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?

I’ve been mildly skeptical of the device. I’ve known enough fitness nuts and I’ve got enough head knowledge about fitness matters to know that a wireless scale that talks to your game console isn’t likely to be a good substitute for a membership at the local gym. And it’s not. But it’s certainly better than nothing, and right now between my day job, a 1.5 hour commute each day, chasing after a toddler entering his Terrible Twos, and squeezing in three new comics per week plus site updates… well, nothing is about all the exercise I’ve been getting.

The Wii Fit is far from perfect. As stated above, it’s essentially a wireless scale that is sensitive enough to detect shifts in weight. Thus, it knows not only how much you weigh but where you’ve placed your feet, where your center of balance is, and with some sophisticated guesstimation, where your body is in space relative to the device. Believe it or not, that gives it an incredible amount of flexibility as a game controller. For example, there are a number of balance games included, such as a ski slalom course that you control by shifting your weight just like a real skier would, and a “table tilt” game where you try to roll little balls into the holes of a disembodied table by shifting your weight to tilt the table this way and that. It looks to have a lot of interesting potential as a controller beyond the Fit game, especially for sports games like skiing, snowboarding, surfing, etc.  The sensitivity is a little questionable sometimes; there’s a step aerobics “game” where you almost have to stomp on the device to get multiple foot presses to register. But all in all, it expands Nintendo’s Wii game play innovations in a new direction.

Another beef I have is its use of body mass index as a general gauge of health. BMI is a better indicator than weight alone, but a good read over the linked Wikipedia article will give you tons of reasons why BMI alone isn’t very useful. OK, I know I’m overweight; I’ve already come to terms with that, and that’s one of the reasons I’ve been using the thing pretty religiously for the past week or so. But your weight (and thus BMI) can fluctuate all over the place during a given day and even day to day. One good Sunday dinner with the in-laws was enough to blow the previous week’s progress according to the all mighty Fit. Unfortunately, it actually gets worse as you improve. Muscle is more dense than fat, so a fit person might have a higher BMI than and overweight person of comparable height and weight. Of course, it would probably have been too difficult (and not to mention spooky) to have little robotic arms with calipers come out to actually measure your true body fat, so I suppose this is better than nothing.

I’m also mildly annoyed with the Fit’s preoccupation with posture and balance. I know my posture isn’t the best in the world. There was concern when I was a child that I might have mild or borderline scoliosis, and my right foot actually turns outward a bit when I stand naturally and comfortably. Both of these, probably combined with years of desk sitting and (admittedly) weight gain, have made my posture less than ideal. The Fit constantly chastises that my center of balance is off-center or, worse, that it can’t get a good measurement because I’m constantly “fidgeting”. Of course I’m fidgeting; I’m constantly readjusting myself to stand perfectly straight just so you can take your blasted measurements. Sigh….

Probably the most useless thing about the Fit is the “Wii Fit Age”. This is some magical, arbitrary calculation based on your real age and BMI that is supposed to determine your overall wellness relative to your true age. In reality, it’s completely pointless and has no basis on anything useful. My Fit Age has bounced around from the mid-50s down to the mid-20s, sometimes within a day of each other. For a man in his mid-30s, that’s a big range. As previously stated, my sense of balance isn’t the best in the world and the Fit Age calculation is based in part on how well you perform on two arbitrarily chosen balance tests such as balancing on one foot, shifting your weight to certain pre-determined ratios, or simply whether or not you favor one leg over another as you walk. Thus, I stink at these games and they throw my Fit Age out the window. I’ve learned to mostly ignore it, as the minor buzz you get from a negative difference between it and your real age is easily offset by the buzz kill when it swings positive the next day, just because you’re tired.

But enough dumping. Let’s say what’s positive here. The big plus is that the Wii Fit has gotten me off the couch and doing something, anything, rather than plopping on my rear every evening after Ben goes to bed. It’s cut somewhat into my comic production time, but not any more than regular household chores. It has a nice balance of different types of activities so it’s extremely hard to get bored of the same old routine. There are yoga exercises (which I pretty much ignore), aerobics (my primary focus for trimming the fat right now), strength exercises, and balance games. Many exercises make combined use of the Fit board and the standard controller; for example, the synchronized boxing has you stepping off and on the board to “block” while the Wii remote and the Nunchuck are used to throw punches. Since the board is a sensitive electronic device, the running activities use the accelerometers in the Wiimote (you stick it in your back pocket) rather having you smash the board with your feet. Unfortunately, it is possible to cheat on such activities, i.e. you can “run” perfectly fine by sitting on the couch and shaking the Wiimote with your wrist. However, you’re on the honor system in that regard and having someone else playing with you can keep you honest.

As stated, I’ve been concentrating on the aerobics portion at the moment. Aerobics are all about burning fat, and I’ve got plenty of fat to burn. At the least, I want to turn that spare tire from a full-size to a compact. So I start by doing a regimine of step aerobics (first the easy beginner mode, then advanced). (You would find this hilarious if you had seen me join my wife’s aerobics class several years ago; it’s quite a mental picture.) I follow this with a nice long run then the sychronized boxing. Once I’ve done all this, I’ve done a good 25-28 minutes of real aerobic exercise. I pad this with a little bit of balance games or strength training to make sure I’m over 30 minutes. Some of the little things it does to encourage you are cheesy, like having other Miis stand on the sidelines and cheer you on while running or by participating in big group step aerobics sessions. This is particularly funny for me because in addition to friends and family running or stepping beside me, I’ll occasionally see some of the GPF Miis my wife created. It’s mildly disheartening to see Dexter run past me at three times my speed, but equally enjoyable to see him trip and land on his face.

The Wii Fit isn’t a suitable substitute for a serious diet and exercise regime by any means. But it’s a fun, entertaining way to get started. I’ve started and stopped many exercise plans over the years, and this is perhaps the first one that really has made me want to get started each evening. Some of the scoring seems arbitrary at times, but each time you beat a previous record you get that sense of gaming accomplishment that motivates you to keep trying. I’m hoping it will be a gateway to a more serious exercise plan, but for now it’s at least getting me to do something more with my evenings than watch TV.

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.