Hello again and welcome to another Geek Of The Week. I hope you all had fun celebrating the Holidays, umm wait, I mean Christmas. I don’t want Mr. Wolf getting his panties in a bunch or a boot in my arse. Either way at this point I think it’s inevitable. Now that you have your gifts and they are all unwrapped and completely in your possession it is time to think about exchanging them. Yeah this week its all about the geeky gifts you wish you got for Christmas or maybe its what I wish I got for Christmas.

iSlate

OK who doesn’t want an apple product for Christmas. I mean they are so cool looking and they actually work. I think Apple are one of the few company’s that can actually do both. That being said there isn’t any product out now by apple that I want. What I wanted for Christmas was their new  iTablet or iSlate. Its so new that no one even knows the actual name but iSlate may be the winner as someone found out that Apple just purchased that domain. The only thing I do know is that it was designed by Aliens and it floats. No but seriously this is a real device that should be announced on Jan 26 at a special media event. You know apple they are always hush hush but they always deliver the goods. Here are some completely fake fan mockups of the device.

Ticket to Space

Yes a ticket to space on the Virgin Galactic would be out of this world. This program has been in development for some time now. On Dec 7 of this month they revealed the new spaceship to the public. They even let the Governator hit the damn thing with a bottle. I personally don’t want to go to space on that one. This new spaceship is roomier than the first version and looks pretty nice too. Tickets cost $200,000 and deposits start from $20,000. For that price I can take a few friends along. Actually I’ll just continue to dream of space and just watch the wealthy have all the fun. For the full details go to their site here. Maybe they will have layaway.

Random Bag Of Crap

Ah I love woot. If you haven’t experienced woot then you are really missing out. Woot is just one of those cool sites on the internet that cater to the compulsory nature we all have in us. They will list one item for 24 hours at a really good price. You never know how many they have and once they are gone they are gone. At the end of the 24 hours a new item is posted. If the previous item didn’t sell out they will hold on to them for their Woot Off. The Woot Off is when all the past items that didn’t sell out are listed again. The same format of one item being listed is followed but this time when the item sells out a new one is posted instantly. This continues for an unspecified amount of time. At the end of this woot off their is the chance to get the Random Bag of Crap. These bags sell for $5 and they get snatched really fast. There have been bags in the past that were flat panel monitors but it could also very likely be some cheap umbrella. You never know.

Tauntaun Sleeping Bag

In the sub-zero wasteland of the planet Hoth, only the strong survive… and of course those lucky Jedi protected by the thick skin of a Tauntaun. Oh yes the Tauntaun Sleeping Bag. You know the inner Geek inside you wants one of these things. They even come with a lightsaber laser zipper so you can reenact the scene from attack of the clones.  This is from the brilliant minds over at Think Geek the place to go for all your geek needs.

Gold Devices

I will admit that these really don’t interest me in the slightest but I know that some of yous however might be getting all giddy for some blingtastic tech device. Well your wait is over. The guys over at Goldstriker Internati0nal are the leaders when it comes to blinging out the latest tech gadget. They have an iphone, wii, and PS3. I guess they don’t like to play games with friends cause everyone knows you need an xbox for that. Ooohh… yeah thats right I said it, Xbox. Here are some pics of these devices. For full specs on these things go to their website. Quick note about their website. While these guys have some of the most expensive tech devices their website is one of those horrible flash sites. You know the ones that have all these crazy sparkles and goofy intro.

Optimus Tactus Keyboard

Wow am I really finishing this list with a freakin keyboard. Well my friends yes, yes I am. This is not just any keyboard this is the Optimus Tactus. They are designed by Art Lebedeve Studio and these keyboards are cool. The first version of this keyboard is for sale already at a pretty steep price point of $2000 U.S. dollars. Who cares about that one. I want the Tactus. The Tactus is still just a concept and no functional prototypes have been shown. The idea of having a fully customizable keyboard sounds pretty neat to me. Look at the the first picture below and imagine running photoshop because that’s what it’s showing you. While this wouldn’t really help me at this point since I am a power user. Yeah thats right I said it, Cmd + Opt + Shift + E. Don’t worry my nerd powers were only set to stun. The cool potential comes from  all the other programs that can modify the keyboard layout for you. Video games is the first thing that comes to mind. Having icons for all your inventory items. Or say you want to run Avid or Protools this would be pretty cool since they make specific keyboards for them already but they are ugly and you cant change them.

I could go on and on. There are so many cool things out their that would be fun to have. I told myself I would limit it to 5 but gave you 6 anyways. Once again I hope you all had a great Christmas. I’m Street Fece and I will see you next year.

Hey, kids! It’s Akatzen here with another book report.

In 1992, Microsoft released Windows 3.1, an update to Version 3 released in 1990. Selling over a million copies in its first year alone, Windows 3 represented an epochal shift in mainstream personal computing towards GUIs (Graphical User Interfaces) and away from CLIs (Command Line Interfaces) such as MS-Dos. (While GUIs had been around for quite some time — Xerox released a GUI model in 1981 — Windows 3 made GUIs mainstream.)
Just one year previous, Linus Torvalds started writing the code for Linux and Tim Berners-Lee introduced the public to the World Wide Web. Essentially, it allowed users to easily browse and open files around the world, but it is worth noting that “web browsing” did not become mainstream until 1993 when the Mosaic Web Browser hit the market.

The reason I say it is worth noting is because of one of Neal Stephenson’s visions of the future: the cyber-punk novel Snow Crash, published in 1992, a time where computers looked vastly different and had far fewer capabilities than the machines they are today.
The cyber-punk genre may sound a little strange to you, but films like The Matrix and Blade Runner owe much of their flavor and ambiance to cyber-punk.
Matrix 4?

The title of the book comes from a particular software failure on the Apple Macintosh: the system crashes and what appears on the screen is a bunch of gibberish resembling the static of an untuned or broken television.
As for the book itself, Stephenson originally envisioned the book to be a computer-generated graphic novel, with art by Tony Sheeder, but ran into difficulties when they realized that the image-processing software didn’t exist yet (and now it does. Go check out Mythoi: Wiglaf).
Stephenson eventually dropped the graphic novel idea in favor of producing pictureless fiction, and the ensuing novel is not only incredibly interesting, informative, and entertaining; Snow Crash also presents, in many areas, a shockingly accurate view of the future.

In many ways, Snow Crash has also had a direct influence on the direction and innovation software has gone.

In the Metaverse (the book’s idea of the internet’s future—think of it as a Virtual Reality mash-up of Second Life, Tron, and the World Wide Web), users navigate the ‘verse (ie. Browse the web) via the use of avatars. Yup, anytime you create a virtual persona of yourself (like you do on the Wii, the Xbox360, or any number of online applications), the avatar you are making is entirely due to Neal Stephenson’s use of the word in Snow Crash.

One of the programs the main character (Hiro Protagonist) uses is called Earth. What it does is create a 360 degree view of the earth from satellite photography, enabling you to view any place on earth you can think of, and zoom in as close as you want. Anyone who’s ever used Google Earth will find this description incredibly familiar. In fact, one of the developers at Google said the idea for Google Earth came, at least in part, from the similarly named program in Snow Crash.

Then there’s the burbclaves (essentially H.O.A. citystates), the complete corporatization of America, the devaluation of the dollar, the anti-rape measure called a dentata, and the ability for normal people to degenerate into savages after a crisis: a ridiculous picture of the future that feels ridiculous only because it’s actually possible.

Throw in some computer tech speak (like that GUI/CLI jargon I started the post with) and a highly intriguing exploration of ancient Sumeria, the Tower of Babel, and how civilization may have come about through a virus and you have an incredibly interesting and entertaining novel.

And then there’s the sex, drugs, rock and roll, sword-fighting, and motorcycle chases. There’s no getting around it: this book is cool. (Um, and by cool, I also mean that it has a few Rated R moments, so don’t toss a copy at your 12 year old computer geek younger brother or anything without making sure it’s something he’s mature enough for. So yeah, no copies for Mr. Wolff.)

Anyway, this book is highly recommended by Yours Truly, so give it a read. You won’t be disappointed.