growing up geek
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Engadget Distro Issue 10: It's alive! And ready for download
They're creepy, they're kooky, they're your favorite Frankengadgets and they've invaded the latest issue of Engadget Distro. But fear not, this edition of our fine weekly isn't all about chopping and screwing the devices you love, we've got plenty of other real-life gadgets on hand as well. See that tiny silver sliver on the cover? That's ASUS' Zenbook UX31, perhaps the most viable candidate for the Ultrabook throne. It may not be as thin and light, but we're also bringing you a review of Dell's lightweight XPS 14z, an ergonomically sound laptop with a sizable asking price. On the mobile front, Myriam Joire says hello and goodbye to Nokia's N9 MeeGo phone and Zach Honig gets his hands on its brother from another operating system, the Lumia 800. Nokia's claiming its latest is the "first real Windows Phone," but Sharif Sakr's review of the HTC Titan might just prove otherwise. We'll also bring you a look into Tech News Today host Iyaz Akhtar's geeky upbringing, our latest installation of In Real Life and an exclusive comic from Ed Piskor. So what are you waiting for? Hop on that iPad or hit the PDF download link below, and soak up all that Distro goodness. Distro Issue 10 PDF Distro on the iTunes App Store Like Distro on Facebook Follow Distro on Twitter
Growing Up Geek: Iyaz Akhtar
Welcome to Growing Up Geek, an ongoing feature where we take a look back at our youth and tell stories of growing up to be the nerds that we are. Today, we have a special guest: Iyaz Akhtar, current associate producer and host of Tech News Today on TWiT.tv. My childhood home had a lot of electronics around because my Dad was a bit of a gadget guy. Every now and then, we'd go to a small electronics shop where my dad would negotiate prices and extras since he apparently knew the owners. If we bought a portable game system, we'd always get extra batteries for free.
Growing Up Geek: Terrence O'Brien
Welcome to Growing Up Geek, an ongoing feature where we take a look back at our youth and tell stories of growing up to be the nerds that we are. Today, we have our very own Associate Editor, Terrence O'Brien. In case you hadn't guessed, that's my father up there with a tiny me cradled in his arms. He's OG -- original geek -- and a defier of easy categorization that clearly explains how I ended up as the son of a gun I am today. In fact, without an understanding of where he came from and who he is, much of what would fill a completely self-centered Growing Up Geek simply wouldn't make sense. So, that's where we'll start the story, with a quick look at the man who, for better or worse, made me the nerd I am today.
Growing Up Geek: Jesse Hicks
Welcome to Growing Up Geek, an ongoing feature where we take a look back at our youth and tell stories of growing up to be the nerds that we are. Today we have our very own Contributing Editor, Jesse Hicks. I've never been one for nostalgia, but if I had to choose a Proustian element from my geeky childhood -- a singular sense-memory that evokes a whole constellation of related feelings -- I'd pick the eerie keening of a 28.8 modem. That high, quavering sound, for me, conjurs up the earliest days of my geekdom, when computers were slow, landlines were king and the internet was young. I was twelve when my family got our first computer: a 486DX that first appeared without a hard drive. My mom had found a great deal at a computer show...or so it had seemed. That missing 120MB hard drive, as you may have guessed, severely limited functionality. But once that problem was remedied, I was off and running with DOS and XTree, happily deleting essential system files. The learning process had begun.
Growing Up Geek: Ben Drawbaugh
Welcome to Growing Up Geek, an ongoing feature where we take a look back at our youth and tell stories of growing up to be the nerds that we are. Today, we have our very own Contributing HD Editor, Ben Drawbaugh. Unlike many adults I knew growing up, I don't think being a kid is easy. Maybe it is for some, but growing up geek in the small hick town of Clewiston, Florida means you learn you're a geek the hard way. This story of struggle turned out great, though, and now I wear that geek badge proudly as it's no doubt the secret to my success in almost every facet of my life.
Growing Up Geek: Tom Merritt
Welcome to Growing Up Geek, an ongoing feature where we take a look back at our youth and tell stories of growing up to be the nerds that we are. Today, we have a special guest: journalist and broadcaster Tom Merritt, current host of Tech News Today on TWiT.tv. I always hesitate to apply the term geek to myself. To me it's an honorific. Someone with super mad skills or knowledge deserves the term, and the superior of all those who deserve it is the alpha geek. But times being what they are geek has become a term of currency. Before I let this devolve into a debate about the difference between geek and nerd, let's move on to the evidence. You, dear reader can decide for yourself where on the geek scale I belong.
Growing Up Geek: Zachary Lutz
Welcome to Growing Up Geek, an ongoing feature where we take a look back at our youth and tell stories of growing up to be the nerds that we are. Today, we have our very own Contributing Mobile Editor, Zachary Lutz. Perhaps it requires a special breed to proudly wear the label of "geek." No, I'm not talking about circus performers that bite heads off chickens (check the original meaning of the word), but about people like you and me, the folks who pursue their interests to a fantastic degree. It doesn't matter whether your passion is knitting, fishing or kayaking; if you're a curious individual who's always thirsting to learn more, there's a good chance we'll get along. For me, my pigeonhole just so happens to be computers -- and, more recently, mobile technology. Sure, you could blame it on way too many hours in front of the screen, but as a certain self-empowered pop star might say, I'd like to think I was born this way.
Growing Up Geek: Billy Steele
Welcome to Growing Up Geek, an ongoing feature where we take a look back at our youth and tell stories of growing up to be the nerds that we are. Today, we have our very own Contributing Editor, Billy Steele. See that dapper young fellow right there? You'd never think someone dressed that goofily as a kid would grow up to be a tech blogger, now would you? It's true -- and I never thought so either -- but, as I would come to find out, my unorthodox childhood would help shape my nerd sensibilities in more ways than one. It all starts with the fact that I was raised by my grandparents, which was awesome, but usually meant that I was at least a year behind on all the popular gadgetry. This also meant that I was forced to hold on to things a bit longer, so while my friends were sportin' the N64, I was still rockin' Contra on the NES (no shame). Let me take a step back for a moment. My first exposure to technology of any substance was a high-mileage Atari at my mom's place. She had an entire library of games, but the only two that I cared about were Frogger and Grand Prix. A couple of years later, when I obtained that coveted O.G. Nintendo, I survived on a constant diet of Excitebike, Bases Loaded and Tecmo Super Bowl. After playing until I couldn't see straight -- on several occasions as an elementary lad -- I was able to string together a handful of undefeated seasons with America's team the Dallas Cowboys. I've now taken on the plight of a Panthers' fan, but I digress.
Growing Up Geek: Kevin Wong
Welcome to Growing Up Geek, an ongoing feature where we take a look back at our youth and tell stories of growing up to be the nerds that we are. Today, we have our very own Contributing Editor, Kevin Wong. Okay, so let's get the pink pencil elephant out of the room first. Yes, that is a Superman t-shirt and yes, I thought I could fly -- with some help from my pops, of course. Back then I wasn't aware that physics had laws, and to be honest, all I thought holding me flat was my love for robots. What I did know was that Transformers were are awesome, and that ice cream was a perfect supplement for vegetables.
Growing Up Geek: Joseph Volpe
Welcome to Growing Up Geek, an ongoing feature where we take a look back at our youth and tell stories of growing up to be the nerds that we are. Today, we have our very own Associate Editor, Joseph Volpe. Let's get this out of the way. I did not grow up a geek, I was a sorcerer trapped in the body of a husky little boy. Or, so I managed to convince myself for years on end, wearing my Mother's Argentine poncho, and wielding a carved wooden staff (my wand, ahem!) and a yellow glass marble -- all tokens of my extended magical abilities. Before you wonder aloud if I spent much of my time sitting alone at recess convincing bugs to transform into Popples, I will tell you now that you are wrong. I did, in fact, have plenty of company in my (failed) attempts at insect transmogrification. Esoteric interests, it would seem, are the flame to the kindred weirdo's moth. Russia factored wildly in my youth. Aside from the Cold War themes omnipresent in every '80s film I watched obsessively, and my unrestrained glee for a country frozen in an unending winter, I had my third eye fixed squarely on its governmental research into psi phenomena. Yes, I was a seven-year old who carted around a paperback copy of Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain and engaged any unwitting adult in my quest to harness telekinesis. To the credit of my immediate family and one slightly freaked out Grandma, my repeated mental attempts to move the crystal napkin holder were graciously humored over pancakes and eggs. My early life wasn't all a vain attempt at unlocking my sixth sense. No, I had other loves -- namely books, comics and video games, but not in the way you'd think. While most children were happily rotting themselves into contented alpha states in front of the boob tube, I was poring over fantasy novels, concocting potions and searching graphic novels for the "knowledge" that would get me out of this earthly realm. Jean Grey was somewhat of an early hero to me; the X-(Wo)Man who would later become Phoenix had the power pack combo of psychic powers I'd always wanted. Ours was a love / hate relationship that ended in bitter resentment. (She never shared her secrets!) I'd moved on from my fictitious frenemy when I unearthed a book at primary school called The Girl with the Silver Eyes about a young child with (surprise, surprise) psi abilities born from prenatal drug use. Cue me repeatedly questioning my poor Mom as to the list of medications she took while I was in utero. Any other mother would have found this alarming, but mine was only further charmed. Technology was something I took for granted back then, since its silicon circuitry lacked the magic I so desperately sought after. My father was a computer programmer and we always had a plethora of personal computers stationed around the house. One of my earliest memories is even of him bringing home the first Macintosh. I wasn't aware then that at-home computing was a rarity for the time, nor that it was a nascent market. I'd accepted computers the way most young kids accept a new baby, or puppy. Year after year, model after model, we aged together, developing an intimate bond that just seemed natural. When AOL first swung open the dial-up gates to the World Wide Web, I was there trading insights with folks in the New Age chat rooms. It was about this time, my early teen years, that I also decided to take a serious swing at coding. I'd sit in our basement for hours on end, feet up on the desk, head buried in some dense how-to for Hypercard or C++, vainly attempting to make sense of the programming languages I couldn't seem to master. Four months in, and I'd numbly settled into the realization that programming was not my calling. French, however, would turn out to be my bag(uette). From the age of two and continuing up until around 17, my heavily opinionated Sicilian extended family had me fingered for a career as a Pediatrician. I know, pediatrics and the supernatural aren't what I'd call bosom buddies either, so you'll understand the internal disconnect I had for my planned future. Thankfully, a little something known as the PlayStation and Next Generation magazine would come along and permanently derail medical school from my pre-arranged life track. Midway through a presentation I'd created to get them to purchase a still unreleased PlayStation for Christmas, I saw a look in my parents' eyes that said, "This kid has no intention to actually play video games." And they were right. I didn't and never have really had an interest in defeating Bowser, rescuing Zelda or bringing down Dr. Robotnik. Mine was a pure love for the industry and its inner machinations. I pored over processors and discussions about phong shading the way most follow news of the Brangelina horde. It was clear to me then what had to be done. I'd learn Japanese, move to San Francisco and work as a video game journalist. Some of these things happened, but none in the way I'd intended. And so it went that I dove head first into foreign language study, 4.0 GPA territory and enough extra-curriculars on my booked up schedule to exhaust even the brownest of brown-nosers. Here, my friends, is the moment where fringe geek intersected with overachieving nerd and completed my ascension to the freak throne. I bought video games to collect them, read industry magazines to analyze them and lived in Japan in the hopes of reporting on them. As you can probably tell, I didn't succeed in that goal. Oh, I became a journalist, no doubt, but the fascination with 3D gaming took a turn for the general gadget category somewhere in my Akihabara wanderings. Now, I proudly bear my geekdom badge as it's been legitimized by a certain reputable online publication. Gone by the wayside are my dalliances with the supernatural, and my preternatural obsession with the video game industry. In their stead, I now pursue with an equally obsessive zeal research into quantum mechanics and ancient astronaut theory, swapping out The Boy Who Could Fly from my Netflix queue for What the Bleep Do We (K)now!? And don't worry, I still carry my inner husky boy with me -- except now he knows that real magic lies in the specs. Joseph Volpe is always on the Twitters doling out nuggets of pop cultural ephemera to anyone who dares follow him (@jrvolpe). He cannot promise to side with humanity in the face of an Anunnaki return.
Growing Up Geek: Sean Buckley
Welcome to Growing Up Geek, an ongoing feature where we take a look back at our youth and tell stories of growing up to be the nerds that we are. Today, we have our very own Associate Editor, Sean Buckley. The hardest question I was ever asked as a kid was "What do you want to be when you grow up?" When the boys all cried "Fireman!" and the girls unanimously pledged their life to marine biology, I came up short. Growing up? I hadn't planned on that. Peter Pan complex (and book collection) aside, I had it as good as any boy during the 80s / 90s split. I grew-up in the pre-internet stone age, when the world was still a mystery that couldn't be Wiki'd away. Playground rumors went without debunk, and wild stories ran amok across the schoolyard -- pixies in England, aliens in New Mexico, and magical robot cars in Japan. The world was a fantastic, impossible place. It still is, but I'd be lying if I said the finality of reality isn't a small disappointment compared to the lies I loved as a child. With the information superhighway still under construction, I had to find other ways to spend my summers. Sure, countless hours were wasted well spent saving 8-bit princesses (and the world of course), but the best weeks of summer were had at Boy Scout camp, the County Fair, and trudging across the country on family road trips.
Growing Up Geek: Richard Lai
Welcome to Growing Up Geek, an ongoing feature where we take a look back at our youth and tell stories of growing up to be the nerds that we are. Today, we have our very own Senior Associate Editor, Richard Lai, who also happens to be the Editor-in-chief of Engadget Chinese. I've come to the point in life where I stop paying attention to my age, though it's still fun to make people guess it for their reaction -- you'll find out after the break, but here's a hint: I've spent the same number of years in both Hong Kong and the UK, plus a couple of years in Australia. Such a combination has turned me into a Chinese guy who speaks both British English and two Chinese dialects while holding an Australian passport; but I tend to skip all this and say that I'm a spy with many gadgets.
Growing Up Geek: Joe Pollicino
Welcome to Growing Up Geek, an ongoing feature where we take a look back at our youth and tell stories of growing up to be the nerds that we are. Today, we have our very own Associate Editor, Joe Pollicino. Growing up geek? I'm having trouble believing I did. In preparation for this piece I scoured all of my family's photo albums (these stop at around 2004 -- must've been that digital camera craze), and the pictorial evidence to support my geeky ways just doesn't seem to exist. Notably, I had to start wearing huge glasses in kindergarten, but to me that's merely a trapping of the stereotypical nerd aesthetic -- though I do fancy my current Rivers Cuomo-esque horn-rims.
Growing Up Geek: Christopher Trout
Who wants cake? This guy does. Or so says 29 years of photographic evidence. Baked goods loom large in my pictorial history, as does the use and abuse of Dep Gel and even, dare I say it, an affinity for socks and sandals. As much as technology's played a part in my existence, however, my photo album is all but devoid of references to my geekier undertakings. Believe me, there were nights spent playing D&D -- although my relationship with RPGs was short lived -- and days lost in the wormholes of the web, but, truth be told, I've never really considered myself a geek.
Growing Up Geek: Zach Honig
Growing up in the 80's, many kids used their Little Tikes easels to sketch their homes, or their families, or a football or two. Mine was littered with pictures of ceiling fans. But not just the ceiling fan mounted above my playroom -- no, these fans were upside-down (like a model I saw in New Orleans), daisy-chained (seen at a local arcade), and connected to a gas-powered motor (as I once noticed at an Amish farm). My obsession with ceiling fans, and really any motor-powered gadget, ran deep. At one point, shortly after I took my first steps, I began refusing to eat in restaurants that didn't have fans. And when a particular establishment was sophisticated enough to have installed that ever-so-necessary exposed air circulator, you better believe that it needed to be running, and at full speed. My seemingly bizarre obsession with powered devices didn't stop there. I also had an unlikely fascination with vacuum cleaners. Not with their ability to pick up dirt -- I don't believe I had any interest in what they were actually used for, much to the chagrin of my mother -- but with the loud motor that sprung to life when I flipped the power switch, and the uncannily bright headlight that lit the way. Sure, vacuums today feature quiet motors and highly maneuverable ball designs, and even though life was simpler two decades ago, that mesmerizing loud hum, and bright, guiding light would be all it took to get a two-year-old me hooked. But electricity became more than a casual curiosity. My most prized possession was a wood-mounted set of outlets paired with matching switches -- one was fixed, and one dimmed. My grandfather helped me build it after one of our weekend trips to the hardware store.
Growing Up Geek: Michael Gorman
Welcome to Growing Up Geek, an ongoing feature where we take a look back at our youth and tell stories of growing up to be the nerds that we are. Today, we have our very own Senior Associate Editor, Michael Gorman. "Weak! Eye! Double-eye cry! Cheap, to the weak, to the la-la land!" That bit of condescending gibberish was the haunting chorus of victory (or defeat) of many of my childhood football and basketball games in Decatur, Alabama. Often, it was followed by a kind of taunting circle where the winners would dance around chanting in unison "CRY!" (clap, clap... clap) "CRY!" (clap, clap... clap) "CRY!", while the losers fumed and demanded a rematch. I spent time on both sides of that win / loss equation, and the picture you see above is one of the occasions that I came out on top. It's the aftermath of the annual football tournament played among the four fifth grade classes at Gordon-Bibb Elementary for the right to call themselves Turkey Bowl Champions. That's me, the kid in the middle grabbing a knee, and I remember catching a long touchdown in that game in spite of my attire -- stonewashed jeans and turtlenecks were the Under Armor of the 90s, I swear. The bomb was hurled my way by my teammate, Philip Rivers (also kneeling, front left), who you may recognize as the Pro Bowl quarterback of the San Diego Chargers. Needless to say, our win that day was due in large part to his talents, and while he has gone on to professional gridiron glory, my skills were better suited for activities off the field.
Growing Up Geek: Dana Wollman
Until now, I had conveniently forgotten that I collected Magic Cards. Not just collected, mind you, but hoarded -- a feverish obsession harking back to an earlier yen for stickers, pogs, and Happy Meals. While some kids played Truth or Dare in the back of the bus to I.S. 228, I kept my collection at the ready, wrapped with care in a rubber band. I'm not sure who I intended to show them to, save for a handful of guys who used to stake out a row in the front, but if I happened to have something good, I wanted to brag a little. At thirteen, I challenged a certain boy to a game, thinking that was all the hint I needed to drop. He beat me handily, and I never admitted my crush. Let's just say I've evolved since then. I remember as little about mana as Peter Pan did about owning Rufio in a dissing contest. I seem to have kicked my shyness habit -- so much so that my coworkers have taken to calling me "Brass Knuckles." And while I haven't had to suffer dating for awhile, I like to think I've stepped up my game.
Growing Up Geek: Brian Heater
That's me above, on the left. I'm Robin, reaping all of the benefits of fighting supervillians on the mean streets of Gotham, without the whole thing about watching my parents brutally murdered by a mob boss. All things considered, life was pretty good, growing up in the East Bay in the '80s, save for the fact that my cousin was somehow promoted to the role of Batman – most likely because he was visiting from afar (and maybe brought his own costume up from Southern California). And then there's the whole holding hands thing -- I can pretty much guarantee that ended the moment the photographer parent put the camera down. I mean, Arkham Asylum isn't going to patrol itself. Despite early photographic evidence to the contrary -- and a few select themed birthday parties -- I was never really a DC Comics kid growing up. I'd chalk a fair amount of that up to the fact that, so far as these photo albums indicate, I didn't arrive on a rocketship from an exploding homeland, and was never independently wealthy, as the poor tailoring job on the Robin suit can attest.
Growing Up Geek: Tim Stevens
I didn't even really like Superman when that picture was taken. I think I was three or four and well on my way to being a fat kid. I mean, sure, the movies were boss, and Christopher Reeve was the man -- all suave and all-powerful -- but I didn't know Kal-El from a candy cane. I liked his costume, though, and of course I knew that he was super strong and could fly. I was obviously super strong too. Just look at me hefting that huge mass of leaves all by myself! I thought I could fly too. According to Stevens family legend I tried to jump out of a second story window in those very Underoos. Thankfully I decided to get a good long running start and my sister, two years older, grabbed me before I flung myself into that particular adventure.
Growing Up Geek: Vlad Savov
Welcome to Growing Up Geek, a new feature where we take a look back at our youth and tell stories of growing up to be the nerds that we are. This week we have our very own Associate Editor, Vlad Savov. Yes, I grew up in the monochromatic nation of Bulgaria. As geek starts go, I doubt anyone could come up with a more unlikely one than being born in a village in the southwest corner of a country known more for its sporting and culinary exports than any sort of technical expertise. That's not to say that Bulgaria was a tech backwater, but it's the sort of place where you spent more time reading about gadgets than actually using them. Fortunately for me, my mother worked in a local computer club, where the bright youth of the day would gather to use Pravetz machines -- finely crafted Bulgarian Apple II KIRFs -- and it was a spot that I would inevitably retreat to after a thoroughly regimented school day. That's another thing about growing up in the former Communist bloc: education was intensive and rigorous, though you shouldn't let that rebelliously turned up collar in the image above fool you, I was madly in love with my studies (as any true nerd should be). Somewhere between that boy pushing buttons and tearing down floppy diskettes for fun and the current London-based cynic pumping out copy for Engadget during the American night shift, my life happened.
