The Arduino Duemilanove Microcontroller Board (image: Arduino.cc)
Every year people make the same ridiculous New Years resolutions that they know darn well they won’t keep. Lose weight, exercise more, eat better, quit smoking, stop fishing illegally off private docks and so on. Yet when March rolls around, they are still sitting on a dock with a fishing pole in one hand, a bag of cheetos in the other and a cigarette hanging from their lip. I’m speaking rhetorically, but you get the drift.
We all make resolutions that are outside our range of being and generally boneheaded. So how about this year we make some resolutions we can actually keep? So with a little idea help from my Twitter pals, I’ve come up with 12 geeky New Years resolutions that for the most part, I actually plan on keeping.
Go to at least one ‘Con’ this year. Last year I made it to zero cons. This year I plan on going to no less than three. All in Orlando. Megacon, Star Wars Celebration V, and Nerdapalooza. I’ll see you all there right?
Watch three geeky trilogies back to back to back. One thing I never had time for this past year, or the years before, was performing the ultimate geeky movie watching trick. Watching the Lord of the Rings trilogy, followed by the Matrix trilogy and capped off with the original Star Wars trilogy I own them all. There is no reason I can’t make this happen on a good three day weekend. (h/t @timlav)
Learn and use Arduino to make something cool. With lots of LED lights and wires and perhaps an actual function, like a binary clock or something. I dunno. The range of interactions and controls that can be created using an Arduino board are nearly limitless. Up to this point, I haven’t gotten into coding and electronics much but with it’s open source environment and damn cheap price, how can I not? (h/t @frankiebit)
Continue to support independent artists by not buying their music. At some point in the past we’ve all been slaves to the corporate music empire. This past year saw a rise in independent artists, especially in the nerdcore genre. Most of it, you can listen to or download for FREE. The artists are literally giving their music away to build a name for themselves, the way file sharing was intended to work. Then if you like it - you buy it and support a starving (really, they eat Ramen three meals a day) artist. Head over to Scrubclub records for a plethora of fantastic tunes (my personal favorites are The Bear Necessities by Benjamin Bear and Next Gen by Dr. Awkward) and Hipsterplease.com for bi-monthly podcasts featuring the latest in hip, geeky music. (h/t @scrubclub)
Keep up with my monthly comics. Times were tough this year, so it was hard to keep up with my pull bag at the comic book store. It would sit there for weeks, months, just waiting to be picked up. For next year, I added comics to the household budget, so there will be no dust on my Detective Comics.
Stop using Star Trek catch phrases in general speech. I’m guilty of this one. How could I not be? Star Trek has given us some great catch phrases over the years. The most notorious in my lingo being, “I’m a doctor dammit, not a (insert profession here.)” Another that needs to be limited is using “make it so” when talking to sub-ordinates at work. Eventually, they will rise up and go all Borg on you. Assimilating your office and desk supplies and leaving you locked out of the building for overusing sci-fi terminology. (h/t @onnabugeisha)
The GeekDad book - Buy it! Buy it now!
Get a geeky book onto a bestseller list. Since I’m yet to finish a book, I’ll dedicate this resolution to GeekDad’s editor in chief, Ken Denmead. His book, Geek Dad: Awesomely Geeky Projects and Activities for Dads and Kids to Share drops in May. I suggest we all flood Amazon with pre-orders and put a book about geeky D.I.Y. projects on the bestseller list.
Defy the Hype. Every time something new and super cool looking or sounding is announced, the geek community goes super nuts and usually, so do I. This year ended with the hype surrounding Avatar. Looking forward to next year, the hype surrounding the Apple Tablet is already starting to swirl. The best thing you can do to fight the hype is to read as much tech and geek news as you can, learning about the hyped item before it becomes hype. Therefore, you can still be excited about the item, but you don’t have to fall into the hype hysteria that everyone expects. (h/t @hipsterplease)
Finally purchase and construct the LEGO Star Destroyer or Death Star II. This has been a resolution of mine for several years now, ever since LEGO started releasing the Collectors Edition sets for their Star Wars line. The Star Destroyer, while the largest and most impressive of the two sets, clocks in at about 3100 pieces while the Death Star II comes in at about 3400. Either one is a challenge and looks like hours of awesome.
Indoctrinate the kids on the classics. Every year the kids get a little bit older, so every year I pass on another classic movie, book, toy or artifact from my childhood to them - based on age. They’ve got the Atari, they’ve seen Flash Gordon and have read plenty of comics. So what’s it going to be this year? They are reading more, so getting them started on sci-fi master Heinlein might be a good idea. While Stranger in a Strange Land will have to wait until they are full on teenagers, Have Spacesuit, Will Travel is a perfect entrance into sci-fi novels. When it comes to movies or television, I think it’s time for some Red Dwarf. At least the first six seasons. (h/t @jennywilliams)
Go Green, geek style. While I probably won’t be building my own compost bin or making compost tea like some fellow geekdads, I’m open to checking out alternative energy saving ways to charge my hand-held devices. I can even install a cooling program on my PC to help it run a bit cooler and conserve electricity. Since I live in Florida however, I probably won’t be turning off any fans. (h/t @twid)
Stop being an FPS snob. When it comes to gaming, I play a lot of FPS (first person shooter for you n00bs) games. From the Call of Duty series to Rainbow Six, Halo and so on. There are a lot of good games out there for all the systems I own (Xbox 360, Nintendo Wii & DS) that I’m not playing because I claim I don’t have the time. Dragon Age: Origins is supposed to be a fantastic RPG, and Scribblenauts for the DS is one of the most innovative games of the year. Maybe I don’t have the patience, and that takes me right back to a typical resolution. Practice patience, when gaming. Especially with the Wii. Outside of bowling, I haven’t touched the thing.
I’ll let you know on Twitter during the year as to how I’m doing on my resolutions (and one has to wonder, how did Matt Blum do on his resolutions last year?) Until then, have a happy New Year! Welcome 2010!
