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…

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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…)

Pink Nerds are Cool T-Shirt
The absolutely essential first step in proclaiming your nerdy allegiance is to rock a t-shirt that shows the world what you think is worthwhile proclaiming to the world. This pink faux-vintage tee features a distressed graphic featuring Nerds—as in the cartoon versions of the Wonka-created candy—romping around an exuberant statement of the cultural significance of technologically sophisticated individuals. Check it out. $20.

Estrogen Necklace
Nothing says “girl” and “nerd” quite as beautifully and literally as this sterling silver necklace featuring the estrogen molecule. And, not only is estrogen essential in making a girl into a woman, it also influences bone density, body temperature, cholesterol levels, and skin and hair health. Who knew girlie stuff could be so useful (and totally nerdy at the same time)? $40.

Smiley Necklaces - Sterling Silver
As anyone who works with computers and language (including computer languages), text and western punctuation are great for conveying logical instructions and data, but expressing emotions require a more artistic approach. However, we’re lucky to have a system to communicate emotion with common ASCII punctuation–Smileys. Why not express yourself in a totally geeky way with one of the many options in the silver Smiley Necklaces. $65.00.

Credit Card Organizers - Pink - 6 Card & 12 Card
This neat gadget holds 6 credt cards that correspond to each of the switches on the top. If you want to grab your Visa, just push the VISA switch and that card gets nudged out just enough so you can grab it. When you’re done, just put it back in the slot and you’re ready to go. No more leafing through your wallet at the store while the crowd behind you in line gets angry! $39.50

Diskette Handbag
And here’s a cool way to tote around your new pink credit card organizer, along with your essential gadgets, make up, keys, and the like. This black pvc handbag features six real floppy disks on each side, and the inside has pockets to carry around the essentials, and enough interior space to stash those less essential things. Totally geek chic. $55

Floppy Disk Earrings
There’s no way to undermine how nerdily-cool floppy disks are. Entire operating systems and programs used to be distributed on floppy disks, but as time and technology progressed, floppies were superseded by CD-ROMs, then USB and high speed internet connections as a way to distribute data and programs. However, when cast in silver, they make very cool earrings. $40.00

Customizable Dot Matrix Wrist Cuff - Pink
Hacking and DIY go hand-in-hand. Just check out MAKE Magazine and all the cool projects they have for modifying everyday objects into increasingly useful things. So why shouldn’t your fashion accessories represent your DIY spirit in a way that wouldn’t warrant a visit from the fashion police? Grab yourself a blank Dot Matrix Wrist Cuff and punch out the dots to spell a word, acronym, or expression in pixelated form by punching out dots on a 5 x 30 grid to form words or patterns. Here at Fractalspin we’ve provided templates so you can easily express your geekativity with patterns like “WTF,” “MYSQL,” “APACHE,” “</ARM>,” “LINUX,” and more. Check out either of these templates we’ve made to help you out [1] and [2], choose your favorite, punch away and out your closeted nerd self. $30.

Remember when Barbie was a troublemaker? She got herself and Mattel into hot water when the talking version of her vinyl embodiment quipped “Math class is tough.” Suddenly education activists and women’s rights watchdogs were up in arms at Mattel’s complicity in the fact that more boys than girls take advanced math and science classes, and boys outnumber girls studying computer science by a factor of 3 to 1 (but the Barbie Liberation Organization had quite a bit of fun with it).

Is is because math and science are boring and useless? Hardly! Who designed the iPhone? A bunch of very hip nerds at Mac. How did you get to this website to stare at this post? The hard work of many dedicated nerds who made computers possible and then figured out how to hook them up to each other. You’ve got to admit it: Nerds are cool. So grab yourself a cool, nerdy t-shirt that proclaims the truth and wear it proudly!

PS: Nerds are also delicious.

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]

Laptop jockeys and synth-slingers have a harder time getting gigs in a club world ruled by rock. Here’s a nice article over at Createdigitalmusic.com that has ten tips on how to get booked for a live PA in a club or a bar.

Getting Booked:10 Basic Tips for Getting Live Electronic Music Gigs

Here’s another one over at LivePA on more of the technical elements of getting started:

Livepa: Where Electronic Music Comes Alive

Here’s also a good, related article:
Getting Publicity: Start With a Good Name for Your Project

Sure it may be inexpensive and “engrave-able” with a label printer, but wow, you’ve got to get something else besides that gigantic black binder clip you borrowed from your office to store your money in. It’s not only bad for the magnetic stripes on your card, it makes you look…well, cheap. And that you value a quick solution instead of a smart one. Why not check out our cash-organizers instead? They’re geeky, innovative, and stylish. Just like you, right?

The simplest, most elegantly nerdy solution for you if you primarily carry cash and one or two credit cards is the Circuit Board Money Clip ($10). Choose your circuitboard color–red, green, or blue–and then clip together your loose bills and receipts. Easy.

So you’ve got a few more credit cards but still like the concept of a money clip. The Duct Tape Money Clip will be absolutely perfect for you. Everyone knows how useful duct tape is for securing cables to the floor, holding broken CRT monitor cases together and repairing holey laptop bags, but as it turns out it also makes awesome wallets. There’s 2 credit card slots and 1 clear ID window along with the money clip part so you can stash the essentials in style.

So you need a better solution than just a hopped-up money clip, but you still want to show off your nerd cred, and you don’t want anything that’s too bulky. Check out these Tyvek Dot Matrix Wallets that come in Trifold ($23) and Bifold ($18) forms. It looks like you’ve got a wallet made from retro pin-fed accounting paper that people used to use to print out reports or ASCII art, but it’s made of super strong yet thin and waterproof Tyvek–a paper-like material made from plastics (the same thing that USPS Priority Mail envelopes are made from). The printed numbers are the first 3,000 digits of pi, which not only made a nice decoration, it also makes your wallet into a swank reference tool.

You’re a gadget freak and wish you could apply cool technology to managing your cash and credit cards every day. You’ve got to check out this Credit Card Organizer ($39.50)–just push the corresponding switch and the card you want is nudged out of its slot for you to grab and use with ease. They’re totally lightweight with a low profile and have a cash clip on the reverse to store more stuff. You can even switch out the icons assigned to each slot with others or just use colors. And you’ll never go back to a standard wallet again!

OK, so you’re a gadget freak and a card freak. The option for you is the larger version of the aforementioned gadget: the 12-Card Credit Card Organizer ($58). The same six switches control 2 cards now, doubling your payment / loyalty-generating power. It’s perfect if you use a bag or a purse and don’t need to stuff it down your pants–er, pockets–every day.

While a gadget that pops out cards by the push of a switch is definitely cool, you’re more of a traditionalist, but with still a ton of credit cards and cash.Your best best would be to go with the Duct Tape Hybrid Credit Card Wallet ($15). There’s slots for nine credit cards and a clear window for your ID, as well as a regular money fold and a slot for coins. It’s the ultimate, nerdiest solution for physical money exchange management and it won’t set you back too much at a mere fifteen bucks.

If you’re almost sold, there are more options between the ones we’ve picked. Check out all the wallets we have here and you’ll surely be on your way to being a more organized, money-at-the-ready geek.

We just added two more sizes to the line of circuit board notebooks and binders: a composition notebook and a half-sheet, smaller binder. If you’re especially wordy you’ll appreciate the larger page size of the composition notebook and if you’ve got endless scattered 6″ x 9″ pages, punch some holes in their sides and gather them together in sequential order, protected by tough circuit boards on the outsides. Nerdy but definitely cool.

Good news and bad news. The bad news is that the host that the Fractalspin blog is on got had its databased erased and the backups corrupted (but the main Fractalspin.com site is perfectly fine–it’s on a different, dedicated server). So we’ve lost all the posts from February - April. :-(

The good news is, we were inspired to create a line of “fbxrd” gear, like the sticker you see above, and the t-shirts down below. The shirts will be great to wear when you have a hangover–or when you get all your websites hax0rd into the ground.

Fear not–more new stuff is on the way!