All products featured on WIRED are independently selected by our editors. However, we may receive compensation from retailers and/or from purchases of products through these links.
Recently, we proposed 50 geeky things kids should do before they're 12. But why should kids get all the fun? I asked the GeekMoms what geeky items were on their bucket lists. As it turns out, no one is especially fond of the morbid term "bucket list." However, we could easily share some of our favorite geeky items on our long-term to do list:
- Build a functional robot.
- Get a car that runs on something other than gasoline.
- Know how machines I rely on actually run and have at least a moderate ability to fix them.
- Explore a cave.
- Identify a hidden superpower and use it (okay, a power).
- Convert a non-geek to geekdom.
- Become a connoisseur of something (coffee, wine, chocolate are expected, become a connoisseur of the unexpected).
- Wear a cape in public.
- Become someone who wears fascinatingly strange hats.
- Win a Nobel Prize for advancing fandom.
- Start a trend of funky tights that never becomes too popular that it goes out of style...ever.
- Have a comic book about me doing something really awesome that I haven't discovered yet.
- Have an element named after me.
- Get a shout-out in a Neil Gaiman book/Joss Whedon directed film.
- Write a comic book.
- Appear as a special geek chef on an episode of Good Eats.
- Go to a midnight showing at a cinema.
- Go to the cinema in costume.
- Become briefly addicted to a video game/book/band.
- Make a short film about anything.
- Go to a new city by myself and explore it just the way I want to.
- Wear a full costume to a convention.
- Get re-tweeted by Nathan Fillion.
- Watch Star Wars.
- Hug a Gremlin.
- Go to a TED Talk.
- Get invited to a science fair at the White House.
- Give a TED Talk.
- Visit Thomas Dolby's solar-powered houseboat recording studio; watch him record.
- Install a biowall in my home.
- Learn how to program a lilypad so that I could sew flickering LED lights into all of my clothes.
- Learn how to process film.
- Learn how to can preserves.
- Explore subways and underground spaces with Steve Duncan.
- Write and engineer my own podcast.
- Visit every Disney Park in the world.
- Appear as an extra in a sci-fi film.
- Read a children's or YA book that your kids aren't interested in – for yourself.
- Explain a piece of technology to someone younger than you.
- Try a scary experiment you saw someone do on YouTube.
- Attend a Geek convention like Comic-Con.
- Create a character and play an RPG.
- Read Lord of the Rings.
- Write a novel.
- Generate my own electricity, get "off the grid."
- Hike the full Appalachian Trail without any WiFi/cellular service.
- Get good at photography: post processing and SLR technology.
- Become a zero-waste home.
- Go on a commercial space flight.
- Invent and patent something.
What geeky life goals would you add to the list?
