Well, you blew off Black Friday. Good for you – it’s just a hassle with the crowds when it’s not online, anyway.
Rather than looking at Wired’s mostly awful gift listing, which included the canned unicorn meat from ThinkGeek, an old April Fool’s joke, I have a few gift ideas for this year that are pretty nifty, some of which won’t even break the bank.
Speaking of keeping it cheap, let’s start with this:
The Boardgame Remix Kit
As it says on the Boardgame Remix site, “Turns the boardbamges you’ve got into new games you’ll love”. The current offering is simply a 55-page PDF that gives you some concrete plans for rejuvenating your existing boardgames, for just $4.
There are plans for Monopoly, Scrabble, Cluedo, and Trivial Pursuit, for both tweaking the game subtly and for rewriting the whole thing. There are even some mashups, like the one that uses the full Monopoly set and the questions from Trivial Pursuit to create a kind of taxi fare game where you move by answering questions. It’s an original concept.
The only downside is that the game is written for an English audience, so the games have pound notes in Monopoly, for example. Other variations are present, but you can pretty easily convert it into the US places/units.
There are a few other products in development and for pre-order on their site, that look interesting enough to keep an eye on as well.
Shock: social science fiction
I admit to a bit of nerdiness with my geekiness, and that’s one reason I like Shock. Shock is a pretty darn neat role playing game. The system itself is utterly unique compared with anything else I’ve played, which is saying a good bit. It shares hardly anything in common with traditional games.
What you do, in a very simplified explanation, is construct a science fiction story by agreeing with the other players on certain thematic elements of the storyline in advance, and then telling the story live, in a way that allows other players to interrupt if the story doesn’t go the way their character would appreciate. A roll of dice and spending of points result in the outcome that dictates the end result. And like all good science fiction, the end result is more important than anyone really “winning”.
This game is probably really hard to play. And if you’re a D&D player, and you are used to and enjoy the “listen, attack, loot, camp, move forward, repeat” procedure, then you may not enjoy this. Nonetheless, if you’re into games, this is at least a fantastic read and a good price from a small press.
PDF and print versions are available, and a bundle of both tops out at $26.
My Sucky Teen Romance
My Sucky Teen Romance is a film about a teen who goes to a geek convention, gets bitten by a real vampire, and then has to rely on her friends to help her work it all out. It reminds me of the good, unpolished Kevin Smith stuff.
Ok, before you skip to the next gift, here are the cool bits: The movie looks really, really fun, and it’s produced by 18-year-old writer/director Emily Hagins (who’s from Philadelphia too, neat!). Campy vampire movie, you say? Check out the awesome trailer:
Here’s the thing: You’re late to this one, but you can still get in on the deal. The project that this gift is about is an IndiGoGo project, where you can give money to someone who wants to produce a movie, and when they reach their fundraising goals, they actually produce the movie that they pitched. What’s neat about this project is that the movie itself is already complete, they’re just raising money to get it into production.
Different contributions give you different perks. For $10, you just get a “Sucky” button. For $1000, you get tickets to the premiere for the film, and all of the other perks. I recommend the somewhat lavish $250 donation, which gets you a personalized, signed copy of the movie from the cast and crew, plus a t-shirt, a poster, a postcard, and the “sucky” button, plus the warm feeling that you helped bring this movie to the world.
Whoomp! Earbud Enhancers
I don’t know about you, but I can’t wear the regular cheapie earbuds, like the ones that come with Apple products. The iPod earbuds won’t stay in my ears. I don’t know if my ears are too small or too big or what, but the buds just don’t stay in there even if I’m staying absolutely still.
I’m a big fan of my Ultimate Ears earbuds, which are most decidedly not cheapie. I recently bought a set of $20 Skullcandy earbuds while I was out because I forgot my good UE set, and all I can say is “I got what I paid for”. Yuck.
Nonetheless, you can at least solve the fit problem for your standard earbuds with these little snap-on earbud thingies, Whoomp! Earbud Enhancers. They snap on to your regular earbuds, and give it that nice little rubbery “noise isolating” earplug insert. At $20 for 2 pair, they’re about as much as the new Skullcandy earbuds with the noise isolation built in, but if you have a pair of nice earbuds that otherwise don’t fit your ears, this might be a way to salvage them.
On the other hand, if you’re just looking for some replacement noise-isolating tips for your existing set of earbuds, Monster makes a SuperTip Starter Kit that might have in it what you need.
Technophile Lip Balm
I’m not a fan of my lips drying out, which tends to happen a lot in the winter when it’s cold outside. I usually get the Burts Bees brand of lip balm, but this tube of chocolate flavored Reality Sucks hand-made balm from Geek Bliss looks marketed right at me.
Sara is a geek herself, and produces the lip balm for sale on Etsy. She’s got many flavors listed, if chocolate isn’t your thing, and as of this writing, everything seems to be on sale.
By the way, Etsy is a nice place to get some hand-made crafty gifts for the folks that really like that kind of thing.
Shapeways
Oh yes, Shapeways isn’t really itself a gift, but there are so many cool things for geeks there. No matter what you get from Shapeways, you’re getting something that was modeled in 3D on a computer and custom printed out of a 3D printer in whatever material you choose. That’s pretty darn cool.
Shapeways has the kind of store like Cafe Press, where you can upload your digital models and get a portion of the sale of an item. My favorite items currently for sale include this $25 iPhone bumper, which is really stylish. This Rubik’s Cube Gift Box is a working Rubik’s Cube that, when solved, opens to reveal a surprisingly large internal cavity for holding some other item. Check it out:
I gotta say, that’s absolutely insane. And so is the $247 price.
But also on Shapeways, you can see the models for d20 role-playing dice, which are reasonably priced and absolutely unique. Here are a few die collections by different modelers:
- dizingof
- Huan80
- Ceramic Wombat (my favorite)
- Jvo
Microvision ShowWX Projector
Projectors are cool. We use one to project movies in the back yard around the fire pit to watch with the kids in the summer. The ShowWX Projector isn’t for that, but it’s pretty neat.
This projector is different from the other projectors on the market because it uses lasers to create its image. The result of this is that the projector needs no focus adjustment. The focus is always perfect, even around curves.
There are some other projectors on the market that might be brighter, cheaper, or last longer on a charge (yes, these pico-projectors are typically the size of your phone and have an internal rechargeable battery), but there aren’t any others that use lasers and don’t need focus adjustment.
That said, don’t ask me if I’ve ever used my pico projector for a practical purpose. It’s just a really neat gadget looking for a purpose.
Daemon on Audible
Who has time to read? Well, you should make time. But if you can’t, you can use Audible. Audible is the audiobook store that powers both Amazon and Apple’s audiobook inventory. Why buy direct? Because if you’re an avid listener (like during that long commute) you can get an AudibleListener subscription for $15/month and get about one new book per month from Audible’s full inventory. (You actually get a credit per month, and some obscenely large books are as much as 2 credits.)
Audible has some great science fiction in their library. I’ve enjoyed Spin, by Robert Charles Wilson (although the narrator, Scott Brick, isn’t my favorite), and the whole lot of John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War series.
But what you should look out for is Daemon, by Daniel Suarez, which is one of the best books I’ve read this year. Freedom™, is the sequel, which is also really good.
Tron Legacy by Daft Punk
I don’t know what people see in Tron Legacy. I should write a whole post on this topic. This “reboot” is going to be as bad as the Lucas-ification of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. What geeks like is the romance attached to the first movie, and they don’t seem to realize that what they’re getting is not romance, but HD treatment of their SD childhood movie memories. The graphics in the original Tron looked like that because that’s all we could imagine at the time. The graphics in December’s Tron Legacy look like that because… Um… They looked like that in 1982?
Nevermind that the movie is directed by someone who’s never directed a movie before, and is written by people whose prior efforts include TV, and the best show they could muster was “Lost”, which I classify in the “why am I watching this crapfest, and oh, wait, that was the end? Wow, that sucked” type of show. I digress…
The soundtrack looks to be pretty good. Daft Punk hasn’t released any music in the last three years, but the release track from the new album is good. It’s not released until December 7th, so you might wait until then for more reviews, but based solely on Daft Punk music in the past and the one track of the new album that is available, “Derezzed”, I say “buy”.
Scott Pilgrim vs The World
With the metric crapload of comic books that have turned into movies over the past few years, you’d think they’d treat some of them right. You know all I have to say to prove my point here is “Daredevil”.
Now I don’t know if the Scott Pilgrim movie is true to the comic, but the movie is one of the best things released this year. And if you’re a geek without it, you’ve totally lost your cred with me.
I mean come on. “Pee meter.” I rest my case.
Fujifilm FinePix Real 3D W3 Digital Camera
I was pretty amazed by the $400 Real 3D W3 when I saw it. It’s a camera with two lenses and two 10-megapixel sensors. The lenses can be set to different settings so that you can take a telephoto image with one lens and a wide image with the other, but of the same subject and at the same time. You can set the camera to use different exposure settings for the two lenses also, which lets you get interesting action shots or at least compensate for an utter lack of camera know-how.
The camera, like most digitals these days, takes movies. This one takes movies in 720p. In 3D. If you have a 3D TV, you can hook this camera to it and it’ll play back the 3D movies you’ve taken with it.
Oh. The screen on the camera is 3D, too. And doesn’t use glasses.
Outlets To Go Power Strip with USB
The $12 Outlets To Go Power Strip with USB is one of those things you didn’t realize you needed until you have one and have been using it for a while. It’s basically just a standard 3-outlet power strip with a single USB charger.
This is similar to the Belkin mini surge suppressor, which has three outlets and 2 USB ports ($9). We actually have a few of these around our house. The problem with them is that they don’t have a cord, and so you have to be right next to the outlet to use it.
What makes the Outlets To Go strip nice is that it has a compact cord that allows you to get just a little bit farther away from the outlet. The advertising suggests that this is good for hotels. This is not where you will find the most use for the strip. This strip will be most useful at the airport and coffee shop, where you need to barter for space among the 4 outlets they leave exposed. You can be someone’s best friend if you add another available electrical outlet. And with the USB port, you can charge your phone at the same time. Nice!
One other nice thing about the Outlets To Go strip is that the plug prongs fit nicely into one of its own outlets while it’s stored. With the Belkin model (and this is my bigger complaint about it), the prongs are always exposed in the bag, taking up an odd amount of space at the bottom. It’s always bending up pages of books or making it hard to fit notebooks in there. It’s a small thing, but for an extra $3, you get a cord and tucked away prongs. That’s not bad.
