Ah yes, ’tis the holiday season yet again, where we once again are assaulted by the endless exploitation of the holiest day on the calendar of the dominant religion in the dominant world economy as an excuse to spend money we don’t have on things we’re told we want. Cynicism? What’s that?

Even so, there are a few of us left who do try to make Christmas a special occassion. If you count yourself among them as well, here are a few suggestions as to what to give the geek in your life - or, if you are the geek in your life, what to put on your own Dear-Santa list.

• What do you get if you combine chess with lasers? Khet. If you’re old enough to remember the days when computer magazines featured type-in BASIC or machine-language programs, you might recall that one of the leading mags of that era - COMPUTE! - featured a popular game called “Laser Chess” circa 1987. It played like chess, but instead of soldiers in an army the pieces represented mirrors used to reflect or refract laserbeams fired by a cannon piece. Any piece touched by this laser was destroyed. As in most chess games, the object was to destroy the enemy King. It was a fun computer game, but one that was highly unlikely to ever be a real board game… or so we thought at the time. Nearly two decades later, along comes Khet, which with minor differences appears to be Laser Chess brought to life (and given an Egyptian theme for some reason). Small laser pointer-like devices and reflective surfaces are used to recreate (whether the game’s creator was aware of it or not) the old computer game, creating perhaps the only board game capable of “shooting your eye out” like the gun the kid wanted in that damnable movie that’s shown on an endless loop every Christmas.
• What do you get if you combine marbles with Gomoku? Pentago. If your geek’s taste runs more to traditional games than to something like Khet, how about this MENSA-approved mental challenger? The game is simple enough - a 6×6 dimpled wooden gameboard divided into four 3×3 quadrants, and 36 marbles of black and white. On your turn, you place one marble of your color anywhere on the board, and you rotate one of the four quadrants 90� in any direction. The first player to get five marbles in a row wins. It sounds simple until you actually play!
• Hey, what time ya got? About 1111 minutes past 0110. Watches are always a fun gift idea, but let’s face it - most of them fall into the “drab” category. Analog watches are… well, analog, and digital watches stopped being cool at about the same time narrow ties and the Disc camera did, even the ones with calculators and datebooks built in. For the truly geeky, the watch to own is probably one that tells the time in binary, with a series of ten LED lights that appear meaningless to all but those who know that the time I quoted in this section header translates to “quarter past six.” Like in the original digital watches from the ’70s, pressing a button displays the time for five seconds. Just imagine the look on someone’s face when they ask you for the time when you’re wearing this watch… Definitely a lot more interesting than the $10 throwaway watches with phony inner dials and misleading displays that populate countertops at Wal*Marts and Targets nationwide!
• Of course, there’s always the old standby - the king of keyboards. Ask just about anyone who uses a keyboard for extensive periods of time - it’s important to use the right one with the right feel to it. Mushy keyboards are the bane of the existance of many would-be typists. By a common consensus among the geeky, the undisputed champion of keyboard design remains the IBM Model M, designed in 1984 for the original PS/2 system (back when “pee ess two” referred to a business computer and not a game console). The heavy weight that gaurantees it won’t wander around while you type, the pleasant full-travel keys with the trademark “clickety-clack” as you type away, the easy-to-clean and freely rearrangeable keycaps, the gentle curve to the layout that is actually more ergonomic in many cases than so-called “natural” keyboards, and the exceptionally long life of the unit (this article was written on a 20-year-old Model M that still feels brand new!) all conspire to make this the weapon of choice for many a code warrior in the trenches. The site linked above may be a bit pricier than finding a used Model M on eBay or at your local flea market, but the keyboards they sell are professionally restored models, gauanteed to work in all but the most exceptional cases. (With eBay or dumpster-diving, you never know what you’ll get.) I may be a bit too much of an advocate for them, but only because I’m a firm believer in the product - if you do a lot of typing, get a Model M and your fingers will thank you forever.
• PS2 Gaming goodness. Yes, the talk of the Sony video gaming world this year is the PS3, but if waiting lists, short supplies, and ricockulous price tags have scared you off of joining the “next generation,” there’s still plenty of good stuff to be had on the “last generation.” For PS2 owners, Final Fantasy XII and Valkyrie Profile: Silmeria will satisfy the CRPG lover, while LEGO Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy is just as much fun as its predacessor and features the Star Wars universe we remember best from our own childhoods. Also recommended is the Sega Genesis Collection, combining 28 non-licensed titles from Sega’s back catalog for the system that truly launched the 16-bit revolution, including all three Genesis Phantasy Star installments and all three Golden Axe games, among many others. Great variety in that pack.
• Now, this is retrogaming! If money is no object (wouldn’t that be nice…), you can always splurge on this fine addition to any game room - a reproduction of a classic 1980’s “cocktail” arcade cabinet, loaded with 30+ Golden Age arcade games… Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Centipede, Space Invaders, and more. To me, this style of cabinet brings back memories of sneaking away from my parents’ table at the local Pizza Hut to drop some quarters into Ms. Pac-Man while waiting for the food to arrive. All you’d need is a soundtrack of ’80s music - might I recommend the .977 Shoutcast stream? - and whammo, instant time warp.

Well, there you go - at least it’s a place to get started. And I promise, I didn’t do this as any sort of personal “wish list”; I’d never stoop so low as to use WotG to further my own selfish ends! This was a public service announcement designed to help facilitate holiday gift shopping for those who are hard to shop for.

…Of course, I wouldn’t object if anyone bought this stuff for me… uh, Migo? Migs? Put down that lead pipe! I was just kiddi

If you liked that, try...

1. Comic Rundown: The Good Ideas, The Bad Ideas and the Ugly Ideas
2. The Sports Geek - A New Breed of Geek
3. DIY Flashlight Laser
4. Fly an X-Wing on an Oscilloscope
5. The High Price of Being a Geek

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