I've pulled together all of my fatherhood posts from the time Jordan was born until now, and grouped them into a category called, simply enough "Geek Dad". These posts have proven popular over the years, and they've been languishing in obscurity since the redesign. Now they're back and easy to find -- just go to the "Blog" section and look for the "Blog Categories" list in the right-hand column.

Douglas Adams died at the gym. If geeks ever needed an excuse to avoid the gym, the death of the grandmaster of science fiction humor would do wonderfully. But geeks have never needed any excuses to avoid the gym, having come up with dozens on their own.

After all, we're not athletes. It's not that we don't love games. We'll play anything -- card games, board games, role-playing games, war games even live-action role-playing games -- as long as it doesn't require some sort of physical activity on an actual turf playing field. The reasons for this are legion, though for me personally it’s a combination of bad habits picked up in high school (where a nerd in the gym was a ripe target for ridicule), laziness (after all, I used to go biking every morning when I was a teenager) and a sincere desire to do something more intellectually compelling (in this, I am not alone).

In a post-WorldCon entry on his blog Contrary Brin, science fiction author David Brin worries that the grey hairs that dominated the convention are yet another sign that science fiction fandom is aging ... and that this does not bode well for the future of the genre.

Curious about what PC games are most popular today? Then check out GameSpy's Give Me The Stats! page, which lists the 40 most popular games (based on number of servers and number of players) on the net.

Home improvement once again takes center stage as my wife and I prepare to re-paint our living room. But it's not all painting and scraping: I've also got two new sites to talk about -- GenCon (Almost) Live and Geek Acres -- and a run down of my favorite games for the Nintendo DS. And that review of George R.R. Martin's A Feast for Crows? Yeah, that gets delayed again -- look for it in Radio Active #38.

Once, geeks were reviled. Ridiculed. Ignored. Now ... we're sex objects. Yes, that's right folks, there are now romance novels about geeks and nerds. I found this out accidentally, while walking through my local Giant supermarket on a quest to buy diapers and milk. There, on the book frontend, in bright blue and yellow pastels, was the novel Nerds Like It Hot by Vicki Lewis Thompson.

Joystiq reports that the classic German-style board games Settlers of Catan and Carcassonne are coming to Xbox Live for the 360.

That's fantastic news -- Settlers and the Hunters and Gatherers version of Carcassone are two of my group's favorite games, and they've even proved popular with my non-geek family, including my wife and my mom (ok, well, my mom's more of a proto-geek than a regular mom). While nothing can compare to sitting around the table rolling dice and grumbling about being robbed with friends, being able to play over Xbox Live might prove to be a decent alternative.

It's official -- you can now wax nostalgic with your kids about the days when there used to be nine planets. Space.com reports that Pluto has been demoted from planetary status, leaving the solar system with eight planets. The diminitive body, as well as its moon and dozens of other objects lying beyond the orbit of Neptune, will now be known as dwarf planets.

An earlier proposal to keep Pluto a planet by relegating it to a subcategory called "plutons" proved exceedingly controversial and was ditched in favor of a new definition that downsized the nineth planet.

Mike Mearls (Iron Heroes, Player's Handbook II, Monster Manual IV) is a prolific writer, and in this interview with Treasure Tables he talks about how he got started with freelancing, what appeals to him as a game master (focused games like inSpectres and Dogs in the Vineyard rank high) and thoughts on dealing with burnout. It's an excellent and insightful read.

Ok, it's not the great dirigible filled future that so many science fiction stories and films have heralded (or in the case of Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, re-imagined) but helium-filled, stratosphere-soaring, robotic aircraft could one day provide us with easily accessible wi-fi and cellular access almost anywhere in the world.

I love the idea that these things could eliminate the need for cellular towers, which at best disrupt the skyline, and at worst distrupt the skyline while attempting to look like a completely unconvincing pine tree.