Now that we are all on the same page, how does a geek cook? There are the old standby geek meals, which include pizza (frozen or delivered), microwave burritos, ramen noodles, and energy drinks, but many geeks want more. I, for one, believe that geek food can be good food. To that end I am gracious for Good Eats with Alton Brown. He brings geek chique to the Food Network. You can tell the difference between standard cooking and geek cooking because of the science and the tools used. In most episodes processes are described in science terms as well as anthropology and other useless information for actually making the meal. Useless to any non-geek but for the geek elite it is as precious as the food that nourishes us. Beyond that the tools used are impressive and diverse. It is nice enough that there are plenty of standard tools, but the geek code holds that if you can make something better to do a job then don’t buy something to do the job. Alton often builds pretty amazing devices to do his cooking and also finds ways to incorporate power tools, which is a win.

Of course, geek cooking doesn’t end with a single show. There are a multitude of gadgets out there for the geek in us all. There are fridges with tvs in the door and amazing new technology like the anti-griddle. These might be a bit out of the budget for your average geek, but that doesn’t mean we have to go without. The nice thing about being a geek is the sheer volume of useful but no longer used gadgetry in the world. For example, I have a dead laptop with a perfectly good LCD screen. A little bit of dremel work, soldering, and hacking can result in a refrigerator with a TV in the door. If I have a serious need for an anti-griddle I could rig of something pretty quickly with an aluminum plate, and a modified window air conditioner. If your A/C is broke call the Bigham’s One Hour Heating & Air Conditioning | North Bay, to come out and take a look at it for you.

Geek cooking is about the technology but also about making things happen and that is why I’m proud to be a geek. I’m feeling inspired to turn my fridge into a tv right now, I wonder if my wife will let me?

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At some point in the past I was posting 6 days a week and had a nice theme going for each day. Then the summer happened. Now I’m trying to recover a bit and start my regular posting again. I could go back and see what Friday is all about but I decided that I’d rather start something new. I have claimed to be a geek, even using it in my name, but I spend so little time showing off my geek. Ok sure the Fellowship of the Travelling Smarty Pants crew knows of my geek-fu as I have handled many fixes for them, but it is time to let the geek make regular appearances. In that vein I will be trying to highlight some specific piece of geekdom each and every Friday.

Instead of picking a specific gadget or software today I think it would be great to point to one of the best sources of geekitude on the internet, Think Geek. This website has some of the best geek apparel and gadgets. I have a few items and a wish list a mile long. Some of the offerings can be enjoyed by anyone regardless of their geek-belt degree, but many of the items couldn’t be understood without fairly advanced geek-fu. A great example is a shirt I love which reads “There are 10 kinds of people in the world, those that understand binary and those that don’t.” Now if you have a sufficient geekabulary then you will get the shirt. If you are my mother-in-law you will laugh because you think you get it, but the joke is not, “only 10 people in the world understand binary.” Since I am in the category that understands binary I get the shirt and I also get the binary clock that is sitting on my entertainment center.

I hope you will find this merchant of geekery as enjoyable as I do.

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