Geek 2 Caner 2 Gives a hoot.
I was such a geek that I used to be able to wander into any store selling the BBC Model A/B and with a few presses of some keys could lock up the
pooter and freeze the display, requiring a power down and reboot, at will, much to the frustration of the spackers charged with flogging the beebs.

That was 20+ years ago and since then I've been such a caner I have A/ forgot which keys and B/ learned not to give a fuck about stuff like that.

I bet there's some lurking spod who can remember the correct key sequence.

Clock's a ticking.........
(sham-il-eer-tak-tak noes better but still can't give a fuck at, Sun 9 Mar 2008, 22:54, Reply)

Bnupypmo hud yc hanto yc Gmehkuh un Pehyno
Pid ur famm...
( Chilli Heatwave ,shit, Sun 9 Mar 2008, 22:53, Reply)

I've been
read out on Radio 4

published in the Guardian's letter section.

Political nerd? yes.
( Matoosh would rather like a biscuit, Sun 9 Mar 2008, 22:43, 1 reply)

%53%6F%6D%65%20%6F%66%20%74%68%65%73%65%20%61%72%65%20%72%65%61%6C%6C%79%20%66%75%6E%6E%79%2E%00
111146040171157165040143141156040162145141144040164150151163040143154151143153040157156040111040154151153145040164150151163056

0100001101101000011001010110010101110010011100110010000001100111011101010111100101110011
( diffy maybs, Sun 9 Mar 2008, 22:14, 1 reply)

I am reading this qotw using a guitar hero controller to scroll up and down

also i am wearing a guitar hero tshirt


I may need help
(Zrya Loves the new presidents album > 80% of kittens, Sun 9 Mar 2008, 22:03, 2 replies)

heroes
just watched all 11 of series 2 on dvd back to back for the second time this weekend. I wish it was real ..........
( SteveFrench Cardio is for homo's. do you even lift bro?, Sun 9 Mar 2008, 20:51, Reply)

A History of Nerdiness
A life of nerdiness, punctuated by wonderful activities such as:

- Avid live role-playing fanatic in my teens, involving running around Chislehurst caves with a foam sword yelling "double, double" as you hit "monsters". Got my Scout up to eighth level.

- Correspondingly liked to be referred to as "Garthal the Shadow" in real life for a good number of years.

- Heavily into bus spotting for three or fours years. Big hightlight was seeing Routemaster 1 (RM1) at the London Transport museum. Also travelled on V1 (first Volvo bus) in Roehampton - awesome.

- Taking my girlfriend (yes I did have one) to see Rocky 4 three times.

- Into all role playing games including D&D (usually playing half orc assassins), Runequest (Humakti warriors), Paranioa, Call of Cthulhu, Toon, and Stormbringer. Car Wars and Warhammer too.

- Subscriber to multiple play by mail RPGs including Troll's Bottom.

- Did a degree in philosophy (vice president of the Philosophy Society) and became an accountant when I left.

- As a junior auditor, once spent two weeks adding up a six thousand page policy holder listing..and enjoyed it. (the total was right in the end as it happens - but always worth spending 80 hours to check).

- Came up with a life justifying audit adjustment when auditing the UK subsidiary of a major US software company (the big one) that was material at a USA consolidation level !! It related to an erroneous provision for government stamp duty on a huge property transaction in the Winnersh Triangle.

- Used to spend all day Saturday hogging the display Spectrum at Boots to programme in home made adventure games.

- Spent early days of working life still saying "Si Baroni" until my audit manager told me it was unprofessional to use phrases from Dangermouse in front of important clients.

- Also used to take pride in educating colleagues on the fact that tea is an infusion, whilst coffee is clearly a suspension.

- At the age of 36, recently purchased the entire Dragonlance Chronicles again, and relived happy times rereading them all....twice.

- Oh yes...and my mum cut my hair till I was 15. She wasn't a hairdresser but liked the 70's look - hence I sported a mega mullet basin through to the late eighties.

- In the sixth form, invented "Curse Snooker". One of the most popular curses other people played to avoid was "You will get a blue, Marks & Spencers, leather jacket like Mandrill's for Christmas".

- At parties, used to phone up random people called Smith asking whether they were aware of the high probability that their ancestors were metal workers (hilarious).

I am still proud of all these activities and achievements. To top it off, I am now making myself laugh.
(Mandrill, Sun 9 Mar 2008, 20:24, 3 replies)

Quite Nerdy....
I am a grammar and spelling Nazi. I can't help it. If I see a sign in town that has a comma or an apostrophe in an incorrect place, I have an intense and immediate desire to get out a red pen and circle it.

It could be worse, though. How, you say?

Well, I have a friend who looks through every book she reads for errors. When she finds them, she makes a note of it and files it away to write to the publisher later.
(YayLady is cold, Sun 9 Mar 2008, 20:00, 9 replies)

i once
hosted a lan party for wintereenmas
( Reme Philips laid an epic dump on, Sun 9 Mar 2008, 19:22, 1 reply)

Ultimate nerd factor?
I stumbled on this website (no, honestly I did) some time ago. It's essentially a history of every Dalek prop ever built, which bits of which casing ended up in which shows and how you can identify them because of significant little dents / breakages / misalignment of 'balls'.. (quiet at the back, or you'll get detention).

Now, I am a self confessed Dalek nut, but, if I ever have this amount of time on my hands, please point a gun at me and force me to get a life - go to the pub, gym, even lock myself in the bathroom and masturbate furiously.

Don't say I didn't warn you...

www.dalek6388.co.uk/
( Davros' Granddad a voice of calm reason in a world of spastics., Sun 9 Mar 2008, 19:11, 6 replies)

Are you a nerd in mix tapes QOTW shocker!
Spooling back a couple of weeks to the mix tapes question has prompted me to recall something from my childhood that fits the bill nicely here.

I used to have 'different' tastes in music when I was a child. When I started getting heavily into my science fiction obsessed phase, I used to really enjoy some of the soundtracks and theme tunes to various movies and TV shows. And so, armed with one of those little tape recorders with a built in microphone, I'd record the themes from programmes. I once recorded a number of Doctor Who's this way as well, so I could listen to them in bed...

Obviously this could be problematic when your younger brother farted, or the phone went. It became a bit easier when we got a video recorder. It also became easier still when I got my first twin deck tape player/recorder, and armed with numerous tapes of movie soundtracks, I'd start splicing my own compilation tapes together featuring such gems as themes from Star Wars, Superman, Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, V, Doctor Who (and related musical scores from said productions). Plus, often interspersing the musical stuff with snippets of dialogue / whole scenes from films and TV for added effect (and this, many years before Quentin Tarantino and the like started splicing in dialogue on their own movie soundtracks - I was so ahead of my time, when I think back).

Each finished tape would then be lovingly adorned in a specially created cover with an appropriate design drawn on, which I'd cut from card using very precise measurements, a scalpel and a metal ruler...

I listened to this sort of stuff for a good 3 or 4 years, before I discovered 'real' music. But even then, would still get the tapes out for a listen every now and again...

Even my mum considered me 'odd'.

*EDIT* I just remembered that I used to make my own sleeve notes for each tape, crediting composer, year, music publishing company where applicable… And yet, I’ve still managed to get off with a girl. Somebody up there must like me…
( Davros' Granddad a voice of calm reason in a world of spastics., Sun 9 Mar 2008, 18:39, 5 replies)

Now this is geeky....
Annal nadrach!
Uthvas bethad!
Doch-il dienvey!
(brumguvnor www.twitter.com/brumguvnor, Sun 9 Mar 2008, 18:19, 5 replies)

Grammar/Spelling

I once corrected a prominent member of parliament on the spelling and sentence construction in the signature of their email autoreply.
(randomstupidname would really like this signature field to be bigge, Sun 9 Mar 2008, 17:19, 6 replies)

nerdiness
Hi all if i ever wire anything electrical related i ALWAYS leave the earth wire a bit longer. Why? Because nerds live longer.(lenght joke an'all. Heh!)
(swampi thought of this, Sun 9 Mar 2008, 17:04, 2 replies)

This might be a warning sign.
Given the choice between buying lager and the latest Fortean Times the Ft wins every time.
Come to think of it, given the choice between buying food and the Fortean Times the Ft still tends to win.
(Big D, Sun 9 Mar 2008, 16:58, 2 replies)

ctrl alt del
I've read through the webcomic ctrl alt del from beginning to end twice, started again at some point. I'm not sure that's me being nerdy more me just being a loser.

I also went to 3 of the Harry Potter midnight openings.

OH and I get excited at 13:37.
(lei, Sun 9 Mar 2008, 16:09, Reply)

The word "Nerd" seems
to come from a 1950's book, If I ran the Zoo, by Dr. Theodore Seuss Geisel in which one of the characters is called a Nerd. Also probably an alteration of 1940s slang nert "stupid or crazy person," itself an alteration of nut.

I was led to believe the term was an anagram for "Not Equipped for Rigid Disipline." That one told to me by a mercenary from the jungles of El Salvador.

Anyway, in a Skypecast about "String theory and God" several weeks ago, I got into an argument about the use of the word Theory. I said he misused it, he called me a high school dropout.

Bastard.
( CapnChkn I would rather be flying elephants., Sun 9 Mar 2008, 15:35, 5 replies)

Maths A level
I fucked it up because I spent the whole time programming games into my three colour graphic calculator.
( CowJam, Sun 9 Mar 2008, 15:10, 1 reply)

Rewriting Star Wars
I was so disappointed about Star Wars Episode I that I wrote a 5,000 word critique and a further 7,000 word outline for how the script could be improved with a minimum of time spent on re-shoots, hoping beyond hope that George Lucas would pay attention and drop $50-million of his own money in order to improve it.
What's worse, I was not 13, I was 30.
In a recent article he pointed out that fans who don't like the films write their own and that Episode I made the most money.
I felt betrayed and ashamed.
(TommyShanks, Sun 9 Mar 2008, 14:46, 5 replies)

airsoft
It's manly nerdiness.

It's a sport, God forbid you question that, and it costs lots of money.

Examples of it's nerdery:

I paid £150+ for a metal kit for my M16A2 to convert it into an XM16E1. Difference? A single feature. The brass deflector.

People with M4 variants. It's never an M4. It's an M4 CQBR with a collapsible stock. Or an M4A1 converted into an M16 with a shorter barrel.

And what's worst is now i watch films... and watch the guns. Check the period of the weapon to make sure it's in check (i.e. are they using M4s in the 'Nam flick on the TV? *DING* Wrong! They are, but not meant to be!), check it's loaded or unloaded... and the worst part of all:

Check the size of the magazine, and then make sure they don't fire more than the allotted bullets in said magazine.

Airsoft has damaged me somewhat, and i am now a gun nerd. I'm sure it's a contradiction and that i may collapse the universe as we know it.
(Schumann makes awesome quiches., Sun 9 Mar 2008, 13:48, 6 replies)

Dirty geeks
I once played a game of strip Magic: The Gathering. Oh, the shame.

My boyfriend is an enormous nerd/geek (D & D, other roleplaying games, MUDs, stupid number of computers, loves physics and other boring things), yet every time I make fun of him for it, he simply yells "Strip Magic!" and I'm silenced.

I can kind of see his point, sadly.
(BlackArmadillo Avoided writing that article on, Sun 9 Mar 2008, 13:40, Reply)

Nerds
While I have no trouble talking to Women, I am mildly nerdy.

1) I program in C++. Usually odd little utilities I need at work. Sometimes I program drunk,in which case I usually produce code that is efficient, but almost impossible for humans to read.

2) I am proud of the fact that when I needed a utility to create 2,800 accounts on a server, by using my own method, rather than the Microsoft approved method, I was able to do it in 3.5 minutes, rather than 12 hour. Sadly,my method crashed the server everytime it was run (requiring a hard reboot), so was a fairly effective DOS attack.

3) I know what a Denial Of Service (DOS) attack is.
(Ok, I'll get me coat, Sun 9 Mar 2008, 13:36, Reply)

I once got laid
because I could play Tom Lehrer songs on my guitar.

I may be the only man in the world who can make that claim.

EDITED FOR ADDED GEEKINESS: www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzVSXEu0bqI

Yes, I laughed at his joke about the word "minimum".
( The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Sun 9 Mar 2008, 13:34, 5 replies)

Dictionary
I bought a big fat dictionary from WHSmiths and when I flicked through it, I noticed that at the top of each page, paired together were the first and last entry on that page.

revisory - rheumatic, spaghetti - spare...

you get the idea.

Anyway, I spent a good couple of hours going through many of them as a lot of them could be double entendres and may result in a 'vicar'. (http://www.owstwick.org/owbase/ow.asp?Vicar).
Favourites include:
strumpet - stuffing
squat - squirt
off-putting - oily
nerd - neurosis (one for the QOTW)
fuck off - full moon (one for the werewolves).
( sandettie light vessel automatic New Twitter - @bollocksreally, Sun 9 Mar 2008, 12:58, 6 replies)

Windows
I had a trial of Win Server 2003 so I installed it on a spare 40Gb drive I had floating about.
But then my main drive went pop so I needed the spare drive to put XP on. But before I did, I spent the rest of the day installing drivers and running Windows Update until it was fully up to date. Then formatted it and installed XP again.
( sandettie light vessel automatic New Twitter - @bollocksreally, Sun 9 Mar 2008, 12:34, Reply)

They fuck you up, your mum and dad...
For my 17th birthday, my mum realised she didn't have enough candles. Rather than just put one symbolic one on the cake, she put, in a line, one candle, three empty candle holders, and one candle.

Binary birthday cake.

There was never any hope for me.

Oh, and I wish that iTunes was compatible with Excel so I could analyse my listening habits in more detail.

*pop*
(miffytherabbit, Sun 9 Mar 2008, 12:16, 2 replies)

top gear
I'm not sure if this counts but nevermind. I recently bought myself a top gear "I am the Stig" t shirt

IT'S THE BEST THING EVER.
(lei, Sun 9 Mar 2008, 12:05, 4 replies)