Nuketown

Geek Dad

Why I want an Apple iPad

Posted in by Kenneth Newquist on Wed, 01/27/2010 - 11:01pm

I want an iPad. It’s not because I’m a raving Apple fan boy or obsessed with the latest gadget – it’s because it fits the way I want to use technology, and addresses frustrations I’ve had with contemporary form factors. There are three specific products that I want to use with a tablet:

  • Pen-and-paper role-playing game PDFs.
  • Comic books and magazines
  • Ebooks

They’re all print-based, and they share characteristics that don’t easily translate to a laptops, netbooks, or PDAs. I’ll preface all of this by saying these are my opinions; you may find reading an eBook on an iPod Touch to be liberating, love Marvel’s pan-and-scan tools for comic books on your Windows 7 desktop computer, and have no problem paging through PDFs on your netbook. If so, more power to you … but I find these options less than optimal.

Smaug the Magnificent ... in candy

Posted in by Kenneth Newquist on Wed, 01/13/2010 - 5:17am

The good folks at Miss(ed) Manners have done it again: they've recreated one of J.R.R. Tolkien's most epic scenes ... in candy. This time around, it's the conclusion to The Hobbit, featuring the Battle of the Five Armies and the assault on Lake Town by the dragon Smaug.

As with their previous creations -- The Battle of Helm’s Deep, The Battle of Pelennor Fields, The Mines of Moria, the diorama is truly a sight to behold. A red licorice Smaug rises from a frosted Lonely Mountain to ravage a gingerbread Lake Town. Gummi bear armies of goblins, orcs, humans, dwarves and elves battle for the treasure under the mountain, while overhead eagles and giant bats fight for ariel supremacy.

The Battle of Pelennor Fields ... in candy

Posted in by Kenneth Newquist on Sat, 12/26/2009 - 5:30am

Of course, it wasn't enough to recreate the Battle of Helm's Deep in candy. The brilliant, creative minds behind that project had to go and make The Battle of Pelennor Fields ... in candy.

It's got it all -- the white icing walls of Minas Tirith, the black licorice corpse of the Witch King's mount. Gumdrop elephant war machines. A functional battering ram made entirely of licorice. A green marshmellow garden. And, of course, a heck of a lot of candy orcs. It's an amazing project, and I hope they follow it up with some other confection creation this year.

Under the Geek Tree: Innsmouth Horror

Posted in by Kenneth Newquist on Wed, 12/23/2009 - 7:27pm

The Innsmouth Horror expansion for Arkham Horror -- my Birthday/Christmas present from my family -- arrived today.

It's taken up its place of honor underneath the Greek Tree, where it will remain until Saturday, Dec. 26 when the Blackrazors convene to repel the Deep One invasion that threatens to rock New England.

Naturally, we intend to bring as much firepower to bear on the problem as possible, as witnessed by the arrival of the Imperial AT-AT and Slave 1 at the top of the photograph. 

Gingerbread TARDIS

Posted in by Kenneth Newquist on Mon, 12/21/2009 - 8:29pm
Photo: TARDIS Gingerbread House

Clearly I've only just begun to explore the frontiers of gingerbread construction, especially geeky gingerbread construction.

This gingerbread TARDIS (pictured at left) is just too darn cool; I love the attention to detail, especially the window panes AND K-9 the robodog. I'm also impressed that it stayed together long enough to take the picture (especially after last years less-than-successful icing glue experiment). Hats off to Anna Marie for a most excellent project.

813 Gingerbread Lane

Posted in by Kenneth Newquist on Sun, 12/13/2009 - 10:50pm

Gingerbread Hosues The kids and I built our annual gingerbread houses on Sunday, using gingerbread house kits from Wegman's and candy from the remains of our Halloween horde. You can find the full photo gallery (with annotations) on Flickr.

We built two houses, one for my six-year-old daughter StarGirl, and one for my three-year-old son, NeutronLad (with NeutronLad sitting on my lap the whole time, which made things just that much more challenging). We had a big assist from my wife, who showed us how to put the icing guns together, and pre-glued the gingerbread houses. Yes, glued -- last year, we used icing to hold the houses together, and it was a gigantic mess. This time around, we took the advice of a friend and glued them together. They're far more stable, and it's not like we're planning to eat these anyway.

If you're looking for a science fiction or fantasy theme, you won't find one; these are utterly conventional gingerbread houses. Maybe next year we can create the candy Tower of Saruman instead. Gummy ents anyone?

Four Essential Apps for Windows Netbooks

Posted in by Kenneth Newquist on Thu, 08/06/2009 - 4:30am

My family recently got an Asus netbook, which has plunged me once again into the world of Windows XP. Fortunately I came prepared -- while I spend most of my day on a Mac, I occasionally dual boot into XP on my MacBook Pro, and I've accumulated a number of must-have utilities for thriving in Windows.

Launchy: A fast application launcher that allows you to quickly find and run applications on your computer. It's roughly equivelent of Quicksilver on the Mac, though Quicksilver offers more advanced capabilities.

Cute PDF: A free PDF creator for Windows; "print" your document to the Cute PDF printer and it spits out a finished PDF. It's something I do instinctively on the Mac; it's nice to have that functionality in Windows as well.

Bonjour for Windows: Apple's Bonjour software lets you quickly find shared printers on a network. I use this to print to my Airport Express-connected HP LaserJet printer. The alternative is trying to use the Windows network printing utility, and that way lies madness.

The Blue Dolphin Splashes Down at Nuketown

Posted in by Kenneth Newquist on Fri, 07/31/2009 - 9:35am

This is my first-ever post written on my family's spiffy new Asus Eee PC netbook, aka "The Blue Dolphin", so named because it's small and blue, which led my wife to describe it as a baby blue dolphin on Twitter.

Anyway ... we decided to get a netbook as a direct result of our summer vacation; I could have used it at Origins, and it would have been handy to have for writing on Butler Island on Lake Champlain (where we spent a week hanging out with family friends).

It's a cute little machine -- it ships with a 160 GB hard drive, wireless N support, a 4 cell battery capable of up to eigth hours of use (assuming you use the Asus power management tools), three USB ports, an SD card reader, an ethernet port and Windows XP.

I'll forgive it for that last bit; I don't have the energy to hack this thing to run Mac OS X, and if I have to run Windows, XP isn't too bad (though I am curious about trying Windows 7 on it). The whole thing cost about $300 from Amazon. which made it a fairly inexpensive experiment.

Baseball Nerds Unite: IronPigs Host Star Wars Night

Posted in by Kenneth Newquist on Sat, 05/02/2009 - 4:30am

The Lehigh Valley IronPigs -- the AAA affiliate of the Philadelpha Phillies -- is hosting a Star Wars night. That's right: Star Wars. And baseball. On the same night!

The event is being held Thursday, June 11, 2009 from 5:45pm - 10:45pm at Coca-Cola Park in Allentown, Pa. According to the team's Facebook page, fans are invited to dress up in Star Wars costumes for the event, but that level of geekery is not needed. There will also be Star Wars triva and movie clips between settings and a "Pig Wars" commemorative cup.

While I'd love to go, I'm already going to a game two days later, on Saturday. I don't know that I can justify two games in one week ... but I'm sorely tempted.

Goodnight Saint: 1996-2009

Posted in by Kenneth Newquist on Wed, 04/01/2009 - 4:50pm

Saint, our 13-year-old German Shepherd Dog, was a huge, friendly dog who spent his days guarding his pack, watching out for the ever-present feline menace, and keeping a mindful eye on the two-legged pups running amok in our house.

We adopted him at age 3 as a "brother" for Madison, our yellow Labrador. We quickly learned his quirks: he'd go bonkers whenever it was time to go for a walk, and he had a passion for herding cats (though it took us about a year to figure out he was trying to herd them instead of, say, eating them). When we had kids, the big brown dog took it in stride, incorporating them into his pack without without a moment's pause. He and Mad Dog spent many a long summer day watching the kids, barking at neighbors, and insuring that we always knew when the mailman had arrived.

He was smarter than your average pooch -- you could ask him questions, and he'd bark his answer, letting us know when he was hungry, needed a walk, or just wanted a snack ... at least until he went deaf and could no longer hear the questions.