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Gadgets, Personal, Technology
Geeky Christmas Loot, Part Two
December 30th, 2008 (3 years, 1 month ago) by Jeff | Permalink | 1 Core Dump
Sorry again for the long dry spell. As hinted at in the latest GPF News post, things have been hectic in the Darlington household these past few months, with tons of minute issues slowly chipping away at the overall allotment of free time. The good news for GPF fans, though, is that I should have a good month’s worth of comics in the buffer when the comic restarts on January 5th, and with the holidays behind us I should be able to concentrate more on getting things done and on time.

In the tradition of last year’s “Christmas loot” post, I thought I’d post some of the awesome things I received as gifts this year. I know some people might look at this as a bit of bragging—and I can see how it can be read that way—but it’s really not. It’s an honest, geeky desire to share some of the exciting things my friends and family blessed me with out of love and happiness. If you want to read bragging into this, well, that’s your choice and you’re free to ignore this post. Otherwise, let me squeal with geeky glee as I delineate some of the cool things I was blessed to receive from people I love.

I’ll start off with a note to the folks: I know some of my family reads this blog, so don’t be offended if I didn’t mention something in particular that you got me. It’s not that it wasn’t memorable or that I didn’t like it; it’s because you know I have the memory of a sieve and I didn’t take copious notes after each present was opened. Since I’m composing this away from where the presents are stashed, I’m doing everything from memory. I also spent most of my time during the present opening ceremonies assembling and subsequently helping Ben play with his new toys, so there were lots of interruptions. So here’s my apologies in advance and don’t forget that blog posts can thankfully be edited.

My favorite gift, by far, is the one given to me by my wife. (Well, she signed Ben’s name on the tag, but I know he has neither the budget nor expertise to have picked it out himself. Just remember that if you read this years later, my son.) She got me a Nikon D60 digital SLR camera. As I previously Tweeted, “It’s like giving a 16-year-old with a beat-up ’85 Civic the keys to a sports car.” 10.2 megapixels, “real” lenses, tons of preset and manual options… it may technically be a “prosumer” or low-end professional camera, but it’s definitely the best I’ve ever had.

I’ve always wanted to learn more about photography, but have had neither the time nor capital to really invest in more than casual picture taking. We’ve had a succession of digital cameras over the years, all of which have served us very well (the Shows & Cons subsite is loaded with the results). However, they’ve all been relatively cheap, low-end models geared for amateur consumers. Our previous family camera was a nice little Olympus that only topped out at three megapixels and still used SmartMedia cards. Do you have any idea how hard those things are to find these days? While still functional, it was definitely showing its age. However, like many consumer cameras, it did all the automagic focus and lighting settings, making it a simple point-and-shoot device. This new Nikon can do point-and-shoot well, but it has enough manual options to make it a good learning platform for a curious amateur to graduate to a serious hobbyist. Now my biggest problem is finding time to actually play with it….

As an ironic side note, as I mentioned in the previous “Christmas loot” post, my wife’s birthday is also in December, and guess what I got her? That’s right, a new camera. Her’s is admittedly not as nice, but it is exactly what she wanted: a small little point-and-shooter that she can tuck away in her purse for those spur-of-the-moment photo ops where lugging the old Olympus around (and, for that matter, my new Nikon) would be inconvenient. As she so succinctly put it, “Who knew we were going to have such a photogenic holiday?”

Other items of note:
- My sister made me a wonderful GPF quilt/wall-hanging with members of the cast. It’s technically incomplete because I’m supposed to sign my name to the old GPF logo in the center with a white paint pen, and I haven’t gotten around to doing that yet. Here’s a picture:
My sister's GPF quilt/wall-hanging
- A nice commemorative Star Trek watch from my parents.
- Several classic Tom Baker Doctor Who episodes on DVD. Surprisingly, nobody got me the fourth series of the Russell T. Davies/David Tennant series. That’s nothing that a quick trip to Amazon can’t fix, of course.
- Several other movies on DVD. (I knew I should have kept notes.)
- A pair of new Wii remotes and Wii Wheels from my parents and in-laws, respectively. Now we no longer have to borrow my nephew’s “Wiimotes” whenever friends come over to visit. (Not to self: Make new friends. Appendium to previous note: That means “befriend more geographically convenient humans” rather than “construct new ‘friends’ from random inanimate objects”.)
- Several new Wii games. (Again… must… take… notes….)
- The DC Vault: A Museum in a Box and a hardcover copy of The Watchmen from my sister-in-law and her husband.
- The prerequisite jeans, sweaters, after shave, etc. They may not be as exciting, of course, but they’re always appreciated.
So, what did Santa leave in your stocking this year?
Personal, Technology
Geeky Christmas loot
December 31st, 2007 (4 years, 1 month ago) by Jeff | Permalink | Dump Core

Sorry for the dry spell, all. With the holidays I’ve been largely offline with the exception of keeping up with my daily webcomic reading and uploading new comics into the queue. (Yay!) I hope everyone had a happy holiday, no matter what holiday(s) you celebrate, and I wish everyone a slightly premature Happy New Year (or, if you celebrate Chinese New Year, either a very belated one or a slightly advance one).

Firstly, in case you haven’t seen it or don’t subscribe to the RSS feed, make sure to check out the latest GPF News post. Some important updates are mentioned there. I’ll expound upon one of those in a separate post here.

I thought I’d share with you my list of “geeky Christmas loot” for this year. I don’t do it to brag, but more just to share. I always like hearing about other’s newest geek toys, and I love sharing the same with others. So maybe if I share about some of my new playthings, others will chime in and share as well.

Perhaps my favorite gift this year was not one that I received, but one that I gave, and technically it wasn’t even a Christmas gift. My wife (“kmd” on the forum) has a birthday in December, and I always try to make it special for her. Being a December baby can be tough as many people either buy you one slightly larger gift to cover both the birthday and Christmas or worse, completely overlook your birthday altogether. So I try to make her birthday extra special, take her out to a nice dinner, and just give her as best a day as I can. This year, I gave her one of the brand new third-generation iPod Nanos. One of things that made this special is that it appeals to her geek side; she too is a programmer, and sometimes I know she feels “overshadowed” by me in all things tech among folks who know both of us. It’s also significant because most of her geeky gadgets are my hand-me-downs; when I get something new (like a new Palm), she usually ends up getting the old one. So now she has a brand-new geek toy all her own, as well has her entire “Weird Al” Yankovic collection in her pocket wherever she goes. (I also got her the one “Weird Al” album she didn’t have on CD, so now she has his entire discography in digital form.)

As for me, my geek gifts were numerous and plenty. My parents had a definite Doctor Who theme: I got the third series of the new Doctor Who; the transition between two of my old-time favorite Doctors, Tom Baker and Peter Davison; a Tardis 4-port USB hub; and a “You Never Forget Your First Doctor” T-shirt. There were several other DVDs amongst the list, including one of Pixar short films. My wife surprised me with a terabyte(!) external USB hard drive (because you can never have enough disk space).

But probably the credit for the most unexpected and most played-with gift this year has to go to my sister-in-law and her husband. For now I’m suffering from an affliction I only heard about while growing up: Nintendo thumb. I am now an owner of a Nintendo Wii.

Well, I guess I’m having less problems with “Nintendo thumb” as I am with “Wii shoulder”. I’ve suffered tendinitis in my left thumb for quite a while now (it kept me from drawing for an entire month back in 2002) and I actually think the workout it’s been getting from the Wii has been somewhat therapeutic. But several hours of Wii Sports, especially bowling and baseball, had me running for the pain relievers the next day. Man, am I getting old. I’m doing better now, though. I never had a popular gaming console while growing up (or an unpopular one, for the matter); while most of my friends were playing with their ColecoVisions, Intellivisions, or NESes(eseses), I was hacking away in BASIC on my Tandy CoCo. (Gee, that didn’t date me at all, did it?) So this this was an entirely new experience for me. We quickly ran out and purchased a second controller (“wiimote”) and “nunchuk” and added a game or two to the ones that accompanied the system as separate gifts. The system has been loads of fun, although I must admit I’ve done far less comicking this past week than I had hoped.

So… what nifty geek trinkets did you get/give this holiday? And do you have any suggestions for utterly awesome kick-butt Wii games that I supposedly must absolutely, positively have or my life will be incomplete? Dump core below.