2009 Geeky Gift Guide

Geeky Christmas Card, available at Zazzle.

It’s no secret that Christmas is over-commercialized and that too many people have lost sight of its real meaning.

It can be hard to hang on to the idea of celebrating the birth of our Lord and Savior in the midst of Christmas craziness. Thankfully, organizations like Advent Conspiracy are out there helping to arrest focus back where it belongs, and many charities like Samaritan’s Purse and Compassion International offer unique gift-giving ideas that truly make a difference, and I highly recommend that you consider these kinds of gifts this year!

While caring for “the least of these” should always be a top priority as Christians, we also still enjoy taking the opportunity at Christmastime to celebrate God’s ultimate gift of love to us by sharing gifts of love with friends and family. Although it’s important to make sure that gift-giving doesn’t get out of control or become the entire focus of the holiday, it’s a tradition that we at Faith & Geekery enjoy and embrace.

With that in mind, we present our 2009 Geeky Gift Guide. These ten items may just help you locate that special something for the geek in your life!

Books

The Art of Tim Burton
The films of Tim Burton are well known for their dark imagination and unique visual style. Many tell beautiful stories that take bizarre, roundabout paths to heartwarming finales, others are grandiose tales of epic adventure, and some are simply disturbing and should maybe be left alone. Whatever the case, it’s never hard to tell when you’re watching one of his movies.

This 434-page mega-volume from Steele Publishing collects for the first time more than 1000 illustrations, all by Tim Burton, including conceptual art from all of his films as well as personal illustrations and designs. As it explores the various themes and ideas that inspire and fascinate Burton, many of his friends and frequent collaborators offer stories and insights about the man and his work. Available in both a standard edition ($69.99) and deluxe hardcover edition (which comes hand-signed with a lithograph and a cloth slipcover for $299.99), The Art of Tim Burton is in stores only in the UK, but can be ordered online from anywhere else.

The Geek Atlas: 128 Places Where Science and Technology Come Alive
If you’re looking to plan the world’s geekiest vacation, this is your guide. The Geek Atlas by John Graham-Cumming lists 128 different places significant in the world of science, mathematics, and technology. Whether you’re interested in checking out the site of the world’s first atomic bomb explosion in New Mexico or the world’s largest science museum in Munich, this book will help you chart your course.

Each of the 128 chapters in The Geek Atlas offers information about the importance of a particular location as well as practical details for the tourist interested in scheduling a visit. You can find out more at the book’s website or catch it at Amazon.

The Sherlock Holmes Handbook: The Methods and Mysteries of the World’s Greatest Detective
The most renowned sleuth in history is also one of literature’s biggest geeks. Decades before Batman, Sherlock Holmes was solving baffling crimes using science, logic, intensely detail-oriented observations, and an encyclopedic knowledge of what to other people was trivial information. With a new movie in theaters this holiday season, interest in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Victorian private eye is high, and there’s no better time to brush up on your own sleuthing skills.

The Sherlock Holmes Handbook by Ransom Riggs covers a variety of useful topics from deductive reasoning to the all important lesson in surviving a plunge over a waterfall. The book’s publisher, Quirk Books, offers several samples from the book on their website, including “How to Disguise Yourself” and “How to Outwit a Criminal Mastermind.” The Sherlock Holmes Handbook is also available from Amazon.

Toys & Gadgets

Rechargeable USB Batteries
With the majority of toys today (for kids of all ages) running on portable power of some kind, it seems that no modern Christmas is complete without a 1:00 AM run to the corner gas station for batteries on Christmas Eve. Since they’re a needed item anyway, why not skip that trip and slip some rechargeables into a stocking?

While many people might yawn at the thought of a pack of AA’s under the tree, any self-respecting geek would love to find these on Christmas morning. These rechargeable batteries feature a hidden USB plug that will allow you to charge the batteries in any standard USB port. Not only are they cool, they’re “green!” A pack of two USBCELL batteries runs about $20, and there are more sizes and varieties in the works.

Tauntaun Sleeping Bag
It’s an iconic scene from a classic movie: in Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back, Han Solo rescues his buddy Luke Skywalker from a horrible freezing death on the icy wastes of Hoth by using Luke’s lightsaber to slice open a deceased Tauntaun, then stashing Luke inside the beast to keep him warm while Han builds a shelter.

Well, in what started as an April Fool’s Day prank at ThinkGeek.com, an imaginary product drew such demand that the website actually put it into production. Now, for $99.99, you can make like Luke and spend the night inside your very own Tauntaun sleeping bag. This fully licensed Lucasfilm collectible sports a Tauntaun head for a pillow (as well as attached arms, legs, and tail) and a lightsaber zipper that, when pulled, opens the bag to reveal a “gutsy” inner fabric pattern. One size fits all.

BBQ Sword
If there’s anyone among us who hasn’t staged a mock swordfight around the campfire with a marshmallow roasting stick, leave now — and turn in your geek card as you go. For those still reading this, here’s your best excuse yet for some impromptu outdoor swashbuckling.

Half meat fork, half sabre, this fireside implement looks like the sort of thing Aramis might have used to dispatch a particularly ornery bratwurst. (Just remember, kids, it’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye, so don’t do anything stupid.) The BBQ sword comes with a musketeer mask and is available from a variety of online retailers, including Amazon.

If you’re interested in the BBQ sword, you may also want to check out the Samurai umbrella!

Household

Social Media Pillows
Social media is about connecting and sharing. While today people are doing that online through innovative platforms and applications, the living room is still the original place to connect with friends and family. There’s no reason the two have to remain separate, though.

Take your passion for social media into your decorating scheme with these throw pillows from Craftsquatch’s Etsy shop. Each pillow is approximately 12″ square and features well-known web logos. Twitter, Facebook, Gmail, MySpace, RSS, and other sharing services are represented, and are made to order in 2-6 weeks for $19.99 plus shipping. Craftsquatch also offers a range of pillows made to look like Adobe application logos or anonymous avatar images, too.

Aperture Laboratories Mug
Sing with me: “Aperture Science…we do what we must because we can…” The fictional lab from Valve’s hit game Portal has opened to the public its stock of Aperture Laboratories mugs so that you can demonstrate to all your coworkers that you have “A Trusted Friend In Science.”

The Valve Store’s description for the mug says that it is “engineered to reduce conductive thermal transfers of hot, tasty liquids to ambient room temperature, thus helping to maintain an optimal sipping environment for the duration of your scheduled refreshment period.” (Psychopathic sentient computer system not included.)

Valve has some other terrifically geeky items in their store, such as your very own Portal weighted companion cube or Half-Life 2 plush headcrab!

Clothing

Broken Image Necklace
Don’t you just hate it when your jewelry fails to load? I mean, other than that little glitch, this is a classy little number. We may never know what the image on the necklace was originally supposed to be (somebody seems to have left the Alt attribute blank), but at least the broken image graphic is pretty.

Interactive T-Shirts
Another set of items from ThinkGeek.com, these babies are more than just your average screen-print-on-cotton. Featuring wiring, lights, and audio, each shirt performs a function that can enhance your daily life, although sometimes in more useful ways than others. There’s the Wi-Fi Detector shirt, with a logo that lights up to varying degrees depending on the available wi-fi signal strength nearby, as well as the T-Qualizer, a shirt that sports an audio equalizer graphic that moves to the music in the room. Wannabe musicians will have to choose between the Electronic Rock Guitar shirt and the Electronic Drum Kit shirt, each of which features an embedded fully-playable digital instrument.

My personal favorite, though, is the Personal Soundtrack shirt. This tee comes with a speaker velcroed into the shirt (removable so the garment can be washed) and a programmable music system so that you can always have the right background music for whatever is happening in your life. This shirt was another ThinkGeek April Fool’s joke that was too good not to bring into reality. While each of these shirts runs between $20 and $40, some geeks might find them worth the price.

There are plenty of other geeky gift ideas out there, so if we missed your favorite, leave a comment and let us know!