Diary of a Network Geek

I love Christmas, and I love LEGOs.

I love them for two not so very different reasons.
LEGOs remind me of a simpler time.  They remind me of childhood dreams and imagination.  They still spark all sorts of wonderful memories, as old as I am.  In fact, I’ve been meaning to get myself some LEGOs to play with again.  Maybe for Christmas.

Christmas I love, not for the toys or the gift giving or even the food.  No, Christmas I love because it celebrates the rebirth of light and joy into the world.  Very much like LEGOs do for me.
Now, you can combine those two celebrations of joy with a LEGO Christmas tree.

Enjoy!

I love LEGOs.

There, I said it and I’m not the least bit sorry, either.
If I had more time, and money, I’d waste as much of both as I could on LEGOs.  Seriously.  Why?  Because I’m a big kid at heart and to make really cool LEGO stuff takes a lot of bricks.  Don’t believe me?  Just look at this gallery on TechRepublic from a recent BrickCon, a big convention for LEGO enthusiasts.  No, seriously, go look.  You wouldn’t believe the things that people create with those modular bricks we played with as kids!  For real!
And, if that wasn’t enough, check out this IO9 story about a guy who made an entire space habitat from LEGOs!  No, not life-size, of course, but to scale.  Now, this was just the kind of thing I would have done as a kid, if I’d had more gray bricks.

Well, anyway, it’s Friday, so you might as well scour those links and dream of a misspent youth!
Enjoy!

The happiest time of year!

Okay, so, maybe Halloween isn’t everyone’s favorite time of year, but I still think it’s fun.  But, then, I’ve always loved the strange and odd that makes other people uncomfortable.  Back in the “Before Time”, as I like to refer to my adolescence, I got really into a writer by the name of H. P. Lovecraft.  In fact, he was the inspiration for my writing under the name “J. K. Hoffman”, not that Rowling person.  In any case, he created a series of myths around a terrible elder god who slept in an ancient city sunken beneath the waves of a long forgotten ocean, dreaming of devouring all of mankind who was named Cthulhu.  There were all sorts of stories about him and his kin and they were actually quite frightening and a little unnerving at the time, even for me.

But, apparently, old Cthulhu has gotten himself a new publicist and a whole new, “kid friendly” image.  No, seriously!  Check out these 14 Great Cthulhu TOYS and see if you don’t agree!

And, for those of you who remember that high-school 0r junior high-school fascination with things man was not meant to know, go hit that link and have a smile at what the night terrors have become.
Happy Friday everyone!

I love toys.

I never worked at one of those cool Internet startups in the Nineties, but I sure wanted to at the time. Not just for the cash, which would have been enough of a reason, but because, well, it was were all the geeks were cool. Seriously! And, they had money to blow so they kept places like Amazon flowing and that Internet food-delivery place running. And, they had the coolest toys on their desk…

So, now, when I see cool toys for a geek’s desktop, I have to make a note. That’s what I thought when I saw Tokyo Cube Desktop Toys. So, go re-live those days of yore and oogle the toys.

(And, we already had a Friday the Thirteenth post recently, so I’m not mentioning it again!)

No, I mean really psycho toys…

It all started with a harmless, little article on Wired about new cube toys. (Make sure to read the article. It explains a lot about the rest of this.) Then I Googled on a few of the artists and came up with SweatyFrog Toys, KidRobot and finally XL-Shop online. Oh, my stars and garters, as a favorite comic-book hero was known for saying. The toys are truly mad and more fun than a barrel full of developers! They do get a bit pricey, though. SweatyFrog Toys has the best prices, but the other two have a better selection. In any case, it’s great fun to window shop there. And, hey, it’s Friday, go have fun!

(Oh, and yes, this post first appeared at my other blog.)