Dr. Karl – Australia's No.1 Geek? Permission: Creative Commons

Despite the distance, we are holding our own in Australia when it comes to fostering geek culture. So, here is an introduction to some high profile Australian Geeks you should get to know. Feel free, anyone who lives on this side of the equator, to make your own nominations in the comment box.

1. Dr Karl
Karl Kruszelnicki is a scientist best known for his work in science communication in the Australian media. He holds degrees in mathematics, biomedical engineering, medicine and surgery. He has also studied astrophysics, computer science and philosophy. He is best known for his work with Triple J, answering science conundrums from listeners and writing columns for Australia’s daily newspapers. And for events like the Sleek Geek Roadshow he ran with Adam Spencer. One of Kruszelnicki’s most famous undertakings was his part in a research project on belly button fluff, for which he received an Ig Nobel Prize.

2. Adam Spencer
Adam Spencer is Dr. Karl’s Sleek Geek buddy. He is a graduate of the University of Sydney, graduating with a first class honors degree in Pure Mathematics. While at university, he was one of the world’s top-ranked debaters, reaching the final round of the World Universities Debating Championship three times and winning Worlds Best Speaker (1996). He was noticed for his comedy and maths ability by youth radio station JJJ when he read out the weather as a guest on an outside broadcast using mathematical formulae and has been presenting in geeky fashion across Australian media ever since. He partners with Dr Karl on a range of Sleek Geek activities including a short lived TV series and was the host of science show Quantum for 3 years.

3 & 4. Rob Morrison and Deane Hutton
These two blokes were Australia’s first serious TV geeks. They hosted The Curiosity Show, an Australian educational children’s television show between 1972 to 1990. The Curiosity Show won the coveted Prix Jeunesse in 1982 voted by peers from around the world as the best factual program for children. But, when I was growing up Rob and Dean were my Mythbusters, performing experiments using liquid nitrogen, mouse traps and plenty of straws. So, the explosions were not as big, but they got me hooked.

Then there are fonts that appeal to geeks because they play on our geeky nostalgia, reference our hobbies or have a direct pop culture link. These are the ones compiled here.

The #1 Geeky Font has more than just a pop culture link. It was not only part of the logo for one of the greatest geeky shows ever, it was actually part of the show, appearing on signs, maps and everywhere else type was needed. The Village, the seaside resort that was The Prisoner’s prison, was a place under someone’s totalitarian control. So it made sense that whoever was in charge would control not just information, but even the look of the information (Editor’s Note: wonder if Steve Jobs was a Prisoner fan?).

And here are the rest:

2) Blade Runner — A hideous, futuristic font from a movie set in a hideous, futuristic culture.

3) Mobile Font — We’ll be nostalgic for these one day soon.

4) o4b_21 — Space Invaders, Pac-Man and it’s hard to say what else in a classic 5×5 pixel grid.

5) eDisplayDemo — Almost unreadable, but legibility isn’t everything.

6) Embroidery — Everything looks better as a cross-stitch sampler.

7) SF Comic Script Shaded — A pulpy adventure font gives anything a little extra awesomeness.

KCaps — A great gag, but also mighty useful for instruction manuals.

9) ComicFX — The only non-alphabet font to make out list, but there are more to choose from: trains, nerds, cars, logos.

10) tie

PlanetNS — Hard to beat NASA nostalgia…

Crackman — …unless it’s with arcade nostalgia.

Runners up– Transformers, Blade2, Astron Boy Wonder [sic], Dracula, Captain Podd, Coca-Cola ii

—

Finding these and other fonts: There are countless free fonts out there and many font sites to help you find them.

Our favorite is searchfreefonts.com because it allows you to type in your own sample text and see how it will look before downloading the font. This is quite a fun activity for the Geeklets.

If you find anything that you think belongs on this list, please add it to the comments.

There are many great love stories in science fiction and fantasy. From Robin Hood and Maid Marian to Han Solo and Princess Leia, we all love the stories that end with some variation of “and they lived happily ever after.”

But what about the great love stories that don’t end happily? Because loss is just as universal a part of the human experience as love is, the combination of the two in one story is often that much more poignant. Here, then, are the top 10 best tragic love stories from geek fiction:

10. Anakin Skywalker & Padmé Amidala Skywalker — Yes, we know; we’ve seen Star Wars: The Trilogy We’d Like to Forget, too. We know there’s about as much chemistry between the actors as between oil and water, so consider how the characters interact in the current Clone Wars TV series, where they (frighteningly enough) work much better together. And consider the underlying story: Anakin loves Padmé so much he’s willing to rebel against everything else he holds dear because he believes it’s the only way to save her. Regardless of how hopelessly naive he is, he does what he does out of love, and the fact that his actions ultimately kill her makes their story as tragic as they come.

9. The Doctor (as John Smith) & Joan Redfern — In one of the most heartbreaking episodes of David Tennant’s run on Doctor Who, titled “Human Nature,” the Doctor is forced to forget himself and become fully human in order to hide from aliens seeking to steal his Time Lord powers. After adopting the guise of a teacher named John Smith in England a year before the start of WWI, he falls in love with the school nurse, Joan Redfern. But the aliens ultimately catch up with him, and (in the next episode) to save her and everyone else, the Doctor is forced to restore his true nature and memories, and leave behind the love he had found. [Thanks to GeekDad Editor Ken Denmead for writing most of this entry, as he is far more knowledgeable about all things Doctor Who than I.]

8. Scott Summers & Jean Grey — Forget about the X-Men movies, because James Marsden gives the character of Scott Summers/Cyclops about as much personality as deck furniture. Now, granted, the character was never written terribly appealingly in the comic books, but you could at least believe that he and Jean were in love. We know that the whole Phoenix story got retconned such that Jean wasn’t really Phoenix, and therefore was neither responsible for genocide nor dead, and that she “died” again, but for our money give us the original plot line. For us, Jean Grey was Marvel Girl, and Phoenix, and Dark Phoenix, and died on the moon in X-Men #137. The story as a whole, and particularly the love story, seems much more powerful that way.

7. Lee “Apollo” Adama & Kara “Starbuck” Thrace — If you watched the first two seasons of Battlestar Galactica (the reboot, of course), you saw that Apollo and Starbuck were, obviously to everyone but them, madly in love with each other. Which of course meant that, when each of them married someone else, you knew what was coming. To the writers’ and actors’ credit, you didn’t necessarily want them to get together, because they both treated their spouses (and, to a certain extent, each other) like dirt while they carried on their affair, but you could see that it was inevitable. Then Starbuck went and died, and something Starbuck-like inexplicably came back from the dead. And you knew they still loved each other, even though you weren’t sure (and, if you’re like us, you still aren’t) what Starbuck was when she came back. And then, in the final episode, just when it looked like they were going to live happily ever after, she vanished without a trace. That was probably the only time during the series we really felt bad for Apollo.

6. Buffy Summers & Angel — Could a love story get much more tragic than that between a vampire and a vampire slayer? It could in this case, with the vampire having a soul that he is cursed to lose if he experiences true happiness. Buffy ends up not only having to deal with Angel turning back to the evil Angelus, but on top of that has to kill him herself! When he ends up returning from hell, they continue their love story chastely, both knowing that it has no future.

5. Sarah Connor & Kyle Reese — Call it what you will: a love that was predestined to occur; a thinly veiled allegory of the story of Jesus (right down to the savior’s initials); or a classic example of a time-travel paradox – it’s still a great love story. Kyle saves Sarah’s life from the Terminator over and over again, and the way they fall in love with each other as they fight to stave off the killing machine is much more believable than in most sci-fi films or action thrillers. You can sense from early in the film that Kyle is going to die before it ends, and that he knows it, which makes the story that much more tragic.

4. Sir Lancelot & Guinevere — As long as we’re talking about tragic love stories, why not go really, really old school? It may seem strange to include an adulterous affair on this list, but in most versions of the Arthur legends, it is Lancelot that Guinevere truly loves, and not Arthur. One must assume that their love was very powerful, as they surely knew the consequences of being found out, and surely knew that their affair could not continue undiscovered for long. Ultimately (again, in most versions), it is Arthur who ends up dead as an indirect result of the wars that stem from their affair, and they meet one last time at Arthur’s tomb, before Guinevere goes off to join a convent.

3. Dr. Horrible (aka Billy) & Penny — We Joss Whedon fans knew what we were getting into when we started watching Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog online in 2008. We knew his proclivity for getting us to love a character, then killing that character without warning. So we shouldn’t have been surprised by Penny’s death in Act Three, but damn it if he didn’t do it to us again. Once Dr. Horrible had exposed Captain Hammer for the self-important jackass he was, we really wanted to see him and Penny end up together, only to have her die in Dr. Horrible (Billy)’s arms, accidentally killed by the weapon he’d devised. Now, we may have to revisit this one after the sequel comes out, because all reports are that Felicia Day will be in it. Will she be reanimated by the good evil doctor? Only time will tell.

2. Captain James T. Kirk & Edith Keeler / Rayna Kapec — Jim Kirk, as you may have heard, was generally given to sleeping with anything that was recognizably female and attractive. But even he fell in love, at least twice that we’re sure of, and both times tragically. The first time, in the great episode “The City on the Edge of Forever,” Kirk falls in love with Edith Keeler, a woman from 1930s New York. Time-travel romances rarely end well, but in this case it ends far worse than usual, as Kirk not only has to let the woman he loves die but actually must stop Dr. McCoy from saving her, all to ensure that the Allies will have won World War II as they were supposed to. Then, in “Requiem for Methuselah,” Kirk encounters the beautiful Rayna Kapec, the ward of a man named Flint who, it turns out, had at one time been Leonardo da Vinci, Mozart and lots of other brilliant men in Earth’s history. Kirk falls in love with Rayna quickly and deeply, and she with him — which proves unfortunate, as she turns out to be a sophisticated android who, unable to handle her brand-new emotions and the choice between Flint and Kirk, dies. As the episode ends, in a rare display of compassion, Spock uses a mind-meld on Kirk to enable him to forget Rayna.

1. Peter Parker & Gwen Stacy — Regardless of what the Spider-Man movies would have you believe, it was Gwen Stacy who was Peter Parker’s first true love. Gwen was pretty, but also smart and geeky like Peter, and we’re sure to readers at the time it seemed inevitable that they would eventually get married. But it was not to be, with their relationship torn asunder first by Spider-Man’s involvement in her father’s death, and then, most tragically, by Gwen’s murder at the hands of the Green Goblin. Her death was a watershed moment in comic book history as a whole, too, as it was the first time a hero had so completely failed to save his beloved.

So, what did we miss that should’ve made the top 10? Leave a comment.

Image: Arthur’s Tomb: The Last Meeting of Lancelot and Guinevere by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Image © Anheuser-Busch, Inc.

If the numbers are true, 106.5 million people in the U.S. watched Super Bowl XLIV this past Sunday, making it the most-watched program in American history. It stands to reason, therefore, that a lot of geeks were among the audience: some watching for the game, some for the ads, and some for both.

There were no epic, brilliant ads like the iconic “1984″ Apple commercial, but there were some memorable bits nonetheless. The ads, at least, were generally more entertaining than The Who were, though someone commented — on Twitter, I think, but I’m not sure — that it was appropriate that The Who were playing at halftime, since they were only half of The Who, anyway.

Without further ado, here are the top ten things we learned from the ads during the Super Bowl:

10. Danica Patrick, despite making a career out of being a woman in what has traditionally been a men-only sport (or activity, depending on your feelings about auto racing), and despite having won a 2008 Kids’ Choice Award and thus obviously being a role model for some kids, has no problem appearing in commercials, airing during an event watched by thousands of kids, in which women are treated like nothing more than sex objects.

9. Universal Orlando’s Wizarding World of Harry Potter looks — pardon the technical term  — freakin’ awesome. It won’t be as great as it looks, of course, unless they have actually figured out how to get brooms to fly. It is also sort of amusing that they would pay a (presumably) exorbitant amount of money to get Daniel Radcliffe to appear in the commercial, and then have him say just one line in about 1.5 seconds of screen time.

8. NBC is desperate enough to rehabilitate Jay Leno’s public image after the recent debacle that they’ll let him be in a commercial for CBS. This was a seriously surprising ad: I’d be willing to bet that nobody who didn’t know about the commercial beforehand thought Leno would be there.

7. Whoever had the bright idea to put two ads back-to-back (one for CareerBuilder.com and one for Dockers) that featured out-of-shape guys (and some women, but mostly guys) not wearing pants (or, in the first one, shirts) deserves to be flogged. Or maybe forced to watch the commercials over and over again until he goes crazy. If I want to see an out-of-shape guy without pants, all I need is a mirror, thank you very much.

6. Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland looks freakishly strange and somewhat disturbing. In other words, like virtually every other Tim Burton movie ever. And, is it just me, or does Johnny Depp’s performance as the Mad Hatter look uncomfortably similar to his performance as Willy Wonka?

5. The word “spine” can be used on broadcast TV as a euphemism for the word “balls.”

4. Betty White is awesome. This is not news, but it bears repeating. The only problem I have with the commercial is that I get the feeling that White, despite being 88 years old, would probably have kicked those guys’ butts if the ad hadn’t been scripted otherwise. As fun as it was, especially with Abe Vigoda showing up at the end, I would have liked it better if the Snickers bar had turned one of the guys into Betty White instead of vice-versa.

3. Google’s simpler-is-better design philosophy translates very well to a TV commercial. It’s nice to see they have a sentimental side, and it’s refreshing to see a commercial that tells a story in a memorable way, but without huge-budget effects or celebrities.

2. The folks at Dodge have evidently abandoned all pretense that any guy is going to buy the Charger as anything other than a way to combat perceived emasculation by their significant others.

1. The folks at Anheuser-Busch went to huge lengths and likely spent a ton of money to make a commercial that was a clever parody of Lost. But putting Bud Light cans instead of glass bottles (which aren’t allowed in passenger cabins of airplanes, for obvious reasons) in the beverage cart for the sake of verisimilitude would, evidently, have been too much trouble.

Photo by Mogi Vicentini; used under Creative Commons Attribution license.

Every geek occasionally suffers from gadget envy. Even if you’re such an early adopter that you’re already waiting in line to get an iPad, your personal collection of gadgetry is limited by that pesky thing we call “reality.” Go ahead, tell me you haven’t, while watching Star Trek, thought about how handy it would be to have a transporter. And who hasn’t — usually right after saying or doing something stupid, or upon seeing a long shot win a race — wished he had a time machine?

So here, then, is a list of the top ten most useful gadgets from science fiction and comic books. I’ve restricted myself to one gizmo per source, because I could write a whole list based only on Star Trek or Star Wars, for examples. And I’ve also tried to focus on devices that would be useful without being incredibly dangerous — hence, no lightsaber (because you know you’d slice off an important body part thirty seconds after turning it on), no time machine (because paradoxes have that whole destroying-the space-time-continuum problem Doc Brown warned us about), and no transporter (because, as awesome as the idea is, I’m with Dr. McCoy that being disassembled and reassembled sounds rife with potential for serious problems). Oh, and James Bond movies are just too easy to use as source material, so they’re out as well.

10. The gesture computer interface from Minority Report – Was there any geek who saw this film who didn’t feel a bit disappointed when he came home and sat down at his gesture-ignoring computer? The interface was seriously cool, and, unlike many (if not most) futuristic computer interfaces in movies, actually seemed like it might be usable.

9. Mr. Fusion from the Back to the Future movies – I know the folks who made the trilogy threw Mr. Fusion in at the end of the first film because it was funny, and then were forced to stick with it when making parts II and III. But it raises some serious questions, like: If they have a device in the future that can create a fusion reaction powerful enough to generate (at least) 1.21 gigawatts of electricity out of a few pounds of garbage, why the heck do they still use gasoline in their cars? (We know they do, because not only does the DeLorean still use gas after its “hover conversion,” but we also see a Texaco station being run by robots.)

8. KITT from Knight Rider – OK, so calling this “science fiction” is a bit of a stretch, but, really, KITT rocked. Speaking from my own experience, I think most guys who watched Knight Rider wanted to be Michael Knight not so much because David Hasselhoff was that handsome or awesome, but because he got to ride in KITT. Granted, KITT’s AI frequently made him annoying, but mostly he did cool James Bond-type stuff, but was even cooler than any of Bond’s cars. And he was voiced by William Daniels, which is also pretty cool.

7. The sonic screwdriver from Doctor Who – Sure, it’s a classic deus ex machina, which is why the writers (wisely) try not to have the Doctor use it too often. But consider that, while having a frequently-used deus ex machina in a TV show is a bad thing, it would be astonishingly useful to have one in real life. I, for one, would be perfectly willing to have a device that could get me out of pretty much any trouble in which I might find myself, no matter how dull that might be for those watching me.

6. Iron Man’s armor - There’s a part of me that, intellectually, knows that there’s no feasible way to make such a suit without it being crushingly heavy. Then there’s the part of me that really, really wants it to actually exist, especially the version that outflew the jets. That would completely be worth wearing a heavy metal suit, though has it ever occurred to anyone to consider how incredibly inconvenient it would be to be Iron Man and have to use the bathroom?

5. The Green Lantern Corps power ring – The whole ineffectual-against-yellow thing aside, the GLC power rings are indisputably kickass. I mean, you can even use a power ring to create another power ring, which should set off a few alarm bells for anyone with even an elementary knowledge of physics, but that ability  just makes it even more awesome. And, really, there are enough loopholes to get around the yellow thing. It does lead one to wonder, though: Would a jar of mustard be an effective weapon against the GLC? Inquiring minds want to know.

4. The universal translator from Star Trek – How incredible is the Star Trek universal translator? It’s so incredible that it even beats out the Babel Fish, since the latter only works one way. Of course, it’s clear to anyone with half a brain that the device was only invented (essentially as a retcon) because it allowed the writers to avoid including a scene dealing with language differences in practically every episode. But consider how incredibly useful it would be, even if it would send every interpreter on Earth to the unemployment office.

3. The neuralizer from Men in Black – Who hasn’t wanted to be able to modify someone else’s memory, or his own? It would be very, very easy to go wild with one of these, of course, so they would have to be restricted only to people with impeccable ethics. But think how convenient it would be: “Honey, look here for a second. [FLASH] I didn’t forget our anniversary. In fact, I brought you breakfast in bed, and gave you your gift first thing in the morning… and it was wrapped really well!” Of course the movies didn’t address the question of what you should do if the person whose memory you want to rewrite happens to be wearing sunglasses, but that’s a minor quibble.

2. R2-D2 from Star Wars (obviously) – C3PO is an irritating, bumbling fool when you get right down to it. R2-D2, on the other hand, is smart, funny, and astonishingly useful. He’s got attachments galore, and can hack into any computer anywhere just by plugging into it. He’s got enough room to store your lightsaber, should you need him to, and consider: if he can do partial repairs on an X-Wing in mid flight, think what he could do with your car!

1. The matter compiler from Neal Stephenson’s The Diamond Age – It’s essentially the same as the replicator from Star Trek, but I don’t want to violate my one-item-per-source rule. (See also Charles Stross’s Singularity Sky, with its cornucopia machine.) A machine such as this would have  countless uses — and imagine the ads: “You thought it was quick and easy making coffee from a one-use pod! Now just say ‘Coffee, Kona, hot, with half-and-half,’ and there you have it!”

What didn’t I list that I should have? Please leave a comment.

Photo by Rego Korosi; used under CC Attribution license

There has been, and surely will continue to be, a lot of speculation in these weeks leading up to the expected announcement of Apple’s tablet computer on January 27. This is the normal state of things, it seems, ever since the iPod’s original introduction in the fall of 2001, but in this case the murmuring has a higher pitch, due mostly to the fact that rumors of an Apple tablet have been circulating for years.

The problem with all this speculation, of course, is that it’s very easy for the hype to exceed the reality. So, in that vein, we at GeekDad would like to add our voice to the choir of excess hype, to fan the flames of overreaching expectations, and perhaps a few other metaphors, too. Here, then, is our list of features without which the Apple iSlate, or whatever it ends up being called, will be a huge disappointment:

10. BarTablet - Want to make a couple cocktails for friends but don’t know what you have the ingredients for? This app uses the integrated camera to scan your liquor cabinet and the contents of your fridge (for mixers, of course) and will list all the drinks you can make with what you have on hand. Also allows you to rate the drinks, so if you enjoy a nice amaretto sour but can’t stand fuzzy navels, it will tailor its recommendations thusly.

9. iMozart - The perfect application for a tablet computer, this would present you with a page of blank sheet music and allow you to sketch the notes you’d like to play. Tell it what instrument(s) you want to play the music, hook it up to some decent speakers, and listen to the mellifluous sounds of your creation.

8. Advanced anti-theft system - You think fingerprint scanners on laptops are pretty spiffy? Well, this tablet computer not only scans its users’ fingerprints, but, if an unauthorized finger touches it, will automatically activate the recovery system: It will take a picture of the person using it and automatically email the photo to its owner’s registered address; and it will send its GPS-determined coordinates to the owner for tracking purposes. Should the thief try to use the tablet’s built-in GPS navigation technology, he/she will be surreptitiously directed to the closest police station.

7. Immersive defect resolution – Can’t fix a problem with the tablet on your own and don’t have time to wait your turn at your local Apple store’s Genius Bar? Activate the special problem-solving app and stand still as the built-in laser digitizes your body and takes you into the computer, where a friendly program played by Bruce Boxleitner will help you track down and defeat the problem, played by David Warner.

6. Automatic Photoshopping – Are you about to have a conversation via webcam, but you haven’t shaved and look about 30 pounds heavier than you’d like to? No worries: the webcam in this little baby will tweak your transmitted image in real-time to make you look just right.

5. Lenticular screen – Put your Bluetooth earbuds in and watch your favorite movie on the tablet — anytime, anyplace! But you’re at work? No problem: switch it to Boss Mode before starting the video and the screen will look, when viewed from anywhere but head-on, like it’s showing whatever document you want it to.

4. Rock Band integration – Expert mode on drums too easy for you? Try iExpert mode, with your new tablet serving as a fifth drum pad.

3. Mind meld – Want to do a real brain dump? Just load up this app and press the side of your face to the tablet’s screen. Enable the voice option for 99 cents to hear Leonard Nimoy’s voice saying “Our minds are merging… our minds are one.”

2. Holographic help – Need guidance on how to use your brand new technological toy productivity tool? Just chant “Help me, Steve” three times and a fully-interactive holographic Steve Jobs will appear to offer assistance. Upgrade to the VIP edition and the holographic Steve will not require you to genuflect while he speaks.

1. Seriously – The Apple tablet must have a mode that makes it look and work  like the Enterprise control panels and PADDs on Star Trek: The Next Generation. Really, it must. Any tablet computer that doesn’t have such a feature represents a missed opportunity and is consequently fundamentally inadequate.

What features do you think the iSlate (if, again, that turns out to be the Apple tablet’s name) needs to have, lest it fail to be the greatest tablet since the Ten Commandments?

[This post originally ran on January 8th, but we had to re-run it because, well, IT ARRIVES TOMORROW!]

Image by Ernesto Lago; used under Creative Commons Attribution license.

Repeat after me: “I hereby resolve that in the new year I…”

1. Will faithfully read every new xkcd, Penny Arcade and of course Dork Tower strip as it appears. If the joke in a strip is too esoteric for me, I will of course promptly Google it and subsequently pretend that I understood it immediately.

2. Will play with and encourage my kids to play with LEGO, since it is after all the best toy in the world. If I don’t have kids, I will simply have to play with LEGO myself that much more.

3. Will introduce at least two new geeks to the music of Jonathan Coulton and/or Paul and Storm. If they for any reason don’t like them, I will try hard not to accuse them of not being true geeks.

4. Will try very, very hard not to be jealous of geeks who make it to San Diego Comic-Con or Penny Arcade Expo, if I’m unable to go to either.

5. Will try very hard to make sure my kids spend at least as much time reading as they do playing video games, even if that means occasionally buying or borrowing cringe-worthy novelizations of High School Musical or something similar, because even reading something lousy is better than not reading.

6. Will try very hard not to run out and buy an Apple iTablet, or iSlate, or whatever it ends up being called, as soon as it comes out. I will if necessary repeat this mantra to myself: “I don’t need it just because it’s new and cool.”

7. Will watch every new episode of Phineas and Ferb, with or without my kids, because it is the most awesomely geeky cartoon show currently on TV.

8. Will not try what I see on MythBusters at home, but will do everything possible to encourage my kids to (safely) examine their (and everyone else’s) assumptions with a skeptical and scientific eye.

9. Will not get into arguments with other geeks about the age-old PC vs. Mac or Windows vs. OS X vs. Linux questions, because nobody ever wins religious debates. [Reprinted from my resolutions from last year.]

10. Will, #9 notwithstanding, eagerly get into arguments with other geeks about the relatively new iPhone vs. Blackberry vs. Android vs. jailbroken iPhone question, because it hasn’t quite gotten to the point of being a religious debate… yet. And because such arguments often include trading phones for a few minutes, which is a lot of fun — especially if you can quickly figure out how to switch the other person’s phone’s display language to Russian.

If you haven’t yet, you should check out my fellow GeekDad Curtis Silver’s 12 Geeky New Year’s Resolutions.

Happy New Year, everyone!

LEGO Star Wars Christmas photo by Tim Regan; used under Creative Commons attribution license.

Have you ever heard a song so many times in a short span of time that you found yourself rewriting it in your head just to keep yourself sane? It’s a condition that (I find) often strikes this time of year, when it seems impossible to escape Christmas and related winter songs no matter where you go.

So, in case you could use some help keeping yourself from going mad the tenth time you hear “Little Drummer Boy” played in one day, here are ten ideas for geeky versions of well-known Christmas and winter songs. Since the Muppets already did a version of “Carol of the Bells” that’s far better than we could do, we’ll skip that one. We’ve also avoided, as much as possible, the songs the great Tom Lehrer used in his unforgettable “A Christmas Carol.” These are titles and snippets of song only, as song-writing is not exactly our strongest suit, so please feel free to contribute lyrics in the comments.

1. “Winter Wonderland” – “In the meadow we can build a snowman, then pretend that he is Boba Fett.”

2. “Ru’Dolf the Red-Nosed Klingon” – “All of the other Klingons / Used to laugh and call him names / He got a bat’leth and slew one / So his honor he reclaimed.”

3. “Here Comes Doctor Who” – “Here comes Doctor Who, here comes Doctor Who / Coming in his TARDIS / Rose and Sarah Jane and all his companions / Get the Daleks pissed.” (Yes, we know, he’s never called “Doctor Who” except in the show’s title, but it wouldn’t scan right using “The Doctor,” so you’ll just have to live with it.)

4. “Frosty the Cylon” - “Frosty the Cylon / Is a fairy tale they say / He was made of steel / He was not quite real / Then he came to life one day.”

5. “Good King Elessar” – “Good King Elessar looked out / On the feast of Gondor.” (We leave rhyming “Gondor” as an exercise for our readers.)

6. “Let Us Go” - “Oh, the Vogons up there mean trouble / And your house will soon be rubble / We need a safe place to go / Arthur, let’s go! Let us go, let us go.”

7. “Slay Ride” – “Just see those vampires uprising / Surprising your friends too / Come on, it’s lovely weather / For a slay ride together with you.”

8. “I Saw Mommy Kissing Captain Kirk” – “Then I saw Mommy tickle Captain Kirk / Underneath his hair so clearly fake.”

9. “Jingle Bells” - “Dashing through the ‘verse / In the ship Serenity / To Jaynestown we go / To collect our fee.”

10. “The Twelve Days of Christmas” – “On the eighth day of Christmas my true love gave to me / Eight bloggers blogging / Seven dice a-rolling / Six iPhones ringing / Five MacBook Pros / Four LEGO Sets / Three Hexbugs / Two gaming mice / And a cartridge for Atari” (OK, so that last one is a little outdated.)

Image copyright © Toy Vault

We’ve all seen the ornaments Hallmark comes out with every year, and to be fair, some of them are excellent. There are a few Star Trek ones each year, and Star Wars ones, and other somewhat geeky ones, but they’re mainstream — and while there’s nothing inherently wrong with mainstream Christmas decorations, we are geeks and geeks tend to prefer things that are at least a little outside of mainstream.

So, as a public service, and because it’s fun, here is our list of the top 10 geeky Christmas decorations we could find. Please let us know if we’ve left out your favorite by leaving a comment.

Image copyright © CBS Studios & Kurt Adler

10. Captain Kirk With Ripped Shirt Statue
The only reason this isn’t higher on the list, because it’s completely awesome, is that it may not actually be available for sale. It’s listed on designer Kurt Adler’s website, but we couldn’t find anywhere to actually buy it. Nevertheless, the idea of Kirk getting a new shirt for Christmas while wearing a ripped one is, really, sheer genius (and if you can find it for sale somewhere, please let us know!).

9. Star Wars Holiday Waterball Ornaments
How else could you create a miniature snowfall around the disembodied head of Chewbacca, Darth Vader or C3PO?

8. Cardboard Skull Wreath
Sure, it’s nontraditional. And yes, it’s a bit on the macabre side. But if you’ve ever wanted a way to show your Christmas spirit by decorating while at the same time proving that you’re a rebel against mainstream tradition, you could hardly find a better way. Plus, it’s really cool.

7. R2-D2 and Yoda String Lights
Yes, even your lights can be geeky. Are they any weirder than the popular chili pepper lights? Well, OK, yes, they are … but that’s just part of their charm!

6. Flying Spaghetti Monster Ornament
If the religious aspect of Christmas isn’t that important to you, or if you’d just like to be inclusive of other belief systems, why not include an image of His Noodliness on your tree?

5. Serenity as Reaver Ship Ornament
Because nothing says “Christmas” like a mercenary ship disguised to blend in with ships full of violently insane cannibals.

Image copyright © Lucasfilm Ltd. & Kurt Adler

4. USB Computer Decoration Kit
Computers are such significant parts of every geek’s house, it seems natural to decorate them, too, doesn’t it?

3. Cthulhu Plush Wreath
Ignore the fact that Cthulhu is essentially the exact opposite of Jesus — in this depiction he’s green and red and looks like a wreath. How better to say “I’ve got the Christmas spirit, but that hasn’t caused my sense of humor to untwist?”

2. Darth Vader Nutcracker
And you thought he was tough when he remotely force-choked Admiral Ozzel in The Empire Strikes Back. Now he can crack your nuts, too! (Actually, we figure he probably cracked a lot of nuts, but George Lucas just didn’t put that in the movies because it would have made them less family-friendly. Seriously, though: Choking is all well and good, but then someone has to clean up the corpse, right?)

1. Yoda Tree Topper With LED Lightsaber
Be sure no Sith lords will attack your tree, you can. And you know, in Empire, Luke probably thought Yoda had a stick up his … but we digress. How awesome would this look on your tree?