NERDS!
(Credit: Dong Ngo/CNET)I once saw a homeless teenager with piercings all over his face standing on a San Francisco corner, and I asked him about the meaning of those little pieces of metal. Misinterpreting my genuine curiosity, he barked, "To shock people!" and refused my dollar.
Well, while I personally don't believe in self-expression via extreme piercing, I trust these bracelets I got here are gonna scream to the world that you identify as a nerd. In a good way.
The USB wristbands come in many different colors.
(Credit: USB-Hub.net)They're the USB wristbands from USB-Hub. Basically, they're regular USB drives, up to 4GB in capacity, in the form of bracelets.
The band has a rubberized exterior and makes a complete circle when you put the USB head of the drive into the other end, which is also the lid that keeps the drive protected and holds the ring together. The retention is just strong enough to keep the band from falling off your wrist by itself while still allowing you to pull the USB head out fairly easily when need be.
This is actually kind of convenient and helpful, as you won't have to look in your wallet or fumble through keys and coins in your pocket to find the drive. Some of them are even sort of stylish.
And USB-Hub banks on this notion. The bands come in many different colors, and you can have a logo or text printed on them. One of the bands I got actually has the word "NERD" written on it, which is sort of redundant. However, if you don't want to wear the wristband, you can also securely hang it on another object, like the handle of your laptop bag.
The USB-Hub wrist drives are USB 2.0-compatible and work well with virtually any computer, be it a Mac, PC, or Linux machine. They're available in capacities ranging from 1GB to 4GB, with the latter version costing around $15.
As a bonus, I found out you can also put a few of them together to create a necklace, which will not only increase the amount of storage but also make you look even more nerdy, especially when you also wear two on your wrists.
(Credit:
ThinkGeek)
Twitter is great, but there usually comes a time when phenomena like it jump the proverbial shark. The fact that these T-shirts from ThinkGeek exist could mean Twitter is approaching that point, but I do kind of want one anyway.
The brown and blue shirt essentially turns you into the Twitter "anonymous" icon, or the default Twitter profile image for people who haven't uploaded their own pic (I use my CNET headshot, natch!).
The icon's pictured to the left, but for those who don't know it, it's o_O. Just like that. It's an emoticon, really, that resembles a surprised gerbil.
The shirt sells from $15.99 to $17.99, depending on size, which I feel is blatant discrimination. I'll check ThinkGeek's Twitter feed for an apology.
In perhaps the most ill-advised branding move since New Coke, NBC's basic-cable Sci Fi Channel will be renamed the phonetically similar Syfy on July 7.
The change reportedly comes from a desire to own a trademark on the network's name. The term sci-fi is a generic description of a fiction genre (often featuring futuristic technology), while Syfy can be a unique brand.
Bonnie Hammer, president of NBC Universal Cable Entertainment, told The New York Times, "We couldn't own Sci Fi; it's a genre...but we can own Syfy."
The derisive hoots have already begun. Entertainment industry columnist Nikki Finke points out, "Adding to the idiocy is that there's already a company called SyFi Global, an information technology (specialist)." Meanwhile, Gawker says the network's new tagline, Imagine Greater, "means nothing and is grammatically incoherent."
(Credit:
HalloweenCostumes.com)
Last year, my friend Matt Hastings predicted that the coming Halloween would see a flood of people in unfortunate Joker costumes, inspired by "The Dark Knight." He was, of course, right. I'm hereby predicting that every un-creative person in the world will try being Rorschach from "Watchmen" this year. Mark my words.
(Credit:
HalloweenCostumes.com)
These new officially licensed Watchmen movie costumes might make that easier. There are versions of all the major players in the film. A couple of them look pretty good, but the Nite Owl requires some imagination on the viewer's part.
The Silk Spectre II looks great. If I find a girl at a Halloween party wearing one I wouldn't make fun of her. I'd probably ask her to marry me.
The Comedian's treatment is good, but I can't figure out why it has fake bare arms. That's odd.
And of course there's Rorschach, which doesn't look bad, but you could really make your own getup cheaper by raiding Grandpa's closet and staining a piece of cloth. I mean, when I saw the movie last week there were people in their own homemade Rorschach costumes. I thought they were going to get into a fight, but I saved them the trouble by beating both of them up and yelling, "Neeeeerrrrrrrrds!" like Ogre from "Revenge of the Nerds."
(Credit:
Tokyoflash)
Sure, you could buy a regular watch that displays the time in a regular way, but where's the fun in that? You're a nerd (you're reading Crave) and you want to be different. So you probably already know about Tokyoflash watches.
The latest is the $99.62 Hanko, and it's a design nerd's joy. The stainless steel watch is named after a form of Japanese stamp art it resembles and it's very simple object-wise, with nothing on the face save the black acrylic lenses. Behind these lenses is an array of LEDs that indicate the time when the action button is pressed.
The lights chase around the face, finally ending in a three-light position that tells you the current time. The inside lens is the hour, the outside the five-minute increments watches normally have, and the middle field is the number of minutes past that. Thus the illustration above shows 5:42.
Sure there's a learning curve, but if you learned how to tell time on a traditional clock face you should be able to learn on the Hanko, too. It's attractive enough on its own, but the added fun of bewildering people with your time-telling abilities makes this a fun watch as well as a stylish one.
Few places, outside of perhaps CES and E3, illustrate the overlapping Venn diagram of technology, video games, and popular culture better than the New York Comic Con (or the much larger, but unrelated San Diego Comic-Con). Not just for comic book geeks any more, the show is a catch-all of video games (new and vintage), comics, toys and collectibles, movies, and, of course, incessant marketing toward the mostly male, mostly young adult audience.
It's interesting to note that much of the floor space was given over to hosting video game demos and showcases from companies such as EA, Atari, and Activision. While not quite recession-proof, game companies are perhaps the last holdout that can afford massive amounts of expensive convention center floor space. Also big--the comic/video game/movie pop-culture full-court press called Watchmen.
We braved the nerdy waters of this annual show--held at NYC's Jacob Javitz convention center--to bring you this photo gallery, as well as a few video highlights, shot with a Creative Vado HD camera. Click on to see it all.
... Read More
We fully admit that we are all, at heart, nerds. But this episode is dedicated to that special kind of nerd. The kind that you find yourself turning to your friend to whisper into their ear "OMG nerd alert!"
Listen now: Download today's podcast
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Episode 123 |
Nerd pickup lines meme on Twitter
Erykah Badu twitters while giving birth
Star Trek communicator actually communicates via VoIP
Klingon Keyboard: for serious Trekkies only
Rubiks reincarnated: Cubed is out, curvaceous is in
For grammar nerds: Scrabble keyboard
... Read MoreUpdate 7:40 p.m. PST January 6: Thanks to alert reader OneGB for supplying the origin of the clock. The central design may look like a bungled biohazard symbol, but it in fact is another three-nine reference, the "hurricane" symbol of a high-IQ organization called the Triple Nine Society. The group also sells Triple Nine aprons, mugs, bibs, underwear, and other whatnot at CafePress.com.
(Credit:
Dean Hunt, StreetLessons)
Math enthusiasts who don't want to move totally into the digital realm might appreciate this analog clock.
Each number is expressed as a calculation involving three instances of the number 9.
For example, 5 o'clock is the square root of nine (3), factorial (3x2x1 = 6), minus 9/9 (6-1 = 5).
The trickiest time is 7 o'clock, whose calculation works out to 6.99999..., with an infinite number of nines. Wikipedia assures us that 0.99999... really does equal 1, so no worries that the clock is cheating there.
While we're on the subject of archaic clock technology, how come clocks and watches with Roman numerals represent 4 o'clock with IIII rather than the traditional IV? A friend told me it was because it was easier for illiterate people to comprehend, but I'd love to see some history about this.
(Via Bad Astronomy Blog.)
(Credit:
Kleargear)
Anyone can wear their geekdom on their sleeve or, in some cases, around the neck. How much guts, after all, does it take to wear a blue tie?
But keyboard boxers--now we're talking serious Nerdville. There's really not a whole lot to say about this embarrassing undergarment, other than the fact that it's been marked down twice from the original $20.50 price. (We were shocked to find that they weren't sold out, much less discounted.)
Uber-Review points out what we find most amusing of all, that the gray keys spell out "computer geek." Did we really need a label to figure that out?
(Credit:
Red Ferret)
We're almost afraid to post any information about this item because more people might actually buy it.
Some of us at Crave happen to think that the undying popularity of the Lightsaber is a sign of societal decay--or at least depressing nerdiness. But being equal-opportunity bloggers, we feel obligated to mention the "Lightsaber Umbrella" featured on Red Ferret.
There's not much to say, really--it's name pretty much sums it up. It lights up and keeps you dry. Or, more important, it keeps your DS Lite dry. (More photos here.)
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