ideonexus

Category: Geeking Out

  • Science Gift Ideas: Lego Digital Designer

    My Legoland Avatar This free software is available for download, and is a great way to introduce your child to 3-D Modeling software. It’s also free and didn’t cause my computer to explode, so you’ve got nothing to lose by trying it out. A huge selection of Lego parts are available in the application, which…

  • Science Gift Ideas: Rubik’s Cube

    When I was in elementary school, there was a huge Rubik’s Cube fad. In addition to the Rubik’s Cube, there was the Jacob’s ladder-like Rubik’s Magic, Barrel, Diamond, and many more. My favorite was the Pyraminx because it was the most complex puzzle I could actually solve on my own. I am happy to see…

  • Science Gift Ideas: Kill-A-Watt

    Kill-A-Watt Awhile back I blogged on Blackle.com, a black-background version of google.com that purported to save energy by reducing the amount of light monitors needed to emit to display their page. Researchers confirmed this was true of old, obsolete CRT monitors, but flat screens used more energy to suppress white than display it. Well, my…

  • Science Gift Ideas: Worldchanging, A User’s Guide to the 21st Century

    Worldchanging A User’s Guide to the 21st Century “Happiness demands giving up all hope of a better past.” – Buddha I dilly-dallied about checking out this book when it came out last year. Then one day, I happened to pick up an opened copy at the bookstore and immediately fell into profound ionian enchantment with…

  • Science Gift Ideas: Zome Tool

    ZomeTool’s connector balls are small rhombicosidodecahedrons I started playing with Zome Tool after watching the college lecture series Joy of Thinking: The Beauty and Power of Classical Mathematical Ideas on DVD, which required no mathematical background and I highly recommend for anyone interested in learning about why Math totally rocks from a humanistic perspective. I…

  • Science Gift Ideas: RoboRally

    Roborally Allow me to introduce you to one of the coolest board games you’ve never heard of. In RoboRally, players steer robots around a factory filled with lasers, pits, and conveyor belts in a race to reach the finish line. Each round, players are dealt a random set of instruction cards, with which they must…

  • Science Gift Ideas: Snap Circuits

    Snap Circuits Junior Set I picked up a Snap Circuits Junior kit online, and it is undeniably fun. This is like an erector set for electronics. There are 101 experiments listed in the instruction manual, and I managed to run through most of the experiments over two nights of playing with it. I did come…

  • Holiday Light-emitting Diodes (LEDs)

    LED Holiday Tree at Port Discover LEDs are the future of light, and may soon overtake Compact Fluorescent bulbs as the best choice for efficient home lighting. LEDs don’t have filaments, the part that easily burns out in ordinary bulbs, and they do not product heat like incandescent bulbs. LEDs also last far longer than…

  • How to Be Productive at Work

    orisinal.com If you want to be happy for an hour, take a nap; if you want to be happy for a day, go fishing; if you want to be happy for a year, inherit a fortune; if you want to be happy for lifetime, help others. Chinese Proverb

  • When in Doubt, Emoticon

    I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had little misunderstandings explode into full-blown flame-wars in my e-mail inbox. One second I’m having a polite debate with a friend over the comparative merits of government-sponsored versus third-party payment methods for health coverage or whether Captain Picard was cooler than Captain Kirk on Star Trek (Totally…

  • The Little Red Dot from Brussels

    My blog doesn’t drive the most traffic in the world. In fact, it’s pretty sad in comparison to some of my friends, but I write, not because I enjoy it, but because I have to write. It’s in my blood, it always has, and it slave drives me like an obsessive compulsive scrubbing permanent marker…

  • One Laptop Per Child Now On Sale!!!

    OLPC Logo I’ve ordered mine, have you ordered your’s? All the cool kids are ordering one. Don’t you want to be part of the “in” crowd? Not only does ordering one of these super-duper, ultra-nifty, best-thing-since-sliced-bread-cubed improve your health, fortunes, and make you more appealing to members of the opposite sex in general, but every…