Archive for the ‘Brainy Stuff’ Category

What Maketh a Geek?

Wednesday, May 18th, 2011

Which category do you fall into? Geek, nerd, dweeb or dork? To the unassuming regular person these are all part of the same classification for a person with a strong interest and enthusiasm for something. Like coding computers. Or studying rocks. Or keeping 10 Tamigotchi’s alive for as long as possible to beat the World Record. So which of these categories do you fall into?

Still not sure? To be honest, some of us IWOOTers didn’t feel compelled to fall into any of those categories, yet still felt there was something geeky about us. Then we discovered the 15 signs you’re a geek and realised we definitely were (especially with point no. 7 & 8). How many of these apply to you?

1. You have tried to enter your password on the microwave.
2. You have a list of 15 phone numbers to reach your family of just three.
3. You start tilting your head sideways to smile : )
4. You wake up at 2am to go to the bathroom and check your E-mail on your way back to bed.
5. You turn off your computer and get this awful feeling, as if you just pulled the plug on a loved one.
6. You can chat several times a day with a stranger from South Africa, but you haven’t spoken with your next door neighbour yet this year.
7. Your reason for not staying in touch with family is that they do not have e-mail addresses.
8. The concept of using real money, instead of credit or debit, to make a purchase is foreign to you.
9. Your daughter sells Charity Cookies via her own web site.
10. You call your son’s mobile phone to let him know it’s time to eat. He emails you back from his bedroom, “What’s for dinner?”
11. Your idea of being organised is multiple-coloured Post-it notes.
12. You haven’t played solitaire with real cards in years
13. You e-mail the person who works at the desk next to you.
14. You’ve sat at the same desk for four years and worked for three different companies.
15. You pull up in your own driveway and use your cell phone to see if anyone is home.

If you’re reading this and nodding then congratulations you are officially GEEK!!

geek pride uk

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International Geek Pride Day is celebrated every year on the 25th May. By taking part in the celebrations you are allowing yourself to be open to the policies of the Geek Pride Manifesto:

Rights:
1. The right to be even geekier.
2. The right to not leave your house.
3. The right to not like football or any other sport.
4. The right to associate with other nerds.
5. The right to have few friends (or none at all).
6. The right to have as many geeky friends as you want.
7. The right to be out of style.
8. The right to be overweight and near-sighted.
9. The right to show off your geekiness.
10. The right to take over the world.

Responsibilities:
1. Be a geek, no matter what.
2. Try to be nerdier than anyone else.
3. If there is a discussion about something geeky, you must give your opinion.
4. To save and protect all geeky material.
5. Do everything you can to show off geeky stuff as a “museum of geekiness.”
6. Don’t be a generalized geek. You must specialize in something.
7. Attend every nerdy movie on opening night and buy every geeky book before anyone else.
8. Wait in line on every opening night. If you can go in costume or at least with a related T-shirt, all the better.
9. Don’t waste your time on anything not related to geekdom.
10. Try to take over the world!

geek pride day uk

Click here to find out more about Geek Pride Day

Join in the conversation on Twitter #GeekPrideUK

Get Geeky and You Could Win a Nerdy Prize

Wednesday, May 18th, 2011

To celebrate International Geek Pride Day on the 25th May we’re giving away loads of prizes ranging from iwantoneofthose.com gift vouchers to Talking Yodas to some techy stuff. Like the sound of that?

Here’s how to get involved…

::Show us the Geek::

Just how geeky do you consider yourself? Upload a photo of you being your usual geeky self to our Facebook page here: facebook.com/iwantoneofthose and you’ll be in with a chance of winning a geeky prize bundle of amazingness worth £150. Criteria: the geekier the photo, the better.

::Geek Giveaway::

Win a prize a day – there’ll be a new quiz question on our Facebook & Twitter pages every day in the run up to Geek Pride Day. Answer the question each day and you’ll have a chance of winning vouchers, Talking Yoda’s, cameras and more.

geek pride day uk
Click here to find out more about Geek Pride Day.

Join in the conversation on Twitter #GeekPrideUK

The important picking of winners blurb: Two lucky winners will be picked for the photo competition based on the best photo uploaded to our Facebook page after the 26th May. Winners of the daily quiz will be picked after the 26th May. Some spot prizes may also be given at random.

Review of the Month Winner for April

Wednesday, May 11th, 2011

We’ve had a tonne load of reviews for the products you rate the best (or if you’ve been honest, the not so good) this month and as usual we’ve read through them all and selected one lucky winner. Our thanks go to GarryBacon who produced this thorough review of the ZAGGmate iPad Case & Keyboard and walks away with £100 of IWOOT vouchers. Not bad for stringing a few sentences together.

Practicality, Simplicity and Ingenious!

Those three words sum up this product. It’s Practical because you can get the Apple Keyboard Dock but you have to carry that around additionally and it’s bulky. This is a keyboard and case. The keyboard is bluetooth so you can have the orientation set to how you want it. It’s simple to pair, use and pack away, my nan can do it! It’s just ingenious in the way everything fits together to form what is effectively a very strong protector for the front of the iPad. Another thing is it’s cheap! A bluetooth keyboard and a good case costs more than this and with this your getting a case and keyboard that are made for each other. The design is so nice because it’s the exact same aluminium they use to make the iPad. If you get this case you will be as happy and as proud to own one as I am. I would really recommend this to anyone and everyone!”

ZAGGmate iPad Case & Keyboard

This could be you next month, so do keep reviewing your purchases – you could win big (£100 to be exact)!

RC Helicopters Building Towers

Thursday, January 20th, 2011

Regular readers may already know that we love RC Helicopters. We love them enough to make obstacle courses, smash them to pieces, repair them and sell them (not in that order). Naturally, we were rather excited to see that some boffins across the pond (it usually is) have managed to create a small fleet of RC choppers that are capable of building towers. What next? Supermarkets? Branches of Poundland?

We’ll let those boffins explain:

Via Geekologie.

Skiing Is Believing

Friday, January 7th, 2011

Anyone looking forward to careening effortlessly down an Alpine mountain this season will already be rather excited (I just checked the Courchevel webcam for about the seventh time this morning… it’s definitely been snowing…). Well, prepare to be even more excited – we’ve just stumbled across the ultimate pair of skiing goggles to make your impending descents that little bit more Bond-esque.

These rather ridiculous Zeal Transcend GPS Goggles are fiendishly clever, and turn the skiing experience into something that resembles the POV text-sightedness of Robocop rather than Ski Sunday. And that, folks, is definitely a good thing. Due to some intense wizardry (probably mirrors), it’s possible to track your ski routes via GPS and watch them back later, and view your stats as you go. That means temperature, speed and even the height of your jumps are recorded and shown to you as you go. In short, it’s properly amazing.

Slightly frivolous it may be (and naysayers will undoubtedly go on about it turning real life into a computer game… don’t see the problem myself…), but it’s difficult to argue with the functions of this spanking set of specs. A slope essential, if you’ve got a spare three or four hundred quid.

International Space Station visible in Solar Eclipse

Wednesday, January 5th, 2011

You might not be able to tell from the dinky picture we’ve got on the left there, but if you click on this link you can see an amazing photo taken during yesterday’s lunar eclipse. You can quite clearly make out the shape of the International Space Station as the moon blocks out a fair chunk of the sun, a rare glimpse of what’s going on just outside our atmosphere. Also, it looks rather a lot like Pac-Man, so we’re down with that too.

Apparently the International Space Station itself is a mere 100 metres in length, so it’s truly incredible that we’re able to even see it. Thanks to the snapping skills of one Thierry Legault, we can. What a clever chap. You can find out more about the photo here. Here’s a picture of him taking the picture:

Via Bad Astronomy which looks, on first inspection, to be rather excellent.

Sneaky: the boat that looks like it's sinking

Wednesday, November 3rd, 2010

This is quite crafty – a boat made to look as if it’s sinking at all times:

Fair enough, it’s a laugh, but surely there’s a constant stream of well-wishing boat-folk who offer rescue when it’s not needed? Oh how the ship’s captain must laugh! On the other hand, it’s probably an excellent defence mechanism for anyone taking a jaunt around Somali waters with crates of booty on board. That’s the only time this boat is anything approaching useful.

Here’s a pic of it out of the water:

It’s the work of one Parisian artist named Julien Berthier. So it’s a work of art rather than a proper seafaring vessel. As hardened techies we don’t understand ‘the arts’ in general, so we’re just going to file it under ‘stupid, but kinda want one’ and get on with our techie duties. Y’know, wires and that.

Via the super Geekologie.
Click here to see more pics of the boat (it’s called ‘Love Love’… we’re not here to judge).

Review of the Month Winners for August

Friday, September 24th, 2010

August has long since toddled off – we know. We’re slow. But you know what, good things come to those who wait, isn’t that what they say? Unless you haven’t won, of course, in which case nothing but disappointment awaits you. Sorry. Anyway, on to lighter matters – which lucky so-and-sos have managed to pique the interest of our moderators?

First of all, the written review winner is the enigmatically (or possibly drunkenly) named VKKKKKKKKKKKKK, who has gotten themselves into a frenzy over our Steel Playing Cards:

“These steel cards are a steal! I’ve never spent money more wisely. I bought these for my brother at first but once they had came I got so hooked to them i kept the for myself. haha! The detail in this in UNBELIEVABLE! I’ve searched for interesting cards all over the net and my friend told me about IWOOT and its the site for me! :D I spilt some coffee over a few of the cards (accidentally of course) and it dried and i just wiped it with a wet wipe and PRESTO! The coffee came off – no stains no hassle! Also, these cards are suprisingly light weight! Which is great considering you have to hold them. ;) Also, if playing in hot weather, these cards make excellent fans. ahaha! Easy to clean, light weight, beautiful, interseting and hassle free – why wouldn’t you want these cards! I recommend them! :D

Now that’s depth. And what an excellent opening pun. As for our photo review winner and the happy recipient of £75 to splurge with us, look below at the efforts of the appropriately named whippersnapper Gadgetman64 and his Boombox Speaker. Easy there, fella. Don’t throw it.

Our video winner is Spikeyseth, who wins our £150 IWOOT voucher and has evidently been having lots of fun with the Nighthawk Gyro:

This could be you next month, so do keep reviewing your purchases – you could win big!

BBC Computers used to teach Computing A-Level

Wednesday, August 25th, 2010

Crikey we’re nostalgic, aren’t we? If it wasn’t enough for us to ceremonially mark the birthday of Windows 95 yesterday, we’ve now gone all gooey over BBC Computers. When I was but a lad of primary school age, these alien pieces of technology (we were an Amstrad family) seemed unwieldy, almost scary – but get a game of Tanks going and suddenly the fear subsides. Ah, the healing power of armed combat…

Even with their relatively basic (quite literally BASIC, in fact) operating functions, it seemed an unassailable piece of kit, to be bettered only by alien technology or the arrival of Buck Rogers in an IT lesson. While you’re playing Granny’s Garden, the thought of there being any sort of more advanced computing intellect seems like the idle dream of an impossible optimist.

It’s heartening, then, to learn that some students have turned to the trusty old relic for insight into how modern computers work:

Via the BBC, logically enough.

Happy Birthday Windows 95!

Tuesday, August 24th, 2010

Anyone who’s old enough to have owned computer in 1995 will fondly remember the revolutionary design of Windows 95, which celebrates its 15th birthday today. Of course, the fact that its colour scheme looks like a thunderingly dull matte explosion at B&Q only means that our eyes have become more discerning over the years.

I remember when my secondary school finally upgraded to Windows 95, which included this new-fangled thing known as The Internet. It was rubbish. You’d walk in there, list of ‘Web Sites’ on a post-it note, type one in and sit there for the whole lunch hour while the BBC front page loaded up. Still, it’s nice to reminisce, so why not have a look/listen to all the start-up sounds from Windows operating systems over the years:

Amazing! Via Techradar.