking at the rationale for playing the games, any findings are useless.
I don’t know if this is an attempt at persuading Catholics to avoid video games, or are they really trying to help marriages. If the latter, I hope they will go beyond blaming the internet and look at the relationship causes that may drive one spouse to the internet.
Geeky Barbie
Published February 13, 2010 | I saw this on Digg, and I couldn’t help myself. They linked to an article about the newest Barbie, “Computer Engineer Barbie”. Way cool. Now, all I’m missing is the daughter that I can buy it for. It would be great for young girls to aspire to be geeks.