Geeky Paper Lunch Bag Prints
Another printable for you to tackle, for those who like really easy DIY. These are logos you can print onto your paper lunch bag to make it look like a take-out bag:
You can use white paper bags or regular brown bags (for that McDonald’s look). Your choices are Los Pollos Hermanos, The Krusty Krab, Mooby’s, and Smiley’s (that only took a minute to make so why not?).
You can find the instructions and downloads after the jump. Read the rest of this entry
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Video Game Calendars
You’re probably familiar with that calendar that is included in the Windows Task Bar, or maybe the one included in your email client. Those are all fine and good (enough to nearly drive printed paper calendars to extinction), but they aren’t geeky. If it were up to me, these desktop calendars would have a video game theme.
For this example I enlisted Super Meat Boy, a game that has a perfect 5 x 7 grid in its world maps. This design has all the ingredients of a calendar you’d expect in a Calendar app, but with a few video game wrinkles; like the character would be seen on today’s date (probably in an animated cycle).
You could add events as well (events are marked by Band-Aids for the SMB calendar shown above). There would be pop-up windows if you want to see an event breakdown.
Another game that would be great for this is Super Mario 3, which I’ve used often for maps. The numbered levels in that game’s world map would make for great calendar. Basically any game with a world map can be used for this type of calendar.
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Video Game Outlet Adapter
These are grounded tap adapters which look like video game power-ups you are drawing power from. They have illuminated features that also make this a night-light as well. For the Super Mario one, the 2 outlets are on the sides of the question box.
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Zelda Lawn Ornaments
So that last post got me thinking about how great it would be for a city park to adopt a Zelda layout, enough to get me thinking about doing a crowdfunding project (still mulling it over). My thoughts then migrated to something a little closer to home - the backyard to be exact. How cool would it be decorate the yard with Zelda-themed lawn ornaments in the style of item pickups? This is a million times better than gnomes!*
These would be ornaments with a little peg underneath that you’d plug into the lawn anywhere you want. It would look like Link invaded your property and struck down all the shrubs (he has issues).
I think this would be a fun DIY project for lawn-loving geeks. I have no idea how you’d make such large Rupees though (any thoughts out there?). For safety reasons I’d want the arrows made out of rubber (or something not stabby in general, as we’ve learned from lawn darts).
*The opinions expressed by this blogger do reflect those of this blog, and should be completely embraced by you without hesitation.
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The Future Of Geek Landmarks
As you know geeks are in the early stages of taking over the world. As a show of our dominance we are starting to leave landmarks in our wake that will leave future generations in complete awe of our empire.
Right now we have giant Gundam robots springing up in Japan, the Shire becoming a permanent fixture in New Zealand, and um, a Robocop statue being raised in Detroit. Okay that last one, while cool, means we have a long way to go in North America.
Here is a recent video of that Gundam statue, on sentry duty for his geek masters:
By landmarks I mean places of interest that are accessible by everyone for free. A geek mecca like Legoland is a tourist attraction, not a landmark.
The pilgrimages that geeks take now just to check out filming locations speaks to the appeal and power of geeky landmarks. Whether it’s the original Star Wars sets or a popular location from Breaking Bad, if you’ve built it or filmed in it they will come.
But as I mentioned there is a general lack of quality geek landmarks to check out right now. However if the current trends are any indication we’ll see the following:
Building Ornaments
Whether it’s the Daily Planet globe, a Wayne Enterprises or Luthorcorp sign, eventually a few skyscrapers from around the world will indulge in cosplay for some geek love. I’m a bit surprised Marvel or DC’s headquarters don’t do this already, but c’est la vie. This would be among the cheaper initiatives.
Statues and Sculptures
The aforementioned Gundam statues in Japan are groundbreaking and need to be emulated all over the planet. I would say the North American equivalent would be Transformers or superheroes. Plus these would absolutely mess with archeologists in the distant future.
Entire Towns
Some of you may scoff at the idea of building a town that copied Hill Valley or South Park, but you’d be surprised how many cities are being built every year, with many becoming ghost towns. If only they hired a geek architect. As I stated before the Shire project is a pretty cool idea, one that was attempted previously for the Big Whiskey set from Unforgiven (sorry no link!). Mark my words: geek towns will be built! And they will host Weezer concerts every summer.
Vehicles And Ships
The bombshell from earlier this year that a life-size Enterprise would have been built in Las Vegas is still a very cool notion. It blurs the line of being a landmark and a tourist attraction (it was slated to be a hotel and casino), but at least you can visit it and take photos outside. There are other ships and vehicles which would be great for tourists, like the Sandcrawler, Serenity, and the Planet Express. Just a matter of choosing where to permanently park them. There are plenty of UFO attractions currently, but all lacking that pop culture touch.
Parks
A municipal park could be home to outdoor locations seen in a video game, like the fountain from A Link To The Past (see below), or an entire track from Mario Kart — the sky is the limit. Speaking of which, one block from my home they razed several old houses and put in a new park, but prescribed a terrible layout for it. Where are the geek city planners??
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These are all just predictions for now, but you have to admit the appeal of having any of these landmarks become a reality is just huge for us geeks. We’re just going to have to wait until our world takeover is complete in a few years.
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Spy Hunter Car Stereo Deck
I thought I’d address the complete lack of geeky car stereo decks with this Spy Hunter design. For the most part it would be your standard stereo, save for a neat cosmetic touch: the back-lit weapons dash that adorned the original arcade cabinet.
These five icons would randomly illuminate (at a slow non-distracting rate) for a bit of a light show. Other touches include 3 buttons found on the steering wheel of the arcade cabinet: the ‘Source’ button disguised as the Weapons Van button, and the play/stop buttons use the same red push-buttons used to fire weapons.
Not only would this deck help recreate the feel of playing the arcade game while behind the wheel of your car, but also grant you delusions of being a badass spy (even if you’re driving a station wagon).
Notes:
You can check out the arcade cabinet in-depth here. This design was based on this Alpine model. The icons would not allow for a CD slot on the face, so if you want CD functionality you would need to pop the face down to load discs. I suppose you could program this sucker to play the Peter Gun Theme upon start-up. Sound effects from the game could be enlisted for button presses.
