PDF Version

Liz McLean Knight, the main human behind Fractalspin is featured on the cover of the Chicago Tribune’s RedEye free magazine for a feature about geek girls, and especially those in Chicago.

“Geek Chic: New generation of women embracing inner geek” [via the RedEye]

If dissassembling computers is geeky and making jewelry is girly, then Liz McLean Knight has found geek-girl nirvana. From her Wicker Park office, Knight, 30, runs a line of accessories make from computer components and sells the “fashionably-geek hipster gear” on a Web site she created, fractalspin.com.

There you’ll find necklaces made from capacitors. Handbags made of diskettes. Cufflinks made from microcontrollers. Woot! Those wrist cuffs made of MIDI cable are super neat!

Peter Kirn from Create Digital Music pointed to an article reviewing their Make> / CDM / Etsy night in Brooklyn and remarked that the author’s coinage of the term “nerdster” was one he could get behind.

Last night, on the not-so-anonymous urging of a PR company that represents Make magazine, I went to “Handmade Music” at Etsy Labs in downtown Brooklyn…

On handmade music night, super-nerds, artists, and the edgy, in-the-know, 20-something crowd converge on the Etsy labs, drawn by promises of newly-invented instruments, techno music, and free pizza…

(more…)

Which girls best exemplify geek chic? Post your ideas in the comments. Once we have a strong list we’ll post a survey and let you rank the ladies.

Girls can be real people or fictional characters and should be fairly well known enough where a simple web search can return the person in question.

Not clear on what’s geek chic? Here are some resources:
AZ Central: “It’s chic to be geek!”
Wikipedia: geek chic
USA Today: “Geek chic”

(more…)

Which guys best exemplify geek chic? Post your ideas in the comments. Once we have a strong list we’ll post a survey and let you rank the guys.

Guys can be real people or fictional characters and should be fairly well known enough where a simple web search can return the person in question.

Not clear on what’s geek chic? Here are some resources:
AZ Central: “It’s chic to be geek!”
Wikipedia: geek chic
USA Today: “Geek chic”

(more…)

Team Boom Tape is a team that not only makes things out of duct tape in competitions (like a poker-chip-toting barge), they’ve created a server with a duct tape case!

They’ve even lit it from the inside, and it show through since they’ve used 3M’s clear duct tape to make “windows.” The duct tape fan guard is an especially amusing part of the setup.

[via]

Sam Garfield and Jake Haglund run the DIY:happy site–an extensive list of projects that pretty much anyone can do, be it electronics, explosives (really!), toys, paper crafts, rockets, mods, or knitting. Here’s a few of our favorites:

Homemade EKG
Curious how your heart is responding to your web-surfing habits? Why not make your own electrocardiogram and watch your heart-waves on your computer screen?

Film canister home planetarium
Don’t feel like shelling out 25 bux to watch lasers and stars-projections zoom around to a classic rock soundtrack at the planetarium? Just hang onto a film canister (you’ve got to know someone who still has a film camera, right?), punch some holes, grab a flashlight, and invite some friends over for some low-tech science nerdery.

Matchstick Rockets
And while said nerdy friends are assembled in your living room, why not bust out the matches and shoot them all over the place? Everyone like fire and shooting, and this is a low cost way to get some cheap thrills.

Fast-food container airplane
It’s so much easier to create a sweet glider from a styrofoam hamburger clamshell than from a wrinkled, greasy paper wrapper.

Make your own Batphone
Wow, talk about insta-cred! Having a direct line to Bruce Wayne’s mansion sitting on your desk would certainly send a message to your co-workers and higher-ups.