Geek Dad: Awesomely Geeky Projects and Activities for Dads and Kids to Share

Geek Dad: Awesomely Geeky Projects and Activities for Dads and Kids to Share

The ultimate DIY project guide for techie dads raising kids in their own geeky image, in the spirit of The Dangerous Book for Boys Today's generation of dads grew up more tech-savvy than ever. Rather than joining the Little League team, many grew up playing computer games, Dungeons and Dragons, and watching Star Wars . Now with kids of their own, these digital-age dads are looking for fresh ways to share their love of science and technology, and help their kids develop a passion for learning and discovery. Enter supergeek, and father of two, Ken Denmead. An engineer and editor of the incredibly popular GeekDad blog on wired.com, Ken has created the ultimate, idea-packed guide guaranteed to help dads and kids alike enjoy the magic of playtime together and tap into the infinite possibility of their imagination. With illustrations throughout, this book offers projects for all ages to suit any timeframe or budget. With Denmead's expert guidance, you and your child can: •Fly a night-time kite ablaze with lights or launch a video camera with balloons •Construct the "Best Slip n' Slide Ever," a guaranteed thrill ride •Build a working lamp with LEGO bricks and CDs •Create a customized comic strip or your own board game •Make geeky crafts like cyborg jack-o'-lanterns or Ethernet cuff links Brimming with endlessly fun and futuristic tidbits on everything from gaming to gadgets, GeekDad helps every tech-savvy father unleash his inner kid-and bond with the next generation of brainiacs. Ken Denmead is the Publisher and Editor-at-Large of GeekDad.com. A professional civil engineer, he lives near San Francisco with his wife and two sons, who are both geeks-in-training. Introduction About Being a Geek and a Dad Once upon a time, the word geek was used to describe circusperformers. Then it evolved as a pejorative to describeawkward, skinny kids who got routinely thrown intoschool lockers by the high school football team. But these days, geek has reinvented itself. This is the era of the geek. And geeks arecool. There is some interchangeability between geek and nerd . Theyboth generally describe someone of restricted social ability whofinds enjoyment in pursuits outside the mainstream—pursuits likecomputers, role-playing games (RPGs), science fiction and fantasyliterature and movies, science and engineering, and so on—you getthe idea. But there is a key difference between the geek and thenerd. One renowned geek dad (and honorary GeekDad), Wil Wheaton,describes it pretty simply: A geek is a self-aware nerd. It makes a lotof sense to me—I think geeks had those social issues growing upand liked all those things that weren’t part of the popular culturein school, but we came to understand our nature and, in a veryKübler-Ross kind of way, moved past the self-limiting aspects ofnerdhood to a state of acceptance, and even enjoyment, of our placein the universe. Which, in a funny way, helped us take care of someof those social issues, because a lot of us ended up actually gettingmarried and having kids (which totally rocks!). I think part of the current ascendancy of geeks in general, andGeekDads specifically, is that there are a lot more geeky womenthan people realize, and some of us geeky guys were smart enoughto recognize our own kind and attempt to mate and perpetuate thesubspecies. But before I get too far along, let me point out something important:Geeks aren’t just about the computers and the D&D and thepassion for anime and comic books. There’s a whole lot more outthere that people get passionate about, even mildly obsessive about,that can qualify them as geeks. If you’re so passionate about somethingthat you’re not just good at it but can lose yourself doing it forlong periods of time (often to your social detriment), you may be ageek. If you carry encyclopedic knowledge about a topic and willjoyfully use it to act as the pedant whenever the subject is beingdiscussed, you may be a geek. If you have a room in your house devotedto a hobby that other family members avoid talking about,you may indeed be a geek. I’m not talking about “experts” or“professionals”—I’m talking about the real deal. Here are some examples: So, what are the factors that make up the geek? I’d like to positthat the geek is a combination of common personality factors thatwe see in all sorts of people. Indeed, these factors taken aloneor only in pairs may lead to less desirable characters. See, for example,the Venn diagram below (talk about geeky!), where I’ve describedthe possible combinations of key personality factors thatmake up the geek, and its associated stereotypes: Knowledgeability,Obsessiveness, and Social Skills. Knowledgeability represents having significant stored informationwith easy recall. That knowledge may be broad and relativelyshallow—the know-it-all—or itmay cover only a few topics butbe deep and profound—the expert/problem solver. Obsessiveness is a person’sability to lose himself in somethingh