The last time I played a video game on the PC it involved small mammals with green hair building bridges and blowing things up – does that date me? My husband on the other hand is an avid gamer, favoring games of the Myst variety but also enjoying things like Call of Duty. So […]
Continue ReadingIf you have to ask why, planking probably isn’t for you. But if you grasp the strange allure of lying rigid as, well, a plank, in unexpected places you may be a ready for planking. As defined by PlankingLOL.com, “Planking is the intricate art of lying face-down in a plank position…in unusual public spaces, […]
Continue ReadingFilm Noir Meets Video Game The first video game I ever played was Pong. It wasn’t at a Con in the vintage game room, but on my living room floor on a shag carpet. It’s amazing to think that a little ball bouncing back and forth across my TV screen could keep me busy for hours, but don’t underestimate […]
Continue ReadingWe are in the midst of the 84th Scripps National Spelling Bee Week in the Washington, D.C., area. I’ve watched the competition with interest most years — although not with the same enthusiasm my family watches the Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest every July 4th! I find it especially cool that ESPN chooses to air […]
Continue ReadingI’m fortunate to work for a company that not only embraces geeks but encourages it. A perk of working in a hands-on science museum is that I can, at any point in my work day, decide that I need a break and go rewire a children’s toy, light something on fire, or puzzle out a […]
Continue ReadingConCarolinas is a science fiction convention that takes place in Charlotte, NC every year. This year’s con will take place on June 3-5, 2011 at Charlotte Hilton University Place. For the last few years, I’ve attended ConCarolinas. It’s a great con that isn’t too large, but still offers a lot of programming. It also was […]
Continue ReadingYou can find geeky references in just about anything. And that includes children’s programming! My daughter adores Dora the Explorer so we watch a lot of it from DVD’s to straight from TV. Now Dora’s Backpack always struck me as odd. It seems to eat everything that is put into it, therefore it seems like […]
Continue ReadingImage: inXile Entertainment From the same people who brought you Fantastic Contraption 2 comes The Impossible Quiz, a crazy, tricky, fun app for the iPad or iPod Touch/iPhone. Very similar, though not identical, to the website by the same name, The Impossible Quiz is a difficult though not impossible quiz, despite the name. It is […]
Continue ReadingLet’s make it short : GeekDad Michael Harrison didn’t like Mansions of Madness. I did. If you haven’t heard about it, Mansions of Madness is the newest board game by Fantasy Flight Games. It’s a mix between Arkham Horror (for the Cthulhu-verse and the Investigators characters) and Descent (for the modular tile map-building and the […]
Continue ReadingIf you’ve not played Dragon Age or Dragon Age II, you might want to avert your eyes. You can’t tell a good love story without some spoilers, eh? I’ve been playing video games for the better part of my life, and through the years, I’ve certainly had my crushes. So when Dragon Age came out, […]
Continue ReadingI refer to role-playing, not actually having sex with your fellow gamers (unless it’s a whole different kind of role-playing group.) I played a character for about a year that had had sex every single gaming session (not alone), and you can do it too! I did not set out to make such a stud, […]
Continue ReadingWay before we had picked our birthday party theme, my son had been snacking on Gerber Graduates Puffs. While he loves these, I was dismayed because the containers were not recyclable. So, I had been saving them trying to think of a use for them. Once the label was peeled off, the container reminded me […]
Continue ReadingGoody bags themselves have always presented a conundrum to me. On the one had, apparently it is a sin to send kids home from a party without one. On the other hand, they are usually filled with junk that ends up cluttering up geekette’s room. Goody bags at our house have been known to disappear and […]
Continue ReadingWe have been busy at our house preparing for the galactic event that is our kid’s birthdays. Geekette will be turning 7 and little bro will be hitting the big one, all within 6 days of each other. How we did that I will never know, but my mom and her dad were born on […]
Continue ReadingOne of the perks of being an official GeekMom is that I receive review copies of some of my kid’s favorite games. My two sons and one daughter were particularly pleased to get their hands on a copy of the new Pokemon Black game for the DS. I’ve never played a Pokemon game in my […]
Continue ReadingLes Moutons électriques (Electric Sheep, just like Philip K. Dick’s famous novel) is a French publisher that offers some wonderful collections for every geek. Its bibliothèque rouge (Red Library) proposes biographies of imaginary characters in a convincing academic style. One can read Les nombreuses vies de… (The many lives of…) Harry Potter, Jane Austen, Dracula […]
Continue ReadingI played over thirty video games while I was at PAX East last weekend. As I predicted in my previous post, most of them were disappointing clones of other games. Also as predicted, there were a few great new games on offer at the convention. It would be exhausting to review everything I played, but […]
Continue ReadingSince we live on a small farm we don’t have the time or the means to travel. But we have always wanted our children to be global citizens—to truly understand how fully they are linked to their fellow beings on this beautiful blue green planet. When they were small we read the stories, ate the foods, […]
Continue ReadingI don’t know if you had the same feeling in the US, but for a while, we French RPG players were quite convinced we were the last generation of a very brief-lived phenomenon. Younger people seemed to mark no interest at all in our favorite hobby. We saw people growing (relatively) older around RPG tables […]
Continue ReadingI love video games. Strike that. I love GOOD video games. The distinction is especially important right now because starting Friday, I’ll be at PAX East for three solid days of VG-playtime. For those who haven’t heard of it, PAX East is a big-deal video game convention where game developers large and small descend on […]
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