doublexgeeks

Fireworks are pretty amazing things, and even moreso when set to music. Be the ultimate geek and bring in the New Year with your own musical display.

Ok, obviously you will not be able to do a masterful display like Ottawa or whatever do, but you can amp up the usual puttputt!

First, lets start with some classic music, the William Tell Overture. Need some good outdoor speakers for this, ones which emphasis base. It’s a good pick because it doesn’t have to be too long, and even if something doesn’t match up perfectly it should still fit.

At this point you can just set them off semi-random and still be pretty cool. Or, if you have some prep time you can figure out the fuse time on various fireworks and set up a “real” display. You’ll have to line them up beforehand, and have a program set up to tell you exactly when to light the fuses. To avoid having to spend too much time figuring this out figure out before hand what time you want what fireworks types to go off and put in something like an excel spreadsheet. Fire off one of each type to get a guess of the time between lighting and BOOM. Subtract this from the times in your spread sheet by type.

If you are super geeky, you might be able to rig an automatic ignition program using usb and sparkers, but you need some technical knowhow and some specific equipment for that.

Home fireworks don’t tend to be as exactly timed as ones designed for big displays, but it still should be pretty cool! Have a safe night, and see you in 2009!

On the fifth day of geekmus I did receive:

Five geeeeeky rings!


These folks actually have a whole line of male-female rings:

And another subtle wedding band:

So far three votes in the poll. I get over a hundred visitors a day guys, common! Just so you know I’m not doing the whole 12 days, just these 5!

1. Where did you begin 2008?
At my friend’s annual shed party

2. What was your status by Valentines Day?
Taken

3. Were you in school anytime this year?
Yups

4. What did you purchase that was over $100?
Text books, a wii fit for my mom

5. Did you move anywhere?
Across the city!

6. What concerts/shows did you go to?
Our Lady Peace

7. Change your hairstyle?
OMG. If you go back to October in my blog you can see some lovely pics of my blue hair.

8. How old did you turn this year?
23.

9. Did you have a New Years resolution?
I did. I think it was to stay organized, which I’ve succeeded at!

10. Do anything embarrassing?
Sure! I do it fairly often

11. Buy anything new from eBay?
Not for myself. Yu-gi-oh cards for a friend, and a replacement LCD screen for my BF’s cell

12. Did you get sick this year?
Yup. In and out of hospital for a bit.

13. What are you looking forward to most in 2009?
Starting my philosophy degree! I’m cool.

On the fourth day of geekmus I did receive:

Four strange phones!

Still fighting cold of doom, still have that poll over there. It’s easy! Just pick one! Doesn’t matter if you are new to the blog! Do it anyway! Now! Please?

I’m a fan of lights, and tend to use some Christmas lights year round for decoration or ambient light. However there should really be a limit to the number one uses. A friend of mine used to buy blue LEDs in bulk and there were EVERYWHERE. In his room, his car, outside his car, and he even snuck them into the cars of other people. But, you gotta admit this looks pretty darn cool.

On the third day of geekmus I did receive:

Three geek ducks!

Rubber ducks are a fantastic thing! And with the vast number of different types and uses you can decorate your entire home with them! I didn’t post the traditional evil rubber ducky since I’m sure you’ve all seen him, but if not here are some.

Please take note of the poll over there to the right. I’m really unsure which way to go so I’m leaving it up to you good folks! As well, in the mean time I am fighting a cold of doom so wish me luck and vitamin C.

On the second day of geekmus I did receive:

Two geek earrings!

Want to make your own geek earrings? While the above are a tad difficult to do without the right tools, electronic ones aren’t so hard. You can pick up empty earrings in most craft stores, as well as craft wire. Take resistors or circuit boards with a hole drilled in them and attach using the craft wire. Viola! You have geek earrings. I believe you can get some resistors at places like radio shack? I’m lucky enough to have an easier supply of them. I’ll post more later on how to make other resistor jewellery.

On the first day of geekmus I did receive:

One usb powered tree!

Here we go! The start of the 12 days of geekmus! As you can guess I’ll be doing a post a day with each item. I haven’t through this completely through so we’ll see how well this works out!

For my (few) readers, come the New Year which would you prefer? Posting Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, like I have been for most of December; or posting everyday like I did in November? I worry that some posts don’t get the attention they deserve when they’re so close together, but I also know people like lots of contact. Please let me know!

Hope everyone is having a great Christmas! Everyone at our home seemed to have a good morning, including the cats that got a few toys as well. Not a big geek haul, as most of what I asked for involved kitchen stuff. I did get some nice Jack Head Storage Jars (from the Nightmare Before Christmas). I got my slow cooker that I’ve been asking for, and some nice cookware. No more having to cook everything in tinfoil LOL!

My Uncle and his wife and kids are DEFINATELY geeks though. They often make us gifts, complete with instructional DVDs. This year we got a bag for crushing cardboard for the family, and “NATCHO” tags for us kids. The gifts themselves aren’t the biggest thing, but the DVD was good for a laugh!

While writing yesterday’s post I realized I was missing out on an amazing bit of Christmas geekary! The post was almost done and too cool not to share so I put it up ahead of schedule.

NORAD tracks Santa!

NOARD has been tracking Santa for 54 years now, and have done a great job keeping up with technology. It started with a printing error in 1955, where rather than the Santa Hotline, Sears printed the number for the Director of Operations at CONAD. Once he realized what these calls were about, went with it and had his staff answer the calls and told kids the current position of the Jolly Man.

When CONAD became NORAD, the tradition continued. Kids could call in to find out where Santa was at that moment, answered by volunteers from NORAD and their families. The tradition has changed over the years, and you can learn more on the Wikipedia page. It’s a great read!

This year you can even track Santa on your cell phone! Despite the youngest in my family being 19, we still have the Santa Tracking site open and watch the updates.

While fun for us older “kids” it’s great for the younger ones. Not only is there something magical about watching Santa’s trip, it’s educational! NORAD has a blurb about each major city along its path, as well it’s a great jumping point to teach your child about time zones.

Happy Christmas from us at Double X Geeks! By Us I mean Me but Us sounds cooler eh? Enjoy whatever season you are currently celebrating :)

Share your Santa Tracking memories!

Oh the sounds of Christmas. My cat once again climbing the tree, Dad cursing on the Christmas lights, the eternal question of “Think we’ll have a white Christmas?” And of course, the Christmas related quests in our various games.

Many games, especially MMOs, like to do events based around holidays. Halloween, Christmas; even things like Valentine’s Day and St. Patrick’s Day. This adds a bit of flair, and while the quest results are often great items, the quests should be fun too.

Some games give different names to their Christmas event, likely as a nod towards their vast range of players, in many different countries.

In Final Fantasy XI it is known as the Starlight Celebration, running from December 18th to December 31st.

Guild Wars calls it Wintersday, and it runs from December 15th to January 5th.

World of Warcraft also has a great event called Feast of Winter Veil.

Everquest has it’s Frostfell Celebration:

RuneScape:

Ragnarok:

SecondLife even gets in on the action:

The Sims 2 has an entire expansion pack dedicated to holidays, including Christmas. Rumor has it if you have a Christmas tree up on Christmas day (the real one) you’ll get a visit from the jolly man himself.

A Tuesday post? That must mean something great is coming tomorrow! Happy Tibb’s Eve!

3 more days! Post Christmas I’m planning on doing a 12 days of Christmas, geek style, so look forward to that!

To me Christmas is about decorations and lights, more so than gifts at this stage in my life. One of the things I miss about living ‘round the bay is that here pretty much everyone puts of lights. I was shocked this year to find out that so few bother in the city! In addition to lots of lights, we (and most of Canada it seems) are having some wicked winter weather. Not great for shopping, but its making the chances of everyone having a white Christmas great!

In the mean time, enjoy these geeked-out trees!

Have a Merry 8-bit Christmas!

This one is beyond amazing. Felice Navidad!

Tesla coils are great; I’d love to make my own musical one someday.

And to keep your tree from being naked, why not get these: