MetaFilter posts tagged with geekery

I Love XKCD, Boom De Ya Da, Boom De Ya Da, Boom De Ya Da, Boom De Ya Da ...

WCityMike — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 20:26:27 -0800

"I Love the Whole World" + xkcd Loves the Discovery Channel + Noah Raby + the Map of the Internet + Olga Nunes = I Love XKCD, a pretty cute bit of animation. (It's not the first time Raby's animated an xkcd strip.)

Math Geekery

netbros — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 05:37:10 -0800

For math geeks. How to Draw the Voronoi Diagram. Voronoi diagrams, as a geometric model are fascinating because they can be used to describe almost literally everything: from cell phone networks to radiolaria, at every scale: from quantum foam to cosmic foam. See also the Wallpaper Group: there are only 17 ways to fill a plane with a regular 2 dimensional pattern. Fred Scharmen [weblog home] is known as 765 and also produces a number of shapes, textures and patterns.

Pecha Kuc-

gurple — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 12:36:22 -0800

Ignite is an opportunity to pack into a theater and watch people geek out in 5-minute prepared talks (15 seconds per slide, auto-advance) on all kinds of topics. Maybe there's one coming up near you. Like Pecha Kucha (and mentioned in that thread), but with less time per slide. Sponsored and somewhat heavily branded by O'Reilly, so maybe a little Animal Cover Blue.

These scissors go "snikt."

Shepherd — Mon, 04 May 2009 10:50:26 -0800

You, like me, have probably often wondered where exactly Wolverine fits in the grand continuum of comic-book hair. Wonder no more. You can cultivate your own Wolver'do (warning: pop-ups), admire the attempts of others to replicate hero haircuts (discussed previously), or just reminisce about other luminaries of comic-book coiffure, including the mid-'90s: the era of the superhero mullet. If you're one of the few superheroes with prehensile hair, of course, a bad hair day is merely a part of your arsenal.

Playing pretend for grown-ups

MrVisible — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 13:46:13 -0800

Want to play a swashbuckling pirate, space opera hero, or monster-fighting Victorian dandy? How about a supervillain fighting against alien invaders? Or a mutant snack cake? Welcome to Savage Worlds. Do you just want to have fun with a role-playing game without having to spend your life savings on books that make your college calculus textbook look like as much fun as Rocky and Bullwinkle? All the rules you need to play fit into a small, cheap book. There are a bunch of supplemental sourcebooks, but there's also tons of fan-created content. The system has an active community, with enormous amounts of resources available for players and GMs. Want to give it a shot for free? Try the Test Drive rules(PDF) and a scenario (20MB download) or two. And on March 9th, for all those of you who grew up wanting to be John Carter (or just dress like him), Savage Mars gets released. Role-playing the way it was meant to be: fun. _{_{Yes, I know, I'm a geek.}}

Lego Turing machine

pompomtom — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 16:34:30 -0800

Lego Turing machine (SLYT)

Braunstein, the world's first role-playing game

Kattullus — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 20:50:52 -0800

Most gamers have never heard of Braunstein. Sad but true. In the hierarchy of self-awareness you’ll find the circle of gamers who know what D&D is (a very, very large circle), then inside of that is the circle of gamers who know what Greyhawk is (large but smaller), and inside that the circle who knows what Blackmoor is (smaller still). And then in the very center, vanishingly small, are the people who’ve heard of Braunstein. Which is a pity, because Braunstein is the granddaddy of them all.

Braunstein: the Roots of Roleplaying Games by Ben Robbins. The first role-playing game was run by soldier David Wesely in 1967, his group including none other than D&D co-creator Dave Arneson. This past GenCon Braunstein was revived! Here's what the players had to say. Handouts from an earlier Braunstein revival. David Wesely's post-game comments. [via Rob McDougall] David Wesely provides further background (posting as weseld1) including that his inspiration for introducing the figure of a "referee" (a.k.a. game master or dungeon master) came from Strategos, The American Game of War by Lt. Charles Adiel Lewis Totten. Rob McDougall tells the story of Totten. Wesely also mentions two books of game theory which had a great influence on him, one of which The Compleat Strategyst, was a bestseller put out by the RAND Corporation. Rob McDougall traces the history of roleplaying back to RAND.

Oh, so they have internet on computers now!

mewithoutyou — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 12:15:00 -0800

Homer Simpson in CSS "...I stayed with the idea in mind that more complex designs could be made using the Verdana font and absolute positioning in CSS, thus generating vector drawings directly embedded in the code html." [via]

My Own Private Ariel

Aversion Therapy — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 07:15:45 -0800

Steven Karl Zoltan Brust, one of my two or three favorite authors of all time, has written a Firefly novel, called "My Own Kind of Freedom." As Joss Wheedon has decided that he does not want novels to be written based on the series. So instead of selling it as he had hoped, SKZB has declared it to be a fanfic, and released it to the general public under a Creative Commons license.

Hello out there, kats and kittens...

jonmc — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 08:19:32 -0800

WFMU's The Hound has been delighting record geeks for the past few decades with sets of some of the wildest, wooliest rockabilly, R&B, blues, gospel, garage rock, and punk that can be dug out of crates. His site offers full podcasts, and individual mp3's under the show links, and organized by artist, and title. Bo Diddley singing to Kruschev! Blues songs about the Kinsey report! The Cashmere's talking about the hop! Brownie McGee singing about baseball's integration! Roughly 4 million variations on 'The Twist!' And that;s just the tip of this glorious iceberg. The music is presented without museum piece reverence and with humor and style. This must be what the glory days of rock and roll radio were like. Audio quality is mediocre, but the file sizes are small, but that only makes it more like hearing it on the radio, right? You want this stuff, even if you don't know it yet. Enjoy.

Geeks rejoice: a new Joss Whedon television series!

WCityMike — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 21:36:07 -0800

Joss Whedon announces new Fox television series, with Eliza Dushku! "Echo (Eliza Dushku) [is] a young woman who is literally everybody's fantasy." "She is one of a group of men and women who can be imprinted with personality packages, including memories, skills, language—even muscle memory—for different assignments." Conceived of during a trip to the bathroom in the midst of a lunch Joss had with Eliza in which he was giving her career advice. (The writers' strike would delay the project.) Geeks and Whedonites everywhere, rejoice! (And Joss' Office episode airs tomorrow night.)

The World's Cutest Synth!

Rev. Syung Myung Me — Sat, 08 Jul 2006 11:40:16 -0800

Have you ever seen a synth and said "Man, what this needs is cartoon eyes?" A bit similar to the Buchla Box or theremin in that they don't have a keyboard to control the sounds -- it's probably closest to the Booper, invented by The Weatherman from Negativland (or, well, Circuit Bending), the Thingamagoop is a photosynthesizer... which means it basically uses light sensors to generate sounds. The signal's run through a couple oscillators and, well, it comes out as somethin' that's pretty dang awesome. I'm on the fence on pickin' this one up. On one hand, it's a really neat toy that makes noise... on the other hand, um.... um.... I dunno. It's not made of candy?

Ahead of their time

featherboa — Wed, 21 Jun 2006 02:17:21 -0800

ASCII-art 1940s-style , flatscreen TV in the Fifties, a video phone from 1964. Articles scanned from classic mechanics and science magazines and blogged here. The future used to be so cool. (Via b3ta)

Geekdom

splitpeasoup — Tue, 04 Apr 2006 13:11:59 -0800

This 'How Geeky Are You?' quiz illustrates how geekdom today means something completely different from what it used to. Out with unwashed hair and actually programming, in with mindless purchase of consumer goods.

A collection of obsessively detailed comic book sites

jdroth — Thu, 09 Jun 2005 09:34:45 -0800

Marvel Masterworks compile old Spider-Man and Fantastic Four comic books into handsome, economical volumes. Only on the web can one find a cross-referenced chronological list of the comics they reprint. In fact, there are scores of obsessive sites detailing comic book minutae: Marvel Comics Group 1939-1980, The Timely-Atlas-Marvel Chronology, Marvel Silver Age timeline, complete Marvel Bronze Age timeline (or with just the core titles), The Silver Age Marvel Comics Cover Index, and The Unofficial Handbook of Marvel Comics Creators. Some might be more interested in a checklist of appearances by DC Golden Age characters. Whichever comic company you prefer, the trade paperback list is a godsend. Indulge your inner geek!

Helping you calculate how much lunch money you've lost since 1972

bigtimes — Thu, 03 Feb 2005 10:22:13 -0800

The Museum of Nerd Watches have some completely awesome watches. Take for example This watch with a built-in space-invaders type game. How about one that generates lotto numbers? What's the boiling point of that liquid? Check it with your directional temperature gauge watch!

We Are The Members Of The Master Race, Got No Style And We Got No Grace...

jonmc — Tue, 25 Jan 2005 17:04:31 -0800

The Dictators. Even in this age of crate-digger archaeology, especially when it comes to the roots of punk rock, this band of Bronx miscreants is little known except to cognoscenti. The stream of punk most identified with The Ramones (unapologetically crude three-minute pop singles, pop culture obsessed, based around fun, what Tom Carson called "deadly serious kidding") began with these guys first three albums and lives on in the work of The Muffs, Nashville Pussy, The Supersuckers and countless others. A rock and roll treasure often overlooked.

Queen Of The Beatniks

jonmc — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 18:33:36 -0800

Judy Henske. One of The Great Lost Artists of the early 60's folk/blues revival. An original among hacks and pretenders. Forgotten by most beloved by many, including crime novelist Andrew Vachss. A torch singer worthy of the name.

VAX 11/780 - The Future Is Now

tss — Wed, 15 Dec 2004 19:40:01 -0800

Geek History through T-Shirts. Shamelessly cribbed from memepool, who spotted a good one...

Meh-tuhl

mwhybark — Fri, 01 Oct 2004 11:27:25 -0800

Stovokor! Captain pInluH and Commander Khrell are stuck in Portland, the sneaky Ferengi having sold them a 'faulty temporal device.' Life is hard on Earth, it seems. Did anyone get a set list? No matter. It's my beleif that we will not see these warriors astride golf carts. Look out, number 1: perhaps they are looking to pull a Titor on your burgeoning data empire!

tamim — Thu, 19 Apr 2001 12:00:45 -0800

Frustrating thy tech savoir faire, the 452 Tech Challenge is a real excercise for the noodles.