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Smartwatches are a way of saying 'look how tech I am'

No, THIS watch (or perhaps THIS one) is a way of saying "Look how tech I am".

BTW, Woz has worn a Nixie-Tube watch for years

Not transistors, but definitely tubes:
http://www.cathodecorner.com/n...

Note the excellent quote from Slashdot :)

I guess he went back to his Nixie Tube Watch.

Geek can be a style! Check out this amazing Nixi Tube Watch. It's awesome, geeky and pretty great to look at. It doesn't go too well with an Armani suit, and it isn't quite classy enough to flash around a funeral, but it sure would score you some points at a geeky interview.

I sent the following letter to Bruce Schneier last year...

Back in the July 2011, I built a device called the Video Coat.

I then went on a family vacation, which culminated in displaying the coat at the Maker Faire in Detroit. The coat traveled to Detroit packed into a suitcase, and I spent an hour assembling it in the hotel room.

I had to catch a plane just as the Faire was ending, so we quickly piled the family into the car and drove to the airport. I didn't have time to pack the coat back into its suitcase, so I carried it on my lap.

I wore the coat into the airport. Everything was fine until I arrived at the luggage check-in counter and was getting my boarding passes. Then, a Detroit cop walked up and told me that he'd had about 50 phone calls about my coat.

They asked me to please pack it into my checked luggage. I had my boarding passes at this time, so I took the time to sit down and disassemble the coat and pack it into its suitcase.

Then, the TSA had decided that my family (wife and two teenage sons) was special, so they wrote SSSS on all of our boarding passes. They nicely let us cut ahead of all the other passengers so that we could get fully scanned, groped, fondled and molested in time to catch our flight. I was enjoying this whole situation very much, since it was so surreal.

The most surreal part was when they inspected the eight big LiPo batteries that are used to provide power to the video coat. They decided that the batteries were small enough to be allowed on the flight, and they handed all eight of them to me for me to repack into my son's backpack.

The way more ultimately surreal part was a month later, when I was at Burning Man, recharging the batteries one morning. I wasn't paying attention, and I accidentally plugged one battery into another battery instead of plugging it into the charger. There was a brilliant white light as the contacts started arcing against each other. I quickly unplugged the batteries and regained my composure.

Since this battery is designed to provide 100 Amperes continuous current in normal use, one can only imagine what the short-circuit current capability is. The manufacturer doesn't provide any safety fuses or shutoff circuits in the packs. It's safe to assume that two of these batteries plugged into each other would catch fire in about 10 seconds.

Imagine if I had plugged two batteries into each other on an airplane! I had enough incendiary material on hand to start four fine lithium fires on that aircraft, not that I would want to do anything remotely like that. I really don't know what the flight crew would have done about that situation. It definitely would make headlines.

So can you please tell me why you think that the TSA allows incendiary devices to be carried on board, but not bottled water?

Bruce's reply? "Because there was an uncovered liquid plot, but no documented battery plot."

Woz has a Nixie tube watch. You gotta love a guy like that.
I think it is this one:
http://www.cathodecorner.com/nixiewatch/

I was there displaying my video coat, being a human television. We had to run to catch a flight at Detroit Metro, so I didn't have time to pack my gizmo, so went to the airport wearing it.

Now I know what Cory Doctorow was talking about in his novel "Makers" with regard to the excessive searching applied to people who create stuff. As far as they're concerned, a dad with a family in tow, wearing a coat with wires and circuit boards on it, is a human bomb. I was just laughing throughout the whole extended search.

We got on our plane OK, because I didn't give them actual shit, but my kids got a good lesson when I said out loud, "This is the land of the free", and the nice TSA lady said, "Not any more."

Actually, he's not evil at all. He's just into bigger engines than I am. http://www.selectric.org/ vs http://www.cathodecorner.com/

Nixies are neat http://www.cathodecorner.com/nixiewatch/

I also prefer analog or the old 70's LED watches. Funny now many people look at a LED watch and are just astounded.

At least I'm not alone in thinking so; I don't care how geeky you are, this does not approximate "style", unless your style is "ugly". At the very least, for $400, I expect brushed metal, if not something better. That plastic look just has to go.

Geeky, yes, but it's not stylish at all, not even to a bunch of geeks on Slashdot. Sorry, but it's true.

I bought a used 2001 Prius in great shape earlier this year for $13k (60k miles). It was being sold on Craigslist by a couple who were trading up to a newer model.

I seriously doubt the tribrid idea would fly... electric-drive hybrids run off batteries most of the time with the combustion engine kicking off only during strong-ish accelerations or when the batteries go below a certain point. Most of the time, the gas engine would not run long enough to release enough heat and generate usable amounts of steam.

This sounds completely backwards, at least for Priuses. The engine is on virtually all the time. It decides to turn itself off at red lights and in parking garages when I'm going 10 mph, but most of the time it's running at a stable rpm that doesn't change too much. During the first 5 minutes the car is in its warmup phase and I get 30 mpg, but after that I get 50. On the highway, the car is basically just powered by the engine alone. When I accelerate to pass somebody it uses the battery to assist.

The whole point is to buffer power output from the primary power source (the engine) so you can get the same performance from a smaller one. Energy is stored in the battery during times it's not needed and drawn from it during hard accelerations. The engine is decoupled from the constantly changing power demand- it runs at a relatively stable and efficient rpm and produces a relatively stable torque no matter what you're doing unless the computer decides to turn it off. A steam engine run on exhaust heat would be a great addition to a Prius.

That, and an odometer that uses Nixie tubes.

It seems like a watch is the wrong form factor for this thing. The idea is really cool, and I think I might actually buy one if it was made as a desk clock, but I wouldn't want that enormous hockey-puck-sized-thing strapped to my wrist all day.

Although currently sold out, it seems the same guy has made some much cooler desk clocks in the past.

It seems like a watch is the wrong form factor for this thing. The idea is really cool, and I think I might actually buy one if it was made as a desk clock, but I wouldn't want that enormous hockey-puck-sized-thing strapped to my wrist all day.

Although currently sold out, it seems the same guy has made some much cooler desk clocks in the past.

It seems like a watch is the wrong form factor for this thing. The idea is really cool, and I think I might actually buy one if it was made as a desk clock, but I wouldn't want that enormous hockey-puck-sized-thing strapped to my wrist all day.

Although currently sold out, it seems the same guy has made some much cooler desk clocks in the past.

Wow! /me pulls out plastic.

Really, this is just sad. It's ugly too: look.

Scope Clock

Nixie Clock

Scope Clock

Nixie Clock

This guy sells Nixie clocks as well as a really cool Oscilloscope clock. He's charging roughly $30 to assemble the kits he sells.

Wow, those nixie clocks bring back some fond memories. I always wanted to build a nixie project, but as a novice hardware hacker, couldn't even read the hookup schematic. Now, a little older, wiser, and with the help of these kits maybe I'll finally build one.

However, while browsing some of the associated links, I came across this clock, which I find even cooler:

http://www.cathodecorner.com/

It uses an oscilloscope tube to draw the time in green phosphor arcs - no pixels. Way cool! And a kit is available with a guts-on-display plexiglass case. Awesome...

--Jim