In my lifetime, I have been fortunate enough to see the technological explosion that has spawned cell phones that can run your whole house, Tablet PCs, and Wikipedia, which we can all agree is really awesome. I truly believe that in my lifetime I may see the extinction of the telephone pole. On that note, I would like to share an article about a new tech gadget that may actually change everything once again.

A few months ago, a group of geeks decided to build possibly the smallest computer on earth. They built a machine that can fit in a pack of cigarettes, and you can stack them to increase their power. That’s right, our friends over at RaspberryPi have designed something that can be turned into a computer the size of your house. The best part? Each individual computer costs $25-35. Yeah. If you were to buy one each month, you could have an incredible super computer by Christmas.

Now to be fair, I’m not geeky enough to know my way around Linux, which is what this system appears to be running on. But everything is open source, and it seems their mission is to get technology to everyone for a low price. I encourage you to check them out, order one or two, and let me know what you think.

Happy Geeking!

-Thorngage

While I’m a fan of both Star Wars and Star Trek, I’ve long been more of a Trekkie.  So I was excited to discover the Star Trek Online banner while surfing around fanfiction.net.  At least I’m not too behind the times–it was released January 17th.  I spent pretty much all day yesterday and overnight to this morning downloading and installing it and hope to have time today to try it out.  Here’s how it’s described at its home site startrekonline.com:

In this free-to-play massively multiplayer online game from Cryptic Studios, players can pioneer their own destiny as Captain of a Federation starship. Or they can become a Klingon Warlord and expand the Empire to the far reaches of the galaxy.

Players will have the opportunity to visit iconic locations from the popular Star Trek fiction, reach out to unexplored star systems and make contact with new alien species. With Episode Missions, every moment spent playing Star Trek Online will feel like a new Star Trek episode in which you are the star.

I’m especially interested to see what the combat system is like, because there’s ground and space combat, apparently.  Once I get running, I’ll post my character name, and invite everyone else to do the same!

I won’t be starting my choose-a-path story yet, as we’re still in construction and don’t have enough members for the voting.  In the meantime, I’ll suggest a fanfiction for you to read.

I tread carefully when it comes to fanfic, because it drives me insane when characters aren’t portrayed geniune to their original selves, or when fans create really bad romantic entanglements.  But I did manage to find one fanfic that I’ve rather enjoyed so far.  It’s a fanfic of the “Big Bang Theory” TV show, written in script form, and it stays true to the characters and the geeky humor of the show well.  A new episode was just posted today, and you can read it all here:  http://www.fanfiction.net/u/2794367/

All in all, this writer has five episodes up.  There is a fan-created character involved, but one that so far integrates well with the original cast of characters.  So if you like the “Big Bang Theory” TV show, check it out!

I began reading through a few of the neat little tricks at Lifehacker.com the other day, and was amazed at the ingenuity of some people. If you haven’t checked out their site, it is full of cool ideas on how to change miniscule details about your life by using geek logic. For example, they did an article showing how you can turn a bag of instant oatmeal upside down, cut the bottom off, and fill the pouch with hot water to eat it right out of the bag when there isn’t a bowl handy. Another article shows how using a metal or wooden spoon (be careful, the wood can warp) to place on top of a pot of boiling water to keep it from boiling over when you aren’t watching. Did some prick on Wall Street come up with this idea? NO!  A geek with a see-through computer case, 4 cats, and posters of vampire gargoyles did.

The article I would like to draw attention to today is how to Seal Plastic Bags with Aluminum Foil and an Iron. I have tried this trick, and it really does work. Take a piece of aluminum foil and fold it over the opening of a plastic bag, like egg noodles, brown sugar, even coffee. Then use an iron to heat the foil and melt the plastic together for a tight seal.

Lifehacker has a great variety of subjects to read about, some of which are pretty smart, others are kind of dumb and useless, but all of them entertaining. I definitely encourage you to at least give it a lazy pass by to check it out.

Happy Geeking!

-Thorngage

Hey, Dinah here. As far as being a geek or gamer, I guess I’m a part-time gamer. No I don’t know the latest mmo, I don’t know which stats belong with which character (fighters need high charisma right?), I don’t know the difference between all the table top rpg’s (aren’t they all just D&D?) and I definitely don’t follow the writers, artists or such of any geek/gamer related anything on twitter. But what I do know is what it is like to be the other half of a geek/gamer. So while I don’t dive head first into the geek world I can drop some knowledge from someone who sits on the sidelines and maybe even gets in the game those last two minutes of the fourth quarter.(see what I did there? That’s a sports analogy. Much more my thing) Sometimes it’s neat to see the geek/gamer world from a different perspective.

‘Ello, I’m Padma (no, not Padme; Padma means “lotus” and is the name of a Hindu deity, which is way cooler than a prequel princess, thank you).  I’m here for the fiction writing aspect of geekdom.  I’m hoping as we gain more members that we can maybe get some turn-based collaborative writing going.  But my foremost duty is to provide you with something to read and entertain you.  Each week, I will post a new chapter of an ongoing story.  And each week, the end of the chapter will include choices so that you, the members, can vote on what will happen next in the story!  The first story I write will be a fantasy genre, but if this project goes well, I’d also like to do a sci-fi along the line.

So check up on Padma’s Pathway every Monday for a new installment in the story (because Mondays suck, and maybe a choose-your-own-adventure might help it suck less), and you will have until midnight Wednesday to cast your vote for the next installment.

So recently I was surfing through Thinkgeek.com, a website that my brother turned me on to. The site features all sorts of things for the everyday geek. Most of them are frivolous wastes of money, like the laser light star projector for only $169.99 (cool as it is, nobody NEEDS this). Then I happened to stumble upon an item that I couldn’t come up with a negative response to. For only $5.99 they offer a set of chopsticks that have a fork and knife at the other end. Think of all the times you have tried to show off your chopstick skills while eating sushi or some other Asian inspired food, only to reach the inevitable point of needing a fork when you want to dig into your 2 quarts of something fried rice. Well now you can whip these babies out from your shirt pocket (don’t scratch the cover of your iphone when you do) and impress those who lack the manual dexterity to wield chopsticks, while showing the humility of using real silverware like the lazy American that you are!
Thinkgeek offers a wide variety of geek eating utensils, like Chimpsticks, Titanium Sporks, and Samurai Sword Chopstick sets. If you want to check out this item, or perhaps order and send a few sets to me, you can see them here: http://www.thinkgeek.com/homeoffice/kitchen/e86a/?pfm=homepage_Featured_8_e86a

Happy Geeking!

-Thorngage

Salutations and welcome to the craze! As we get settled I just wanted to say hello to all those coming to take a look at the Guild’s site. I am Meridian, I shall be helping to cover a gamer girl’s point of view and focusing more on the things you can do to make your geek lifestyle work for you!

Everything from stargate cupcakes to call of cthulu dice bags for those who can knit. My little corner is going to be everything from my point of view on up and coming games I have tested, short stories and reviews on conventions. I should be attending PAX Prime this year and look forward to covering that for you!

But all in all! Welcome and pull up a chair!

~Meri

Hello fellow geeks, nerds, techies, and con-artists (As in convention. See what I did there?)! I am Thorngage and I look forward to sharing a few entertaining tidbits, hobbit humor (if you don’t get it, don’t worry. We can have the half-orc explain it to you), and rants and raves about gaming and tech issues. I may even share a few amusing stories from the world of telephone tech support. Stay tuned!

A great start for our group here.

Welcome to Guild 1042.  Please excuse our dust, debris and broken links as we finish up this website.  But for now enjoy what is working and we hope to see you again soon.