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Geek Gift Ideas 2001
Once again its time for Slashdot readers to chime in on what they think would make good gift geek christmas presents. Please put approximate prices in the Subject so Santa can more easily decide your gift ;) I'm still stuck for ideas for a few people yet. Of course I'll have to post my ideas anonymously so people don't know what they're getting ;)
I think the Apple iPod will totally kick ass this holiday season...
A new game console, plus a Star Wars related game... what else could a geek possibly want?
A job
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
A girlfriend of course, all geeks want those !
Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities.
Aristotele
www.gerberblades.com
better than a swiss army knife and a leatherman. you can even build your own.
JediLuke
-Do or Do Not, There is no Try
Did you give it to him? You could have used it on that penultimate word.
And without port 80 blocked.
Best Slashdot Co
I want my shiny New Economy back!
The RealDoll. Never have to talk to a real girl again!
And, for you geekchicks out there, they now make a male realdoll!
Brant
Argle. Bargle.
The first time I read your post I thought you said: "all geeks want hoes." Which makes sense; when's the last time you saw a nerdy pimp? ;)
F-bacher
James Tiberius Kirk: "Spock, the women on your planet are logical. No other planet in the galaxy can make that claim."
slashdot
seems
to
think
they're
pretty
cool,
maybe
they're
what I
want!
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
However, my sister's kids are getting a Dreamcast with Samba de Amigo that I picked up several months ago. Really, it is more of a family gift (my mom loves that game), but I like to play the rich uncle who shamelessly spoils his niece and nephew (since their mother doesn't).
The middle mind speaks!
12. 36 gig SCSI drives
11. Mosix Nodes
10. Thousand dollars
9. Monitors
8. Cases of DVD-Rs
7. OC-3's
6. Cases of beer or caffinated beverage.
5. Golden fingers
4. Dual-Head Matrox g550s
3. Months of rent
2. Mylex raid controllers
1. Copy of Manos!
oh yeah, and world peace, and for Debian woody to go stable
~ a low user id is no indication I have a clue what I'm talking about.
I've always enjoyed brewing my own beer.
For under $100 you can get all the stuff you need to brew and bottle your own beer.
If they are the handy person type, gift cards for your local Home Depot, Loews, Menards, etc. are good.
Bookworms always like gift cards to Barnes-Noble, B. Dalton, Waldenbooks, etc.
Or Lego Mindstorms whan all else fails
Carpe Scrotum - The only way to deal with your competition.
..most ideas I've read here are rather strange.
The ultimate geek gift is a computer.
Always.
Ever.
All the time.
If a geek has 1 computer he can always use another one.
If a geek has n computers he can always use n+1 computers.
In fact, the necessary (but no sufficient) condition for being a geek is to have always use for another computer. If someone hasn't he isn't a geek.
Owner of a Mensa membership card.
I personally would really enjoy a high-powered high-tech remote control helicopter myself.
:) Maybe even a sensitive omni-directional mic?
Arm it with a video camera to not only spy on friends or surprise them when they are backing out of the driveway... But also to travel over long distances and see where you are going at the same time
Hook up the A/V and R/C to a high-power transmitter and sit in your equipment van in the park with the dish spinning.
I think it'd be a blast.
orgnine
With all the hype of Xbox, Gamecube, and even remaining hype of PS2, people seem to forget that lonely Sega Dreamcast sitting on the bottom shelf for $80. It runs linux! It has an ethernet port! It's the ultimate geek hacking toy for Christmas. Info here.
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
Inexpensive and wise.
Oh, yes.
30 discs of the Complete National Geographic from 1888 to 2000.
Every article, Every picture, and of course every Cool ass map
Lordbyron
www.wylywade.com
Your freedom is worth far more than a woman.
Enjoy it.
109 at cotco.. check www.costco.com
***There is no point in asking, you'll get no reply***
Think Geek has RF Dealbolts. Basically, deadbolts for your home that have a remote control.
Digital picture frames are cool. The ones that plug into your computer via USB don't require a subscription. Kensington makes a good one (640x480) around $200. People ooh and ahh over it. (For the rich geek, get him 20 and let him make a collage over a wall. Sorry. That's more Martha Stewart than Slashdot.)
TiVo! If you haven't already joined the revolution, join it. You'll thank yourself. It will *completely* change the way in which you use your television. Oh, and for the better, too.
An 80's Arcade Game. One of those real-life 6' stand-up arcade games. Any self-respecting geek wouldn't snub his nose at one... well, unless it was a really bad title. "Oh, wow! Pit Fighter! I've always wanted one of THOSE."
Along with the idea of the RF deadbolts, various places sell mechanisms which are used for opening and closing outside gates ($800?). Would be awfully handy for the geek to fit that on a door. Bringing in the groceries or heavy electronics, having the door swing open on command (wireless or touch-pad) would be really handy. [Insert standard disclaimers about potential for misuse.]
X10 remote control stuff. 'Nuff said.
Satellite radio for car. If you've got a musical geek.
Roller Shoes. If they haven't gone out of style already. Like normal shoes, but at the flip of the button, wheels pop out from below and turn into roller skates. Yes, they make these.
hehe ... freedom from a bad woman, priceless ... endearment to a good one, also priceless.
Free Techno/Jazz/DNB/MI Music by guys obsessed with monkeys!
Every once in a while I pull out a soldering iron and rediscover the fun of building widgetry from the ground up. Project books giving an introduction to electronics and a set of simple but neat building block circuits are still kicking around, and would be a useful addition to the pile as well.
I'll dig out my own pile of each someday. Geek appeal comes from trying to build things that most people would never think of (a working mechanical clock out of Construx was my biggest accomplishment with that medium).
This falls under the "intricate hobbies" category, and so has a good chance of being welcome. I know I'm not the only geek with folded paper critters gracing his cube (a dragon, a Pierson's Puppeteer, and a Federation starship - yes, it can be done!).
At $50-$100 Cdn apiece, one reference book costs as much as a large stack of sci-fi books. Help with getting new ones is always welcome, and I'm sure I'm not the only geek who likes documentation on the nifty tools I'm thinking about using (or am already using, for that matter).
There's no need to stick with hardware that will be obsolete in six months
Caveat with most of these - make sure your recipient is interested in them first. Yes, it ruins the surprise, but it's better than getting a bucketful of transistors when the sight of copper and lead make you cringe.
>>or perhaps just another 21"
I could go for a few more inches, but 21 might be a bit extravagant.
Like crack, but digital. But so gooooood.
You do realize that they released these precisely to eat up my disposable income, right?
Two highly geeky DVDs (amongst many) are:
The Matrix/Matrix Revisited Box Set
The Star Trek Box Set (Treks one thru nine)
And not quite as geeky, but with heavy Internet overtones:
Serial Experiments: Lain Box Set
I pased through the mall yesterday and saw many toy store pushing "robo-bugs". The gift for little boys, or shelf-filler on Dec 26?
SPAM!
Need Free Juniper/NetScreen Support? JuniperForum
Anyone who wants to use 12 drives on one (dual channel) controller card, and still get decent throughput.
80 IDE drives means 80 channels of IDE - or 40 channels of IDE and only 40 drives working at a time...
This sig left unintentionally blank.
Best of all, (and unlike the Rio Volt SP250), it has a quite usable UI that lets you search your disks for MP3's by Artist, Title, Genre and so on. (On the other hand, the Rio has an FM tuner, and plays WMA files too). The UI is what sold me on this unit, it really is the make-or-break.
$128 at buy.com
Osama bin Laden's nuts on a stick planted at ground zero!
~price = $25,000,000
Hand carved stone, stone board, etc.
The iPod is a pretty cool little device, but it would be even cooler if it could record sounds on the go. That way, it could be a replacement for those microcasette voice recorders that a lot of people use, or you could just (assuming an input jack, rather than a little built in microphone) plug it into the headphone jack of a soundboard or walkman or whatever. You get the idea.
Don't just think music here: consider that, if paired with moderately decent voice recognition software back on the desktop computer, you could have close to instant transcription of speeches, lectures, meetings, etc. This is really what the PDA was invented to do, but you have to teach yourself how to get data in & out of the device, and even with experience it's a slow process.
Something like the iPod could solve the same problem in a completely novel way. It has more than enough storage capacity to record a lot of audio data, and might [???] have the processing power to do so easily. [If it doesn't have the horsepower, then maybe iPod2 can bulk up on cpu & ram, along with that built-in mic.] No futzing around with graffiti -- just leave it on your desk, recording passively. Later on, it can be rapidly synced with the much more powerful Mac/PC/whatever, where you can do the interesting heavy duty processing on your data -- transcribe it, upload it, burn to cd, whatever. Brilliant.
Having audio out -- where you can record stuff (songs, etc) on your computer & carry it with you on the go -- is cool. Having audio in -- where you can bring sounds from out in the world back to the computer for processing -- would be even better. I want to see someone build such a device.
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
A Terapin Video CD Recorder, $499 is a bit steep, but less than $1499 for the Video DvD Recorder. Works just like a VCR, except you use a CDR disc instead of a tape. It burns the disc as a standard VCD so it is also playable on most DvD players and Computers.
"Our products just aren't engineered for security,"
-Brian Valentine,VP in charge of MS Windows Development
Pretty sure it would make me a hero... on the cheap!
Only problem I had was that I folded the thank you note in the "baby in a cradle" pattern to commemerate my "new time wasting project" (the origami). She mistook it and thought my wife and I were expecting...
"Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."
If you haven't found them the last two years I've made this post, you're missing out. Several small time game companies make cheap games often with a delightfully geeky bent:
A self-modifying card game where the rules of the game are the cards played.
No, not the beer. A Unquestionably cool set of plastic pyramids suitable for playing a variety of games, and designing of your own games.
Imagine real-time (as opposed to turn based) blackjack on speed.
All of these games are perfect for sitting in restraunts waiting for food, or other such awkward time slots that normally get wasted.
Erskin
geek.
I just want an entire keg of Guiness, and a keg-er-ator that can hold it!
...the gift of the English language. Take time out from your day and teach a poor, semiliterate computer nerd how to spell. Make space in your day to instruct him on the difference between "loose" and "lose". Get him a Concise Oxford English Dictionary.
The editorial staff of Slashdot certainly could use this gift, from what I've seen.
hyacinthus.
Skip the commercial crap altogether -- exchange gift exemption vouchers and do something relaxing on Buy Nothing Day.
Handmade presents are the best, and handmade presents with a geek theme are great for geeks.
Why not give your s.o./parents a portrait of yourself made out of your code, like using the Text-Image plug-in for the GIMP, or my own image to text. Get a nice hi-res image of yourself and your best perl script/r00t sploit, combine the two and print it out on some photo quality paper, mat and frame it.
use the case of an old monitor as the pot for a large plant.
make a custom keyboard which only has the letters of your s.o.'s name.
get out the dremel, epoxy, spare parts, creativity and go at it.
-f
www.blackant.net
A great gift for youngsters and oldsters alike.
The Harvard Classics. You can find them on eBay every now and then.
Next year, you can give them the Shelf of Fiction (scroll to the bottom).
The huge variation in price depends on how you acquire the lot. You can buy book-by-book in flea markets (making a charming shelf of odd-sized and colored books), or all in a lot, if you by a collection (making an impressive shelf, appropriate for a lawyer's TV commercial).
This is also a good gift for those who don't get much out of school: if you read through the entire shelf, you've basically acquired a liberal-arts education.
Potato chips are a by-yourself food.
Beer Can Crushing Monster. 1/6 scale, 112 lbs of German Tiger Tank. $3250, but with add-ons that you would obviously want... $4000. Pant...Pant... Add on a .50 Cal single-shot and a wireless camera on this baby, and you can have good fun that is funny without the Cat in the Hat (or the doll from realdolls.com)
1/6 Scale Remote Controlled Tiger Tank
Yep, that's what I want....
We ended up going with Peak To Peak DSL -- their service and prices are good (in the Colorado Front Range area). In the Bay Area, I'd recommend CLIQ internet service -- they offer high powered "geek-friendly" DSL.
Don't get me wrong, Speakeasy are good -- but I think they shot themselves in the foot by getting rid of their intermediate-level uplink speeds.
Added a Firewire card to my work PC. One 6-pin to 6-pin cable and a copy of MacDrive 2000 later, and the drive mounts right up with no additional effort on my part. It even charges, too! Go into View options and show all hidden files and you can see where the MP3's are stored. The annoying thing is that your collection gets spread over dozens of folder with no rhyme or reason for the organization, but they're all there.
I had an idea a while ago for a permanent website of this type.
:-) The site provides links to shopping sites, allows you to search by category, price etc. You then give people your site ID and your friends and family have access to a list of what you _actually_ want, making present giving potentially simpler. Wouldn't be that hard to set up, organise a small commision payment from the sites you send customers to and this could make money. Pity I don't have the time or energy to actually do it :-)
;-) <duck>
:-)
:-)
:-)
:-) but any reasonable, boxed model car will be appreciated. Honestly, little £5-10 cars make me very happy...
;-) Or, if you happen to be determined to throw money at this one, an SLR body using a more modern lens mount than M42 please :-)
:-( and I _prefer_ keyboarded PDAs. I want another.
:-(
:-)
6 0144) I was discussing what I'd enter into Robot Wars / Battlebots if I was up to it, had the time & ability and so on. I'd love to see a robot of that rough type built and entered, just to see how good an idea it would really be.
;-)
You log on, create a list of things you like, things you don't like, things you already have, things you like but you're so picky about that anyone buying for you is a bad idea
Anyway, what _I'd_ actually want:
* Sorry if this makes me sound like I'm trying too hard, but I'd be delighted if someone gave money to a charity I support (or one I didn't yet but whose aims I agreed with) as my present. Let's be honest, I make good enough money and there's only me to support, so I don't need generosity particularly and could get pretty much anything below myself if I put my mind to it (and in some cases, not for very long, either). Others need it more than I do.
* Pretty much impossible to give, but I wouldn't say no to a larger circle of friends. If I came out of the Christmas season with nothing listed below (or similar) but having met just one or two people whose company I genuinely enjoyed, I'd consider it a good Christmas. On the same line, I'm single, ladies, fuzzy photo at the out-of-date URL above...
More traditionally:
* Books. Good fiction or several different non-fiction areas.
* Films. Has to be Widescreen, beyond that I'll try most films _once_
* Music. Play it safe and get me rock or metal, play it slightly more adventurous and get me orchestral music, try pushing the boat out by getting me some jazz or blues. Pretty good chance I'll like any, though, in some places
* Chocolate. Pretty difficult to go wrong with a big box full of chocolate
* Model cars. Don't care what size (though bigger is preferrable
* Camera equipment. I'd feel guilty if someone spent a fortune, but if you happen to see some M42 lenses, filters, tripods or gadget bags going cheap...
Less practically...
* Those desktop RC tanks with the laser tag are _too_ cool. 3 of them shipped to the UK and we could have some cool deathmatches at the office...
* My Psion 5 seems to have packed up
* Hovercraft are cool. Either give me a working R/C model hovercraft, or a good set of plans and components. Or, let me know what will make a good liftfan because I can't find one so far when I'm trying to build my own
* No DVD here yet, so, please, a region-switchable DVD with 5.1 out and ideally a Macrovision defeater so it'll work with a video projector. Oh, how about getting me that projector, I've already got a large empty white wall that would make a lovely screen...
* One of these days I'll get round to building a _serious_ video jukebox (thinking 100+ hours of storage here...) to replace large piles of VHS cassettes and just make it all more practical. If anyone sees them ready-made and upgradeable, that'd be cool.
* Left Europe for the first time this October, visiting my sister in Ontario, Canada. Loved it. All offers of trips to interesting parts of the world gratefully recieved, as long as they come at least half board and flights paid
* Over in a recent poll thread (http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=23631&cid=25
* I need to replace my car at some point...
Greg
(Inside a nuclear plant)
Aaaarrrggh! Run! The canary has mutated!
However, its a blast, and you get to spend time with your friends to boot.
http://www.wizards.com/RoboRally/Welcome.asp
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
I almost agree, except in my case it would be getting my almost fiancee back. She broke things off right before my birthday, and since that time we've been trying for a friendship, but there's too much hurt for things to be working right. So what am I doing? What any self respecting geek would do. I stopped pouring my money into her and instead am redirecting it to hardware. Sad, but hey I've got some neat new toys to play with so I can try and forget what happened.
Hint for anyone in a serious relationship: if you and the one you love start taking it for granted that you have each other, you'll lose each other. We stopped treating each other as the most precious things in each others lives (instead we just would talk about work, not how we really were) and that was the beginning of the end. Guys, when you're in a place like that listen to your girlfriend and let her know how much you care and respect her. Respect is vital.
Ok, too much off-topic rambling.
If I could only live my life with my threshold at 4...
That, and plenty of cat-5, should make my dream home a reality.
Total cost - $3 mill or so.
Law is whatever is boldly asserted and plausibly maintained. -- Aaron Burr