Geek culture

Step right up, kiddies, the carnival is coming to town! And this time, it's bringing robots and lasers.

Well, it will be if the STEAM Carnival successfully reaches its Kickstarter goal and hits the highway with all manner of amusing geeky hijinks under its big tent. Think Maker Faire meets Burning Man, with a decidedly less naked, more kid-friendly slant. The goal is to not only get youngsters pumped about STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math), but to warm them up to STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math).

"Our culture isn't doing enough to get kids interested in STEAM," say the creatives behind Two Bit Circus, a collective of builders, inventors, developers, and makers behind STEAM Circus. (They also helped create the wacky Rube Goldberg machine in OK Go's "This Too Shall Pass" video.) The carnival's advisory board also brings some serious geek cred to the proceedings in the form of MythBuster Grant Imahara; Brian Fargo, creator of the video game Bard's Tale; and Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari and father of Brent Bushnell, one of STEAM Carnival's masterminds.

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Even if you're too short to join the Galactic Empire as a Stormtrooper, at least you can still see yourself as one with the magic of 3D scanning and printing.

For $99.95, visitors to Florida's Walt Disney World during "Star Wars" Weekends (running each weekend from May 17 to June 9) can immortalize themselves as a 7.5-inch-tall Stormtrooper figurine. In some ways, it's probably a better deal than being a real Stormtrooper. They usually end up getting vaporized aboard a Death Star or miss every shot they fire at fleeing Rebels. … Read more

Any fan of "Star Wars" will immediately recognize the Lars Homestead, where Luke Skywalker grew up. But they may not realize that the sets used to film those scenes in the 1970s were left essentially untouched after George Lucas and his crew departed Tunisia.

Thanks to Laughing Squid, I stumbled across the beautiful and haunting photographs by visual artist Ra di Martino, who visited the location in Chott el Gharsa, Tunisia, where Lucas filmed those scenes, and captured their decrepit state years later.

Of course, there are a lot of people who want to keep the Lars Homestead … Read more

Attention early adopters: That first-edition Google Glass hardware is likely to be gathering dust a few years from now as the technology gets seriously revved (or falls victim to paranoid lawmakers and pub owners), but don't toss it out!

If an auction later this month of computing and other technological blasts from the past is any indication, it could pay off to hold on to those obsolete gadgets that were once on the cutting edge, even just briefly.

The highlight of the sale, planned for May 25 by German auction house Breker, is an original, working Apple-1, one of only 200 that were produced and 50 that are believed to still exist. Last year, Sotheby's auctioned off just an original Apple-1 motherboard for $374,500.… Read more

Leaked from today's 404 episode:

- The Worst Room makes everyone in New York feel terrible.

- San Francisco hotels pricey? Van on Airbnb is only $92 a night.

- A bold new font lets dyslexia sufferers read.

- Bang With Friends goes mobile, because some people want to get it on the run.

- A Wi-Fi enabled Microsoft ad printed in Forbes magazine offers free Internet to readers.… Read more

There's something about the NES controller that lends itself to supersizing in coffee table form. We've seen more than a few -- the original (as far as we can tell); Baron von Brunk's working Lego version; and a working wooden version for a touch of class.

It's that last one that concerns us today, since its creator -- Charles Lushear, aka Bohemian Workbench -- has just come out with a brand new "steampunk" version, made from salvaged antique parts and wood. … Read more

Sooner or later, every object in existence, including you and me, will be re-created out of Legos.

Fans of the bricks have limitless passion. But beyond creating cool dioramas, Lego modelers truly impress when they make functional tools.

Case in point: the Hippmikser 2000 by Flickr user Hippotam, whose real name is Marcin Danielak.… Read more

If Starfleet Academy has a Marketing 101 class, these commercials must surely be on the syllabus.

Twice in recent days, Earth's ad agencies have dispatched officers of the "Star Trek" franchise on missions not to seek out new worlds, but to sell new products.

First came a video clip from PC maker Acer using clips from the imminent "Star Trek Into Darkness," docking soon in a movie theater near you, to pump up the excitement for its new flagship Aspire R7.

Then Audi flew into view with a two-minute Spock vs. Spock spiel for its … Read more

As the father of a 5-year-old girl who adores all things princess but also digs stars and comets and mastered the user interface for both Android and iOS in about half a day, I'm always on the look out for Geek Grrl role models. So the new hero in my household is Jennie Lamere.

This 17-year-old grrl loves both reality television and hackathons and tapped into those two passions to win the grand prize at the TVnext hack event in Boston last month. Her brilliantly simple hack, first detailed on evolver.fm, is designed to prevent spoilers on Twitter while watching live TV.

Surely we've all shaken our fists in the air when a fellow "Walking Dead" or "Game of Thrones" fan in a different time zone tweets about the latest character to get eliminated while you're still popping popcorn and getting the couch ready for the evening's gore-fest.

Lamere's Google Chrome app, Twivo, allows users to block any tweets related to a certain keyword or words for a specified period of time, allowing you to keep up with the rest of the Twitterverse during commercial breaks without ruining the show you're watching.

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