If you stop and think about it, the progress we’ve made in technology over the last 20 years or so has been staggering. It really wasn’t that long ago that we were all using landline phones playing Atari games. Maybe things have moved a little too fast and you miss the days when you actually wrote things down and could hang up on a telemarketer with authority thanks to a thick rotary receiver. If so, the following gadgets might make you feel a little nostalgic.
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The summer is almost over, and that means heading back to school. Actually, after a long, hot summer I was almost looking forward to the new school year (a feeling that completely evaporated about a week in). Part of the fun was having new clothes and a bag full of new supplies. If I had some of the stuff on this list back then, I would have been even more excited — maybe for two whole weeks.
It’s been far too long since I’ve played a tabletop roleplaying game. I miss Saturday nights spent with friends around a crowded table overflowing with caffeinated drinks, Chipotle burritos, and some noxious smelling but delicious chips. The food and drinks were stuffed in between dice, character sheets, pencils, graph paper, and the single calculator that everyone shared. Games would last until the early hours of the next morning, and occasionally I’d let my character suffer an injury so I could crawl into the corner and go to sleep. It was a singular yet familiar environment.
Our friends at Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab have developed a RPG series devoted to gaming night. They are known for blending perfume oils with exacting precision. They take their time and experiment. The end result is bigger than perfume oil—it’s experiences. It’s places. It’s RPG characters. Each person who rubs a BPAL oil into his or her skin will smell something different. That’s partially because of body chemistry and mostly because perfume oils shouldn’t be like a McDonald’s hamburger. They shouldn’t be the same to everyone, and the team at BPAL utilize their skills to customize the experience.
Read more on Fashionably Geek…
Easter: A religious holiday that we celebrate by saying a giant rabbit breaks into our homes, hides our eggs and leaves us chocolate versions of himself. It doesn’t make a lot of sense when you think about it, but that’s part of the fun. That said, Easter can get weirder — maybe even a little scary — if you use any of the gadgets featured here.
You know your kid is going to grow up to be a nerd when their best childhood friend is a plush calculator that they unimaginatively titled “Mr. Math.”
Product page ($20 via Make)
We reviewed ‘em, and now we’re passing the savings on to you. But beware, the items in PrankPlace’s Box of Doom are not for the faint-hearted. Can you survive the terror of the Russian roulette balloon gun, the unholy stench of the chocolate calculator and the shame of the virgin, dickdar and gaydar keychain detectors?
If you think you are up to the challenge, send an email to contests@nerdapproved.com with “Bring on the box of doom” in the subject line. If social media is your thing, you could become a fan of the Nerd Approved Facebook page and comment in the contest thread. You could also simply tweet this post and automatically enter. The final day to enter is Monday, March 8th. A winner will be chosen at random and notified the following day. Good luck!
Much like a doily, there isn’t much need for a Wakara cloth calculator in the modern age. However, they are certainly more colorful than a doily if you insist on choosing one over the far more practical calculators we can find in our phones and computers these days.
Here are the top ten Nerd Approved Gadgets for the week of January 25th-31st, 2010:
Contest Reminder: Today is the final day to win Garbage Pail Kids wall and laptop graphics.
Feature: 10 ultimate weapons for nerd self-defense.
Certificate of Virginity: Gives you a fake fresh start.
The Getty Lamp: Looks like a portal into another dimension.
Exhaust Chopsticks: Shift Chinese food into overdrive.
No matter how much you try and dress it up like a game, A calculator is still a calculator and math is still math. Of course, I still add and subtract with my fingers so I could only play 2-player games on something like this and let my buddy do all the work.
(Freeman Games Flickr via Tiny Cartridge via The Daily What)
