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Non-Geeky Gifts for Tech Geeks
An anonymous reader writes "FiringSquad.com has just put out another holiday gift guide. They've gathered together, along with the usual video cards and whatnot, several non-techie toys with a techie slant. With the exception of an mp3 and a digital camera, everything else they recommend is stuff I haven't seen on any list before. They have things ranging from $10 to $7500. My favorite has to be the Blendtec blender. 2 horsepower motor. Turns hockey pucks into mulch."
While I have no problems with them recommending an iPod - they're okay machines and all - I do sort of wonder why they would make it on their gift list, which would presumably to suggest things one *hasn't* already considered. Can anyone honestly say the thought of giving an mp3 player to someone hasn't occurred to them?
I was also sort of wondering about the subs - nice recommendations, I must say, but doesn't it make something of an awkward gift? Maybe it's more of a "stuff we thought was neato" list. Certainly the cutlery discussion seemed to wend that way, though even non-chefs could appreciate the novelty of owning a knife that ridiculously fine.
I am the one true god. However, as an atheist, I don't believe in myself. I guess I have a self-esteem problem.
These are nice and all that. But the best gift this season, at least for me, is Ground School. Gaining my private pilots license is a dream, and the ground school part is a great way to begin. It's relatively cheap compared to the hours of flight time. And it allows for the dreamer (me) to decide quickly whether or not they have the commitment to the dream or not.
www.jmagar.com
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I also think the Kill-A-Watt power meter is a pretty nifty and inexpensive gift. It measures power, voltage, power factor, and frequency of the mains feeding your electrical items around the house.
Although a bit late for xmas now (or is it), I threw together a brief, 1-page, tech geeks gift list a while back which can be found here. Hopefully it is not modded away into oblivion as being too link-whoreish!
Warhammer forums
No. I despise those things. When I'm typing, I don't want to have to turn my amps to 11 just to hear my music (well, when I do listen to music).
QUIET.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
THIS is a blender.
WMV - proprietary
.mov files whenever possible.
It's true that WMV videos are in an ASF container, however the codec itself is an implementation of the VC-1 codec, a standardized codec that is open to free implementation by anyone (like FFmpeg).
XVID/various "divx" AVIs - low market penetration
Uh... AVI containers are probably the single most widespread video container available. *Everything* can read them. As for DivX/XviD...
I suppose the best open and reasonably widespread alternative is mpeg 4
DivX/Xvid *are* an implementation of MPEG-4, and it's more and more common for systems to have decoders for them. Downside for Internet video is the lack of streaming support--(typically) the entire file has to download to start watching.
My biggest beef with Flash-served videos are that usually the player sucks making it difficult to seek the video. Additionally, it's hard/impossible to save the video to your hard drive for later/unbuffered viewing. Finally, Flash videos usually suck pretty hard when it comes to quality/filesize tradeoffs.
Personally, my favorite video format for online stuff would be WMV, mostly because it is designed to stream content and has great support on Windows and Linux (not sure about Apple). The downside is the DRM crap that some people try and throw in, however ignoring that, for streaming and HD playback on Windows it's very good.
I suppose Quicktime would be next up since the container also supports streaming (Quicktime itself is not a codec, common ones used are Sorenson 3 and H.264), but the Quicktime player for Windows blows hardcore. It is the slowest and most unresponsive application, even running on a brand new dual core system. For that reason alone I avoid
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
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Kitchen appliances/gadgets seem to go over well with geeks and non-geeks alike. They're certainly popular with the kitchen hackers in our house.
Also, Heston Blumenthal and other proponents of molecular gastronomy have taken cooking to a seriously geeky level. Heston Blumenthal has written several books that would make excellent gifts to get non-geeks to question how they think about cooking.