Hasta La Gadget!

Dec 31

Five Geeky Things to Do This Holiday Weekend

The orgy of spending that is The Holiday Season begins in the US this weekend. Family, food, gifts, the whole daunting shebang.

Sure, you might enjoy spending the four-day weekend locked up in the house with the in-laws and stuffing yourself with leftovers, but why not escape? Here we give you five suggestions for healthier, cheaper, nerdier and, above all, funner things to do this holiday.

Photo: [177]/Flickr

Get Nerdy in the Kitchen

Face it. You’re going to have to cook a turkey, so why not make it fun? Deep frying is dangerous but gives a crispy skin, a Turducken is, well, it starts with the word "turd", so we’ll skip that, and you can even chop out the breastbone and flatten the thing for the grill (fast and juicy). There are many alternative turkey methods, but the main thing you need to remember is the temperature.

A probe thermometer is cheap, and it’s the only way to know when the bird is done. Turkeys have thin parts, thick parts, flat bits and round bits, so estimating the time you need is wildly inaccurate. An probe plunged carefully into the thickest part of the meat will tell you when the meat is just juicy, but not overdone. When the readout hits 161ºF, pull out the roast and let it rest for 15 minutes and carve. If you have a thermometer with an alarm that can summon you from the den, then that’s just gravy.

Make a Camera

You could buy a new Canon 5D MkII, as we suggested earlier today, and escape the family for a day of shooting. Better still, especially if you have kids, is to make a camera. Yesterday we posted a guide to building a giant camera from an old flatbed scanner, a magnifying glass and a stack of black cardboard. This will keep you from getting bored, keep the kids out of trouble and, best of all, you can escape into the den later to "process the images".

Hold a Garage Sale

All that junk you have accumulated over the last year? Get rid of it. While everybody else is out buying yet more plastic crap on Black Friday, you could clear out the cupboards, make little cash and even meet the neighbors. Don’t underestimate the feeling of wellbeing you’ll have when all the digital detritus has been cleared from your home. I do it roughly once a year and it’s both relaxing and satisfying. Bonus: You’ll make some cash to spend on newer, faster, better gadgets.

Get Out

Theoretically, once everybody has finished rushing about the country in planes, trains and automobiles, the roads on Thursday should be relatively safe and quiet. This is the perfect time to get on your bike or try out the in-line skates that have been sitting in the basement since last Thanksgiving. You’ll work off the post-turkey tryptophan-trance and probably have a lot of fun doing it. Just make sure you don’t drink too much first.

Rip Everything

If you’re the indoor type, perhaps a spot of organization is in order. If you’re a Gadget Lab regular, you may have done this already, but you could spend your spare cycles this weekend by clearing all the plastic disks from your home.

CDs might offer better quality but they’re a pain to use. Better to simply copy everything onto a hard drive and hide the coasters in the basement. Your computer will already have software to do this, but here are a few tips:

First, think about making actual, direct, full sized copies of your CDs. Hard drive space is cheap, and you won’t have to drag the optical disks out when you decide you didn’t encode those MP3s at a high enough bitrate. Once the copying is done, just hook up the disk to your computer, throw the contents into iTunes or Winamp and let it work through the whole lot in one go, turning the music into iPod-friendly, bite-sized MP3s.

DVDs will work, too, but it will take a little longer. Legal concerns aside, the best way to go is Handbrake, a free application for Windows, Mac and Linux that will rip your movies to the size and file format of your choice.

Now you have everything in one place, hopefully ready for the media center Santa is bringing you for Christmas.

Over to you. If you have any more cheap and fun ways to spend the weekend, stick them in the comments.

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