The jury's still out...
Reasons I might or might not be a nerd (or a geek):

When I was 15 I started growing my hair. It was down to my arse by the time I cut it (when I was 18). It was partly my protest against all the skinheads that were around at the time (early-mid 1990s).

I had a Commodore VIC-20 when I was 6. By age 8 I'd learnt to program it. By age 10 I was writing multi-level games, complete with bits of hand-assembled machine code for the time-critical bits.

I've been called a "grammar nazi" (dunno if that counts).

I had a Dolby Pro-Logic surround system in my front room long before anyone else had heard of it.

I owned a hi-fi VHS machine (JVC HR-D725) which pre-dated NICAM stereo. I converted this machine to NICAM using a decoder board salvaged from an old Ferguson TV set. I was about 15-16 when I did this.

I also converted a Ferguson 3V48 hi-fi VCR to NICAM with a decoder salvaged from a scrap Hitachi VCR.

I was writing stuff in 6502 assembler on the BBC Micro when everyone else just wanted to play games on it.

I had a BBC Micro instead of a Spectrum or Amstrad because the BBC had a built-in assembler and more I/O ports. That I made full use of.

When I was 11 I connected two VIC-20s together via their joystick ports and wrote a simple 4-bit communications protocol.

18 months ago I bought a brand new car (Audi A4 Quattro). Before leaving the dealership I got them to remove the standard CD player so I could fit my all-singing all-dancing Sony unit with Bluetooth and iPod dock.

I own (and use) more than one desktop PC.

At least one of my desktop PCs runs *nix (NetBSD in fact).

About 3-4 years ago I dug out my VIC-20 and made myself an XE1541 cable, installed FreeDOS and 64HDD on an old 486 (complete with ISA network card and TCP/IP drivers) and got my VIC-20 talking to my IP-based network.

I wrote a cross-platform development environment for the VIC-20. This consisted of a tokeniser/detokeniser in ARM BBC BASIC on the RISC PC (successor to the Archimedes), a 6502 assembler on 65Tube (an emulated 6502 co-processor running BBC BASIC on an Archimedes) and Samba running on a *nix box. Once a program had been tested and developed in VICE it could then be loaded on the real VIC.

Using the above I wrote a helicopter shoot-em-up game that used an interrupt to rotate the blades of the helicopter as well as moving ripples across areas of water etc. Sadly I never finished it due to time constraints.

My house is fully wired with Cat5. I have a Squeezebox in my kitchen and bathroom with speakers in the ceiling.

I own 3 laptops.

Now, reasons I'm probably not a geek:

I don't have a personal hygiene problem. I take a bath or shower every morning.

I don't wear glasses, contacts etc.

I'm not a virgin. (6 notches and counting... that I'll admit to.)

I look people in the eye when I'm talking to them rather than at my shoes.

I now have a sensible haircut!

I've never in my life played an MMORPG. I have no interest in Final Fantasy. In fact I generally find computer games very boring (except perhaps the Grand Theft Auto series).

I drive way too fast, often for the benefit of some impressionable teenage girl who happens to be sat in my passenger seat at the time.

None of my laptops run Linux. (Or any other *nix.)

Other things that I'm not sure are for or against:

I play the piano. But not often (although I'm not too bad).

I have strange taste in music. 80s pop, country & western, ABBA, dance, trance/techno.

I'm a huge Star Wars fan, and Han shot first. (Only the movies though, I don't collect any of the memorabilia.)

I quite like the Star Trek movies, not really into the series though. And I think Enterprise was complete rubbish.

The Christopher Reeve Superman movies were way better than the new movie and series.

Anything else? Oh, probably...

Length? 8 inches and plenty of girth.
(RabidRodent I'm the person your mother warned you about, Fri 7 Mar 2008, 12:50, 1 reply)

The Christopher Reeve Superman movies were way better than the new movie
Ooh, bit contentious that. Agree that CR WAS the definitive Man of Steel, but whilst the first two were classics of the genre, Superman III, while quite fun, wasn't brilliant and Superman IV really should have been left on the cutting room floor...

Quite enjoyed the latest movie, but agree it lacked something... Much preferred Batman Begins...
( Davros' Granddad a voice of calm reason in a world of spastics., Sun 9 Mar 2008, 17:51, closed)