Howto increase your geek factor : impress your collegues with an origami orthorhombic crystal on your desk. Crystal forms offers paper models for the 32 crystal classes and 7 crystal systems reproduced in .pdf format.
The Lego Store has several Ultimate Collector's items like this 5000+ pieces Millenium Falcon, though the Death Star (3400+ pieces) is impressive too. Even more impressive is the 13 hours assemblage preview.
I'm all hip, young & trendy again, cause I bought myself an iPod. The 2GB black Nano is a worthy replacement for the 512MB Creative Muvo I bought 2 years ago. As for iTunes, GTKPod on Linux seems a good alternative.
I'm looking around for a mp3 player with some more space; and by looking around, one cannot ignore the Apple iPod. I still wonder why iPods have so many success : the feature/price ratio of them is way lower than its competitors. I only can attribute the success to the sweet design (though I find the new Nano with its square corners plain ugly) and the combination with iTunes.
Mp3newsire.net features an early Xmas article with a list of the iPod killers; though I cannot really see anything the would threaten the iPod (except maybe the Zune or the Creative Zen Neeon 2).
What's more geekier than this Lego ice cube tray ?
There's only one drawback I see, and that is that you can't stack the cubes : there's no bottom mold, so the bottom is flat.
HappyMagpie.com has an impressive range of Star Wars origami, if you want to go for the coolness of a droideka on your desk.
Astromech.net is an impressive site for people who want to build their own R2-D2 droid, complete with lights, sounds, and maybe motion. Check out the tutorials.
It's hot out here, and this since two weeks. Temperatures rise daily above 30 degrees Celsius, and that's exceptionally hot. Geoff Milburn decided to put his thermodynamics classes to work however, and produced this ~24$ homebrew air conditioner. It'll cool a room to a comfortable level in 15-20 mins, and will run for a few hours on a garbage pail full of water. It's cheap, environmentally friendly (just fire the waste water off to your garden), and makes a good one hour project for a quiet evening.
The last days have been expensive... First, Friday I noticed an ad for a new bike. I have been looking a long time for another bike : the current one dates from my student years, and frankly, besides the metallic frame, there's not much that is worth restoring. I first thought about upgrading the bike with new parts, but that turned out to be too costly. I then thought about buying myself a second-hand bike, but they are really hard to find and some are as much worn out like my current one. So buying the one I did yesterday seemed to be a good choice, certainly if I considered the price. Unfortunately, the current weather does not allow me to do a testdrive, unless I want to return soaking wet.
We have been looking for some new garden furniture too, and a bargain in the local toy and garden shop seemed the right thing; it even had the color we were looking for.
And last, I'm about to buy myself a new car. I've searched long and hard for a second-hand car, but young diesel cars are hard to find, and *very* expensive. So I bit the bullet and decided to spend 3000 euro more, and get myself a new car. I haven't signed any documents yet, but within a week, there will be more news. Watch this space.
My new toy is the Medion MD95000 PDA. It's nothing more than a rebuilt Mitac Mio 168, and the fun thing about it is that it has a GPS receiver built-in. The bundled GPS software also contains maps for biking and hiking, what's another surplus. Only a shame that Freeware software for Windows CE isn't as available as for the PalmOS.
The Mio 168 runs on Windows Mobile 2003 for Pocket PC, utilizes an Intel XScale processor, and weighs in at a mere 147grams (5.2 ounces). The unit also offers 64MB of RAM and contains a 256 MB SD Card. A 16-bit TFT LCD display with LED backlighting offers up to 65,536 colors to make for clear viewing indoors and out.