Ten Unusual Wines that Geeks Would Love

With Valentine’s Day just around the cor­ner, any one of these wines would make an awe­some gift to present to that spe­cial geek in your life:

Wines for Gamers

Player 1 by 8-bit Vintners

“Player 1″ was cre­ated by an actual gamer, and comes from the wine­mak­ing region of Walla Walla, Wash­ing­ton.  Owner/gamer Mike James says, “My wine is for any­one who spent time try­ing to save a princess or fit odd shaped blocks together. We may have never met, but we have more in com­mon than we ever knew. So blow out that old Con­tra car­tridge, give the NES a good dust off, and pour your­self a glass.”  Sadly, 8-bit Vint­ners has closed up shop, but you can still pur­chase the wine on Ebay and other places (if you know where to look).

Boss Mon­ster by Woot Cellars

This 2007 zin­fan­del from Woot Cel­lars is rep­re­sen­ta­tive of every ter­ri­ble boss you’ve ever encoun­tered in a video game (though I think he looks vaguely rem­i­nis­cent of Phan­toon from Super Metroid).  “Boss Mon­ster” is a lim­ited edi­tion wine that is only some­times avail­able via Wine.Woot.  If you like wine and enjoy get­ting a good deal, you might want to sign up for Wine.Woot’s deal-a-day style offers.

Stun­lock, nOOb, & Gamer Win­dow  by GamerWine

Gamer­Wine is avail­able in three vari­eties with relat­able names: Stun­lock, a rich red; nOOB, a full-bodied Mer­lot; and Gamer Win­dow, a smooth Pinot Gri­gio.  Sug­gested pair­ings:  Hot Pock­ets, Pizza Rolls and Cheetos.

Wines for Fan­tasy Film Buffs

The Bot­tle of Wits by Alamo Drafthouse

“The Bot­tle of Wits” is a new line of sig­na­ture wines by Alamo Draft­house inspired by everyone’s favorite 80’s fan­tasy film, The Princess Bride, which cel­e­brates its 25th anniver­sary this year.  The line includes both red and white vari­eties: “As You Wish White,” a light, golden medium-bodied Cal­i­for­nia blend, and “Incon­ceiv­able Cab,” a 2009 vin­tage Cal­i­for­nia Caber­net.  The wine will go for sale online start­ing Feb­ru­ary 14, 2012.

Wines for Hor­ror Fans

Zom­bie Zin by Chateau Diana Winery

From Chateau Diana Win­ery in Healds­burg, Cal­i­for­nia comes “Zom­bie Zin­fan­del” that is blood-red in color and described as “hor­ridly rich in con­cen­trated fruit fla­vors with a fin­ish that never dies!” Clever.  And here I thought the only zom­bies with mohawks were from Tiris­fal Glades.

Return of the Liv­ing Red by Red­heads Studio

“Return of the Liv­ing Red” is a red wine from Red­heads Stu­dio (I see what they did there), which is a small win­ery in South Aus­tralia. The wine is dark gar­net in color, full-bodied, with fla­vors of cur­rants and black­ber­ries.  The grue­some (but awe­some) pack­ag­ing was designed by Mash.

Kil­li­b­in­bin by Broth­ers in Arms

This col­lec­tion of “killer” wines is by Broth­ers in Arms of the Met­alia vine­yard, also in South Aus­tralia (side note: why does Aus­tralia have all the cool wines?).  The labels were designed after vin­tage hor­ror movie posters to play up the “kill” part of the wine’s name.

Vam­pire, Drac­ula & True­blood by Vam­pire Vineyards

When it comes to vampire-themed wines, Vam­pire Vine­yards pretty much has the mar­ket cor­nered.  The vineyard’s full line includes Vam­pire, Drac­ula, True­blood, and Chateau du Vamm­pire.  There’s even red Vam­pire Vodka, and the com­pany is also branch­ing out into other vampire-themed bev­er­ages  like soda, cof­fee and energy drinks.  Thanks to the pop­u­lar­ity of Twi­light, True Blood, The Vam­pire Diaries, etc, it’s no sur­prise that this type of bla­tant pan­der­ing has also been very suc­cess­ful for the com­pany (just read their nau­se­at­ing About Us page).

Wines for Techies

USB Port by Peltier Station

A zin­fan­del dessert wine, “USB Port” (get it?) has a rich, sweet fla­vor that bal­ances choco­late with ruby cherry and spice. Sounds deli­cious.  Just don’t try to plug it into your laptop.

 Edu­cated Guess by Roots Run Deep

This Napa Val­ley Caber­net Sauvi­gnon is the flag­ship wine of Roots Run Deep win­ery, who would like you to make an “edu­cated guess” about which wine to choose.  The very tech­ni­cal, smart-looking label depicts actual wine­mak­ing for­mula strings that chemists would use.

5 Virtual Retro Toys You Can Play With Online

The other day I stum­bled upon a site that archives those won­der­ful old Read-Along adven­ture books and makes them avail­able for down­load.  It made me nos­tal­gic for other toys I remem­ber fondly from child­hood, and I went on some­what of a quest to see how many vir­tual ver­sions of old toys I could find.

If you’re feel­ing up for a bit of retro­tain­ment and have some time to kill, these vir­tual toys are as close as you can get to the real thing.

Simon

» Play with Simon
Pos­si­bly the great­est toy from the 1980s, Simon was like an audio/visual assault on your basic mem­ory recall skills.  It fre­quently made us feel infe­rior, but those flashy lights and syn­the­sizer sounds kept us happy in our button-mashing comas.  And who didn’t want to be that bad-ass Johnny kid from this com­mer­cial?  WARNING: This is addictive!

Speak & Spell

» Play with Speak & Spell
The orig­i­nal hand-held elec­tronic learn­ing toy that paved the way for decades of imi­ta­tions.  What child of the late 70s/early 80s didn’t have one of these things?  Plus, accord­ing to E.T. you could hack this baby to phone home the mothership.

Etch-a-Sketch

» Play with Etch-a-Sketch
My skill at vir­tual Etch-a-Sketch is only slightly less sucky than my skill at actual Etch-a-Sketch.

This one lets you print out your cre­ations, but sadly lacks a shake-to-erase fea­ture.  Still, it’s a fun time-waster.

Rubik’s Cube

» Play with Rubik’s Cube
I was never able to solve one of these stu­pid things, let alone do it in 8 sec­onds.  If you had a cheaply-made Rubik’s like I did, you could try to cheat and rearrange the stick­ers.  This vir­tual one has real­is­tic twisty-turny action! (And all the frus­tra­tion of the real thing.)

Lite Brite

» Play with Lite Brite
There’s no telling how much dam­age we did to our reti­nas star­ing into these things.  Lite Brites were a relax­ing way for artis­tic kids to spend a rainy Sat­ur­day.  Per­son­ally, I never had the patience to fin­ish my designs, or I’d acci­den­tally shake the thing and lit­tle plas­tic pegs would go flying.

I’m still hold­ing out hope for vir­tual Magna-Doodle.  Now go have fun reliv­ing your childhood!

How do you manage your ever-growing media wish list?

WANTED:  A bet­ter solu­tion for dis­cov­er­ing and con­sum­ing new media.  First things first:  It seems inap­pro­pri­ate to call what I’m talk­ing about a “wish list” because…

A) I don’t nec­es­sar­ily intend to shop for and pur­chase said media, nor do I always want to receive it as a gift.  While there’s a bunch of great, free tools out there like Amazon’s Wish List and Wish Radar, these tools are geared more toward mak­ing a pur­chase and not mere consumption.

B) Most wish list tools are shopping-based and don’t cater well to old media like out-of-print books, hard-to-find movies, or retro/legacy games on dead plat­forms.  And what about obscure TV shows never released on DVD?  Try adding Out of this World to your Ama­zon wish list.

C) The media I’m inter­ested in isn’t always released yet. I often put upcom­ing movies, books, albums, and games on my list that may be a year or more away from a release date.  How do you account for these types of things using a wish list sys­tem that is based on available/purchasable products?

In short, my media wish list is more like a “To Do” list. I have a “To Play” list for games; a “To Watch” list for movies and TV shows; a “To Read” list for books; and a “To Lis­ten” list for new artists and album I want to check out.  I don’t nec­es­sar­ily call all these dif­fer­ent lists “To _______ Lists,” but that’s essen­tially what they are.  Their sole pur­pose is to help me dis­cover new media and keep it on my radar until I’ve had time to watch it, play it, read it, or lis­ten to it.

So how do I keep up with it all? Here is my system…of sorts:

1.  Post-Its and Paper Scraps — I am per­pet­u­ally writ­ing notes-to-self on Post-Its and paper scraps con­tain­ing unor­ga­nized, off-the-cuff lists of things I’ve heard about or read about in my online and offline trav­els.  For exam­ple, if I’m brows­ing a gamer forum and some user rec­om­mends a game that sounds like I might enjoy, I’ll write its name down, per­haps along­side a short note that lends some help­ful con­text like: “Shadow of the Comet (PC) — Love­craft­ian AG.”  If I hear a song I like on the radio while I’m out some­where, I’ll try to scrib­ble down lyrics so I can look it up later.  By the end of any given week, my mes­sen­ger bag’s outer pocket con­tains a stash of folded, wadded-up notes that I’ll later re-visit and add to my wish list(s), then toss the paper.

2.  Google Docs — My actual media wish list is a series of Google Docs con­tain­ing sep­a­rate lists for Movies/TV Shows, Music, Games, and Books.  These are, of course, neater than my hand­writ­ten notes but still pretty raw and orga­nized.  Also, there’s no real sense of pri­or­ity.  Depend­ing on the list, I might add some extra info, like release date/year for movies, plat­form and genre for games, etc.  I like stor­ing this info in Google Docs because I can access and man­age my lists as eas­ily as I do email.  Per­haps one day I’ll grad­u­ate to a more sophis­ti­cated Google Spread­sheet, but the Docs get me by for now.

3.  Plan-Ahead Shop­ping & Stream­ing — When I’m in the mood and can make the time to actu­ally watch/play/read/listen to some­thing, I’ll browse through my wish list(s) ahead of time and pick what­ever looks appetizing…followed by a trip to the store, library, Net­flix, iTunes, XBMC, tor­rent site, or wher­ever it is that I might pur­chase or down­load it.

4. Reviews, Rec­om­men­da­tions, & Taste Engines — Need­less to say, my media wish list is never empty, but it also doesn’t just con­tain things I stum­ble upon.  I will often seek out and dis­cover new media by con­sult­ing a per­son­al­ized arse­nal of review sites, rec­om­men­da­tion sites, and taste engines that includes Net­flix, Jinni, GoodReads, Ama­zon, GamerDNA, just to name a few.  Then there’s the count­less review and pre­view blogs that entice me to pile it on even thicker.  I do get a lot of gen­uinely great rec­om­men­da­tions this way, but as always, it seems more gets added to my lists vs. gets removed.

What this all this boils down to is that I’m approach­ing a state of media over­load and I need a bet­ter way to cope with it. Short of quit­ting my job and devot­ing all day to play­ing video games and watch­ing movies (a girl can dream, can’t she?), I need a bet­ter solu­tion that will track, pri­or­i­tize, remind me about, and remem­ber all this media that I plan to con­sume, whether it’s old, new, or unre­leased.  Is there a sin­gle sys­tem out there that can do all this?

The com­ments are wide open to your sug­ges­tions, app rec­om­men­da­tions, and/or pithy remarks about my being a media junkie with no life who needs help!

10 Gifts for Geeks for $10 or Less

With Christ­mas right around the cor­ner, I thought it would be fun (and hope­fully help­ful) to put together a list of inex­pen­sive gift ideas for geeks, all for under $10. (And I’m not going to cheat and men­tion $10 gift cards, either!)

Pocket LED Flashlight

“May it be a light to you in dark places…”

Every geek needs a good flash­light, and even bet­ter if it fits in our pocket!  Great for wran­gling with hard-to-see com­puter con­nec­tions or ven­tur­ing behind our A/V sys­tems to con­nect new gear, a bright LED flash­light is a must-have.  X-treme Geek sells a nice mini LED flash­light for just $9.99.

Bat­ter­ies

Geek Power-Ups

If there is one uni­ver­sal truth, it’s that geeks can ALWAYS use more bat­ter­ies.  Between our wire­less key­boards, wire­less mouses, dig­i­tal cam­eras, wire­less game con­trollers, A/V remotes, Nin­tendo DSs, PSPs, laser point­ers, giz­mos, gadgets–wait, what was I say­ing?  Oh right: MOAR BATTERIES!  You can’t go wrong giv­ing geeks a nice big pack of AA or AAA bat­ter­ies.  A tad imper­sonal, but extremely prac­ti­cal and def­i­nitely appreciated–particularly dur­ing those moments we real­ize our bat­tery sup­ply is crit­i­cally low and we dread thought of actu­ally get­ting up to change the channel.

Sharpies

For Your Sharpie Fetish

We love our Sharpies.  They’re great for every­thing from label­ing the lat­est disc of pirated legally down­load­able soft­ware you burned to Sharpie-ing per­verse things all over your friend’s face when he falls asleep drunk on your couch. (Don’t ask.)  From Ultra Fine Points to Sharpie Minis to good ‘ol Orig­i­nal, there’s a Sharpie prod­uct in a wide range of col­ors for every geek’s Sharpie fetish.

Bliz­zard Authenticator

I CAN HAZ SECURITY?

Over 11 mil­lion peo­ple play World of War­craft.  Odds are you know at least one of them, and have no idea what to get them for Christ­mas.  The Bliz­zard Authen­ti­ca­tor is a must-have acces­sory for any­one that plays WoW.  It pro­tects their account from key­log­gers, tro­jans, and other mali­cious attacks.  It’s a great gift and for just $6.50, it’s also super inexpensive.

Mole­sk­ine Pocket Journals

Low-tech pro­duc­tiv­ity app!

The “leg­endary note­book used for the past two cen­turies” (if you believe their mar­ket­ing bull), Mole­sk­ine brand note­books are a favorite low-tech vice of writ­ers, artists, and geeks to cer­e­mo­ni­ously com­mit our thoughts and sketches to paper.  Though the full-size note­books are a bit pricey, you can score a pack of 3 cashier pocket Mole­sk­ines for about $8, blank or lined.  These pocket-sized jour­nals are per­fect for keep­ing in your pocket (shocker) to make quick lists or reg­is­ter ran­dom ideas on the fly.

Dice Set

Roll to see if you have a life…

For the D&D nerds, Magic play­ers, and board game geeks on your list, a set of shiny new dice makes for a very thought­ful and use­ful gift.  What’s your geek’s favorite color?  Odds are you can find a cool-looking set of dice to match.  Board Game Cen­tral has a great selec­tion of 6-sided and d20 dice sets all for under $10.

Caf­feine

Energy in a can!

Whether it’s in the form of cof­fee, chai tea, energy drinks, or soda, most of us geeks require an end­less sup­ply of caf­feine to help us through our late night cod­ing projects, marathon gam­ing ses­sions, and the abysmal work day that fol­lows.  Though cases of the really good stuff like Bawls and Jolt are on the pricey side, for less than $10 you can still give your geek a smaller-serving caf­feinated shot in the arm.  How about gift­ing a sam­pler of 20 oz. energy drinks, or a trio of cof­fees or teas?   Also try Pacific Chai, Mon­ster Energy, and there’s always Red Bull.

Comic Books

Mmm…new comic smell!

Comic books have evolved so much over the years, it’s per­haps more appro­pri­ate to think of them as read­able works of art than the hum­ble col­or­ful dis­trac­tions they used to be.  As the qual­ity has gone up, so has the price, but you can still walk into any comic shop and pick up some great new issues with that glo­ri­ous new comic smell for less than $10.  And with so many dif­fer­ent titles to choose from, you’re sure to find some­thing for every­one.  Who knows, you might even get your geek hooked on an awe­some new series.  There’s also manga for the Japanophile on your list.

Thinker Toys

FACT: Play­ing with toys helps you get work done.

Between writ­ing, brain­storm­ing, trou­bleshoot­ing, or fig­ur­ing out why our damn pro­gram isn’t work­ing, geeks need some kind of imme­di­ate stress reliever/creativity spark by our side.  Give your geek some inex­pen­sive “thinker toys” for his or her desk.  Try some Silly Putty, Play Doh, Koosh balls, or per­haps a “thinky Slinky”?  Or go for the clas­sic Rubik’s Cube (though it may cause more stress than it alle­vi­ates).  Any­thing goes, as long as it’s small, mildly enter­tain­ing, and keeps our hands and minds momen­tar­ily busy.

Com­puter Clean­ing Products

Handy for remov­ing yesterday’s lunch from your keyboard.

Geeks love their com­put­ers and gad­gets but it can be a nev­erend­ing bat­tle to keep them clean.  Crumbs in the key­board, fin­ger­prints on the lap­top screen; these are our per­pet­ual annoy­ances.  Which is why any geek can appre­ci­ate a lit­tle help to keep our LCD mon­i­tors and iPhone touch­screens sparkly clean.  Sta­ples sells a nice lit­tle key­board brush for less than $5 and a mini screen cleaner for under $10.

Hope I’ve given you some good ideas for the geeks on your Christ­mas shop­ping list!