I'm a geek, an engineer, and a dad. These pages are some of the things that come about because of one or more of those attributes. :-)

I changed from "geek dad" to "geeky dad" for these subpages; turns out, there's already an awesome GeekDad.com blog, which I don't want name-confusion with. There's a geekydad.net, but it hasn't been active for more than a year, so I won't bother avoiding name-confusion. Especially since I'm not trying for the domain name, just a header for these pages. :-)

LEGO® Projects

My son is very much into LEGOs (and to a lesser extent, so is my daughter). I'm pretty sure that by age five, he has more blocks than my two brothers and I ever had growing up. One of his kits, the Klutz Crazy Action Contraptions, has a relatively-small number of pieces, including bricks, gears, and a few rubber bands; but their detailed instructions allow even a five-year-old to build a variety of gravity and rubber-band powered machines! Combine that with my engineering mindset and… well, you'll see.

And then I discovered the Lego.com Digital Designer, which you can download and use as an infinite LEGO kit, and to document your physical designs. So I have been able to capture creations so we can re-build them later. :-)

Science with the kids

My wife homeschools our children, and she does the teaching. Sometimes she waits for Saturday morning to do the science experiments, so I can participate. And sometimes, because of a kids book they've read, or an idea I've had, I get to teach them some mathematical or scientific principal, or I come up with an experiment or demonstration (depending on the complexity or danger levels – sometimes, I get a bit too mythbustery for them to safely help).

Other science, math, …

And sometimes, I just think about odd science or technology. My wife has caught me multiple times using my kids' magna doodle, whiteboard, or chalkboard to work out some physics or stoichiometric equations …