Ask HN: gifts for geeks? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: gifts for geeks?

What are the best ideas you've seen for gifts for geeks this holiday season?

I thought I had a couple of brilliant ideas (space flight simulator and TED tickets) before realising they cost about $1,000 and $5,000 respectively.

I'd love to hear creative ideas at all price ranges and I imagine there are others here who would as well.

My favourite recent idea was a flying trapeze lesson I bought for my brother. I'm not sure why this appeals to the geek in us - probably something to do with pendulums - but it's a great fun present for active geeks.

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The Arduino is pretty awesome and relatively cheap. The board itself is around $30, but you can get bundles for $50+.

I asked for the Arduino Uno and an ethernet shield for Christmas because I couldn't think of anything else. And let's face it, the idea of programming your plants to tweet when they need water is pretty awesome.

Here's a link for your reference: http://www.adafruit.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&...

Wanting to shoot small? If they don't already have them, Dropbox Pro or Evernote Pro subscriptions sound like a good idea. Or a Kindle/iTunes gift card; you can never have too many books/apps/albums/movies. Also, O'Reilly books can make a great gift.

http://kevinrose.com/blogg/2010/11/27/2010-geek-holiday-gift...

A solid state drive (SSD), if they don't have one already. Prices have become more reasonable and performance gains over traditional drives have become more worthwhile. For example, I recently bought one of the better performing 120GB drives for $220, though they've been available for less with rebates.

Dominion is an amazing board game. The best mechanic is the re playability- you only use 10 action cards out of a possible 25 in each game. Which gives you 25choose10 = 3,268,760 possible combinations. http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/36218/dominion

well to be fair, some combinations won't really work since they depend on others being in use. e.g. curse cards

The gold,silver,copper,victorypoints and curses are all part of the cards that are automatically added in every game, regardless of the 10 kingdom cards.

Olympic curling lessons - strategy, minimal athleticism, and fun.

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