Wil Wheaton's Geek In Review: A Holiday Gift Guide for Geeks

There are just seventeen shopping days left until Christmas, and the holidays are now officially up in our shit like a drunken co-worker at the office Christmas party. Shopping at this time of year can be difficult at best, and shopping for geeks can be downright miserable. We speak a language not a lot of people understand, enjoy things that seem weird to most normal people, and the places you'd go to shop for us can be a little . . . scary.

So, as a public service, I present Wil's First Annual Holiday Gift Guide for Geeks, featuring things you can buy from the comfort and saftey of your own home, right off the Internet.

Toys for Boys (or, uh, girls.)
Electronic project kits and Chemistry sets ($50 - $150) are time-tested, always fun, and perfect for younger geeks, but the Antworks Ant Farm ($30) takes the classic Uncle Milton's toy we all grew up with, and moves it into the 21st century. Instead of sand, your ants dig tunnels through a translucent, edible gel, leaving incredibly cool three dimensional tunnels to look at. Think Geek sells theirs with a blue LED array attached to the bottom, so the whole thing lights up with a soft blue glow that makes your room look like a scene from The Abyss.

Remember when Star Wars LEGOs were all the rage, and then the new movies came out and your geek melted them all into a ball of betrayal that he mailed to George Lucas? This year, you could give him Batman LEGOs and let him build his own Arkham Asylum, Batcave, or Batmobile. (Prices vary, average is around $80.) Of course, if your geek is seriously hardcore, you can earn major points with some Mindstorms ($250). Just don't be surprised when a freaky little robot wakes up and wanders around the bathroom while you're trying to put on your make-up.

If you're looking for something that could be practical at work, how about a working trebuchet model ($34.95) or a binary LED clock ($24.95)? They should both keep nosy co-workers away when you have a case of the Mondays, though for different reasons.

Gifts for Gamers
Lots of parents will try to buy their kids' love with the Wii, the PS3 and the Xbox 360 this season, but how about digging a little deeper for your geek, and getting them some classic 80s video games? Atari geeks can play with the Flashback 2 ($19.99), or the impractical but oh-so-cool Atari joystick and paddle controller keychains ($9.99-$14.99.) If you're shopping for an arcade nerd, and you have an Xbox or PS2, one of the classic collections from Midway or Namco could be in order ($20-$50), but if you really want to recreate that classic gaming experience, and you have $3000 sitting around, your gaming geek will go apeshit over the X-Arcade MAME Cabinet system, which comes with 190 classic games. With a little help from the googles, you can easily expand it to a slightly larger library (like just about every game ever released.) Get a copy of Arcade Ambience, fire up some Journey, and get ready to share a Big Gulp with the most grateful geek in the world . . . provided you can tear him away from Tempest.

Ohh shiny!
Geek Tags are little dog tag-shaped necklaces and keychains, emblazoned with different geeky phrases, like "The geek shall inherit the Earth" and "I *heart* Elves." They also make a tag with a d20 on it (my personal favorite) and some that simply say "geek" "gamer" or "31337." These are fantastic stocking stuffers, or a way to tell your geek, "I accept you for who you are, so here is some geeky jewelry. Now make with the diamonds already." ($20) If you get one of these, and you're not going to make with the diamonds, your geek girl may like a pair of microchip earrings ($25) to go with her "I *heart* my geek" T-shirt ($17.99).

It's more fun when you do it together.
If you'd like to encourage your geek to get out of the house from time to time, your gift could be an activity for you to do together. My personal favorite is Geocaching, the perfect marriage of technology and exercise. It's a treasure hunt, where you use a GPS receiver to find hidden "caches" all over the world. Handheld GPS receivers can be purchased from Garmin or Magellan for under $100. A guide to purchasing one can be found at the official Geocaching website, which has extensive forums and one of the most welcoming online communities I've ever encountered. Geocaching is also a good way to explore areas around your home that you never knew existed. For example, I've lived within ten miles of the Echo Mountain Hotel ruins for my entire life, and I didn't even know they existed until I went looking for a Geocache nearby two years ago. Now it's a regular hike for me and my family.

If your geek likes to explore, but isn't too keen on that whole "walking around" thing, astronomy may just be perfect for you both. It's one of the only hobbies that naturally appeals to all kinds of geeks, but is also interesting and accessible to most normal people, too. Depending on your budget, you can invest as much as several thousand dollars on various telescopes, and accessories, or you can spend significantly less on a book like the Rough Guide to the Universe, or Peterson's Guide to the Stars and Planets, and take a trip through the heavens with an inexpensive pair of binoculars, or just your eyes. I can say from personal experience that there is nothing quite like looking through even a small telescope and seeing the rings of Saturn, the Great Red Spot on Jupiter, or craters on the moon so bright and clear you feel like you can reach out and touch them. And the first time someone sees a distant galaxy or nebula with their own eyes? It's truly magical, and with the right person, it can even be romantic. In fact, if you're with the right person and it isn't romantic, you're probably doing something wrong. And if you're doing it right, you may even find yourselves needing a Level 1 Human crawler as a result of your night under the Milky Way.

Uhh . . . you're not helping me.
If you're still stuck, WIRED has a numbingly comprehensive review of 300 gadgets and tech toys to look at. If you can't find something there (or just don't want to wade through 300 different product reviews) you really can't go wrong with just about anything from Think Geek, the original one-stop shop for things that make 90% of the population scratch their heads, while the remaining 10% of us silently laugh at them on yet another dateless Saturday night. Jinx is also a good place to look for T-shirts that are geared slightly younger, and toward gaming culture, and X-treme Geek, while crossing over with Think Geek quite frequently, also has a few unique toys and gadgets, as well as some things that are just plain silly. Books from Penny Arcade, Userfriendly, Dork Tower, Joy of Tech, or PvP will also make most geeks jump up and shout "LEVEL!" when they open them.

Of course, if you ladies out there want to completely reject the notion of materialism and consumer culture, and instead dress up for your geek in the Princess Leia Slave Girl outfit, that's also about as good a gift as you can ever give him. Trust me.

Wil Wheaton sincerely hopes that, whatever your holiday of choice is, and however you choose to celebrate it, that it's a good one, spent with people you love, or at least don't want to strangle.

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