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Enter to Win a Samsung Galaxy Note 8

Samsung Galaxy Note 8, Image: Samsung

Mother’s Day has come and gone so now it’s time to plan for Father’s Day. Enter to win our Samsung Galaxy Note 8 and you’ll have the perfect gift for the dad on your list!

We’re giving away a Samsung Galaxy Note 8 to one lucky GeekMom reader just in time for Father’s Day. This mid-sized tablet is small enough to take anywhere and includes an S Pen so there’s none of the frustration that sometimes comes with using a touchscreen device.

To enter the contest, simply leave a comment telling me why the Dad in your life needs a Samsung Galaxy Note 8 for Father’s Day and a winner will randomly be selected after the contest closes on Monday, May 27th at 12:00 midnight ET. Also, be sure you leave a means of getting in touch with you so I can let you know when you win. Contest open to residents of the continental United States only.

Good luck!

Seven Books American Kids Love (That This Brit Never Knew Existed)

Image: Sarah Pinault

A recent behind the scenes discussion at GeekMom about children’s literature prompted fellow GeekMom Sophie to introduce many of our writers, and readers, to the children’s books that are invariably read by British children, and that British parents have memorized! On the flip side of this, having grown up in England only to be the mother of American children, I have been introduced to a whole host of adventures that I had never been exposed to before. Certain books that are considered classic over here, were completely new to me when I started having children at 28. So if you have international friends, this small selection might be just the perfect birthday present you are looking for:

Where the Wild Things Are © Harper Collins

Where the Wild Things Are – Written in 1963 by Maurice Sendak. This book permeates American childhood. It was one of the first Christmas gifts that my eldest son received when he was three months old, and it was the theme of my youngest son’s first birthday party. Max, a mischievous young boy, is sent to his room. Once there, a forest grows and he sails away to an island full of monsters where he reigns as king of the wild things. It is a story of pure imagination that begins with trouble and ends with a mother’s love. It is what I hope happens to my son when he is being a wild thing! Read more →

World’s Largest Lego Model in Times Square

Image from Lego postcard © Lego

If you’re in or near New York City and a fan of Lego or Star Wars — or both — put this one on your calendar for May 23rd!

Prom Night Memories: The Good, the Bad, and Tears for Fears

Rebecca Angel with high hopes on prom night.

This post was published on the original GeekMom site, then published again on Wired, and now it’s back here! I can’t get enough of these stories, so please add your own!

Do geeks go to prom? In fiction, it depends on the gender. Geek guys rarely go, unless they are the comic relief. Geek girls can often have the “Cinderella” dream happen and become the belle of the ball.

But that’s fiction. What about in real life?

I recently shared my prom story with the community of geekmoms and a few dared to tell about their own:

I asked the guy I liked to my prom, even though he was a junior, and my friends thought I was weird. However, I was convinced he would ask me to be his girlfriend that night…then hoped it would happen the next day. We went to NYC to see Nine Inch Nails, but couldn’t get in the club because we weren’t 21 (even though we paid for the tickets). I was so disappointed. He didn’t ask me to be his girlfriend at all that weekend, and I found out later that was because he already had a girlfriend, but thought it was fun to lead me on anyway. Damn, younger men! - ME

Image: Samsung.com

If you like what you read, be sure to enter our contest to win your very own Samsung Galaxy Note 8 just in time for Father’s Day!

When it comes to personal devices, I’ve been an Apple girl since the very first iPhone came out in 2007 (wow, has it been almost 6 years already?). To me, the Apple iOSs are revolutionary, especially at the beginning when it was incredibly novel to integrate address books with maps, email services, and web browsers. We are a household of iPhones and I recently had received my first iPad — an iPad 2 — for my birthday last year.

When I received an invitation to try out the new Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0, I was excited to get a chance to really crack into Apple’s nemesis: the Android operating system. I had a brief exposure to the Android OS — with Ice Cream Sandwich 4.0 — when I reviewed the Ematic FunTab Pro last holiday season. But that system had a kid-friendly GUI that shielded users from the meat and potatoes of the OS. This time around, I dove right in.

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GeekMom Puzzle of the Week – #48

Welcome to the GeekMom puzzle of the week!

Each Sunday, a new quiz will be posted and you will have until 11:59 pm GMT the following Friday to submit your answer. The kind folks over at ThinkGeek will be providing a $50 gift certificate for each week’s winner. In order to be in with a chance of winning, you simply need to send your puzzle answer to the email address below. The winner will be chosen at random from all correct answers.

We’ll announce the winner’s name on Saturday, along with the solution to the previous week’s puzzle. Then we’ll start the process all over again the next day. Sound like a good thing? Then let’s get right on with this week’s puzzle.

GEEKMOM PUZZLE WEEK #48:

Identify the movie from the following track titles taken from its soundtrack:

Doors Open from Both Sides
Don’t Take My Stuff
They Called It

Send your answers to geekmompuzzle@gmail.com with the subject line “GeekMom Puzzle #48″ and please include the name you would like announced if you are the winner. Good luck!

Xbox SmartGlass Has Extra Goodies for Star Trek Fans

A peek at the “Star Trek” Xbox SmartGlass home page. Image: © Paramount Pictures.

Can’t seem to get enough of Star Trek? If you were one of the many lined up at the theater this weekend for Star Trek Into Darkness, you may want to revisit J.J. Abrams’ last installment. And if you’ve got the Xbox 360 and a SmartGlass-enabled tablet or phone, the viewing session may take a little while.

Paramount just unleashed a bunch of behind-the-scenes content and other extras, as an exclusive for users with Xbox SmartGlass. Basically, you just need the Xbox 360 and a SmartGlass-enabled smartphone or tablet. The new perk turns that portable into a second screen, allowing viewers to boldly go where other viewers haven’t gone before.

Users can get the aforementioned behind-the-scenes goodies, as well as deleted scenes, concept art of the U.S.S. Enterprise and more, all time-synched with the film. There’s also a sneak peek at Star Trek Into Darkness, just in case you’re waiting for theater crowds to die down.

The Star Trek SmartGlass experience is available now, as an exclusive to the Xbox 360.

Ten Hour Slow Cooking: Pork and Three Bean Chili

It took me a long time to accept it, but the fact is that as a household, we just don’t have the time available to us that we would if I were a stay-at-home-mom. My husband and I both have full time jobs, and we have two children under four. This presents some challenges, and of course being the GeekMom that I am, these challenges are something that I attack with order, lists, and technology.

One of the life- and time-savers in my repertoire is my slow cooker. It may seem like an obvious option for the working mom, but I have found that most recipes out there do not rise to the challenge. The four hour recipe is most common, but as I leave the house at 7 a.m. and return close to 5 p.m., it is the ten hour recipe I need. I can switch the cooker on as I leave in the morning, turn it off as I walk in, and waste no time cooking that should be spent with my sons. I have no desire to get a timed slow cooker and let the raw food sit at room temperature for six hours before it starts to cook. Likewise I have no desire to spend thirty minutes at night or in the morning, pre-cooking food for the slow cooker, or to come home and spend twenty minutes adding ingredients for a burst of “high” cooking. Read more →

Joss Whedon’s Much Ado About Nothing is a “Shakesperience”

When Joss Whedon needed a break after the hectic filming of The Avengers, he didn’t go on vacation. Instead, he invited his close friends to his home for two weeks to make a film: William Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing. At last night’s kick off for the Seattle International Film Festival, a theater packed with 3000 eager Whedon fans cheered and laughed at the Bard’s comedy just like we were all groundlings gathered at the Globe.

Much Ado About Nothing is a tale of love, focused on two romantic pairings mixed in with a fair bit of drama. After returning from war to rest at the home of Don Leonato (played by Clark Gregg), Claudio woos the sweet Hero, which serves as the main plot of the story. But it’s the pairing of the reluctant Benedick and Beatrice, played by Alexis Denisof and Amy Acker respectively, that provide the more memorable and entertaining moments of the film. (If you’re a longtime fan of Angel and you want to see Wesley and Fred get the happy time together they deserved, buy your tickets now.)

The fast-paced “skirmish of wit” between Beatrice and Benedick translates well to this updated version, with a bit of slapstick thrown in to give the movie some real laugh out loud moments. Granted, the theater was filled to the brim with swooning fans, but there was something magical about a Shakespeare comedy giving the older gentleman next to me a fit of the giggles. Read more →

70 Years Since the Dambusters Raid

The Möhne Dam after the Raid © Crown Copyright

This week is the 70th anniversary of the Dambusters raid, one of the most celebrated military operations of World War II but not very well known outside the UK. All week here in the UK there have been special documentaries about the attack, as well as news features, and showings of the 1955 movie. This afternoon my home city is celebrating with a special service at the cathedral and a flyover by a Lancaster bomber, the plane that performed so spectacularly in 1943.

The story of the Dambusters is familiar to almost every Brit but always worth retelling. During WWII, the German Ruhr Valley and its dams was identified as a strategic target. This was a heavily industrialised area and the dams supplied hydro-electric power, pure water for steel-making, and water to feed the canals–not to mention drinking water for the thousands of workers. It was calculated that repeatedly bombing the dams would breach them.

However, the degree of accuracy required was too much to maintain under enemy fire. A smaller explosive would work if it could be detonated below the surface of the water right beside the dam wall, but the dams were protected by heavy torpedo nets to prevent such an attack. Barnes Wallis (who was later knighted) had developed a bomb that when dropped from just the right height and at just the right speed, would skip across water for a significant distance in just the same way that children skip stones across a lake. The residual spin when the bomb finally reached the dam would cause it to run down the side of the bomb to its base under the water.

Trials were run on plaster models and a disused dam in Wales and were successful enough for 30 Lancaster Bombers to be assigned to the mission with just eight weeks to train.