testing a new blog post

After a little over a year of planning and development, my wife and I finally launched our custom kids birthday invitation Card Website Mighty Grams! Check out our fan page here:http://www.facebook.com/MightyGrams. The site has a bunch of quirky 'face in the hole' invitation…

In trying to capitalize on some interests of my sons and their friends, as well as finding some use for my boxes of old baseball memorabilia, I designed a new game to play with trading cards called "Toppers." The game leverages the stats on the back of the player cards as well as 4d6 to simulate a baseball…

Many of the games I've been playing on the iPad are not the games I actually want to play on the iPad. The games I want to play don't actually exist. Mainly because they're paper-and-dice games that haven't yet made the transition to digital. 

My best example? Car Wars. I cannot stress this enough -- I absolutely LOVED Car Wars. When it first came out, the original game and the few expansion packs came in these little black boxes that snapped closed. I still have all my Cars Wars…

Last week,  I was lucky enough to take my son on a couple of tours/visits that may interest some of you (with or without children) in the Vancouver BC…

I am building this project from Make: Projects for backyard fun over the summer. I am changing some of the circuits and functions. When I am done I will probably post my version in the projects section. Watch for it!…

I just had to share this cartoon. Such a great concept and left me giggling. Someday I will have my own rapid prototyping machine...someday...

via …

I just recently finished reading this article, shared on Facebook by Felicia Day, and it really got me thinking about what it means to be a geek. According to author of the article, technology has made it too easy for anyone to be a geek in any given area. Want to be a history geek? Spend a few hours on…

I earned my degree in Psychology. I love the brain and everything about it. My Biological Psychology professor really drove home the fact that everything with regards to the brain, behavior, personality, etc. is on a spectrum. There are no black and whites. 

My first post on this forum tangentially touched on one spectrum I'll call the Geek Knowledge Spectrum: breadth vs. depth of knowledge. This time I want to talk a little about what I'll call, for simplicity sake, the Geek…

I have wanted to write a geek dad blog ever since I found out that my wife was pregnant with our 1st child. The 1st thing I did was to take to Google to try to find a good title that wasn't already taken. That is how I 1st stumbled upon wired.com/geekdad. I immediately added it to my Google Reader, and it quickly became the RSS feed upon which I spent most of my free time.

With so much to read I never did end up starting that geeking parenting blog, but hey, Ken Denmead and his…

Being my first post here, I guess I can introduce myself. My name is Fabian and I am a geek dad. My sons are 17 years old and 2. Yes that's a huge gap. And I am grateful for the help my eldest son gives to my wife and I with his little bro. Live in Virginia and I love to read and get outdoors and build stuff (though not very good at it).

I am currently training him to love Star Wars, Blade Runner, and all thinks Geekdom. We will see how he takes to it. Hope to post more…

I visit a LOT of different websites and blogs -- they run from generic news sites to very specific forums dedicated to all sorts of hobbies I follow. And what do they all have in common? Commenters. 

Lately I've been giving some serious thought to totally ignoring comments for a half year... maybe even a total year. While I love reading comments (good ones), it just seems that the Internet has really taken a nosedive in terms of civility and common courtesy. 

I won't throw…

Who knew that by the time we were ready to start having children, being a Geek/Nerd/Gamer/etc wouldn't be shunned anymore. In fact we are now the preferred role model for children! Smart, intuitive, funny; Truly the Geek shall inherit the Earth.

Looking around online now shows that there are a nearly limitless amount of resources available showing people how to be successful geek parents. This blog being one of them. As a father to be and proud geek, it is heartening to see support…

On Sunday morning my family and I were lucky enough to get hold of some charity preview tickets for Aardman's latest stop-motion extravaganza "The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists!", courtesy of the Cinema and Television Benevolent Fund. I'll start by saying that we all loved it and, unlike some kids' blockbusters, we laughed our way through the film together at the same…

The big reason why I find myself writing blog entries for GeekDad Community is that GeekDad has been extremely useful to me over the last few years. It validates a particular style of parenting and it has been a huge source of new ideas. There is much for us to share at this nexus of involved parenting and exuberance for science, technology, and the culture surrounding them.

To this end, I think it would be useful for us to have a list of GeekDad recommended software for repurposing…

One of the great things about being a Geek Dad is being able to expose my children to the interesting, the esoteric, and the odd. And while I love sharing my personal interests with my kids, it is sometimes hard to reconcile that they are not simply small versions of myself -- that listening…

The following I originally shared on Google+ and then added to my personal blog for Speak Out with your Geek Out but thought that I could go ahead and post it here, too; a brand new forum to discus all of geekery. It explains why I am indebted to the GeekDad blog, and am excited for this new GeekDad community, where, hopefully, I can really feel like I am a part of. The original follows:

When my son was only a few years old, he was watching me do some work down in my basement workshop.

"Dad," he said. "I want you to make me one of those", he pointed vaguely.

"What?", I asked.

"That," he added helpfully.

"What?"

"THAT."

I finally realized he was pointing to my table saw. Just before the words, "I can't..." came out of my mouth, I stopped myself. Well, obviously I wasn't going to build my son his own full scale table saw, but maybe…

Note: A version of this article appears on my own blog at Let's Talk Robots.

My Robotics Journey

Most of what I've learned about robotics, I've learned through the support of an online community called Let's Make Robots. While there is an abundance of information on the…

Geek Finds on Pinterest this week include Alien high heels, wooden Hobbit hole playhouse, and Futurama's …