Specialization: From termites to TiVo

It all started with a desk. My lady needed a new one, and we were looking at a number of possibilities. She had found what looked like the perfect computer desk: the center area was just the right size for a 21″ display; the shelves were exactly the size of CD cases; and there was a specialized nook just for storing the printer. I looked at it for a bit, and got suspicious: “What happens when you go to a dual monitor configuration? And what if you get a printer that’s two inches taller than your current one.” We didn’t have a good answer. It didn’t take much looking to realize that there were a lot more computer configuations that would fail to fit in the desk than there were configurations that would fit. With a bit more searching, we found one that didn’t look like it was custom made for her current configuration, but would work just fine anyway, and would also work for her next 3 configurations. This started me thinking about the dangers of over-specialization.

However, the story doesn’t end here. The desk was for a new house, and this house’s kitchen came equipped with an electric motor.
Built into the counter is a speed dial and a rotating spindle, to which you can theoretically attach whatever accessory you might like. It was made by NuTone, and you can judge the success of the concept by the fact that there are absolutely no references to the concept anywhere on the company’s site. Our collection of accessories includes a mixing bowl, a blender, and a juicer, but we don’t have (and wouldn’t know where to get) the food processor, meat grinder, or knife sharpener. We’ve never used it. Why would we, when we can find 7 blenders with more features for under $20 at Kmart. In this case, we find that what seems like a wonderfully useful device is woefully underspecialized.

So what’s the deal here? Someone designs the perfect desk for the job, and I want a general tool I can adapt. Someone designs a general, adaptable tool for the kitchen, and I insist on buying the perfect tool for the job. Am I just impossible to please? Yep — you got it on the first guess. However, I think that there are some principles that can be applied to determine when specialization is appropriate:

1. The target task is well-defined and generally agreed upon.
2. Either the task’s frequency or the incremental benefit of specialization is high.
3. The cost of ownership is low.

Point one is fairly important. Blenders have become so much a part of our lifestyle that everyone knows exactly what to expect, and what you can do with them. You’d be hard pressed to find a cookbook that doesn’t tell you to use a blender for some task. Desk’s are likewise well understood, but only up to a point: almost every desk will have a flat surface suitable for writing or supporting objects, and will have at least one drawer. Computer desks will typically have facilities for a keyboard in the center. However, there is no agreement upon exactly what standard variety of objects will be placed upon a desk, or how they will be arranged. Individual tastes vary, as do varieties of office equipment. This places a limit on the degree of specialization which is appropriate.

Point two is equally important, but perhaps less obvious. You may not need a corkscrew more than once a year, and may never need a fire extinguisher, but when you do need it, nothing else will do the job right. On the other hand, there are many things that can substitute for a cigarette lighter — but if you are a smoker you will use it so often that you’ll want it anyway. Many bachelors will survive for years without a blender, but the first time they try crushing ice for daquiris without one, they may find that it’s a necessity after all. (It has come to my attention that my mother sometimes reads this blog. I should note, for her benefit, that neither of the preceding sentences should be taken as indications of my lifestyle.)

The third point ties closely to the second. The nutmeg grater may provide you with only a very small benefit, but it’s easy to tuck into a drawer and forget. The wine press and the butter churn, on the other hand, tend to get in the way, so you’d better use them a lot. (Note to Mom. See above.)

After all of this build-up, I can finally get around to the title of the post. (You probably thought that I forgot, didn’t you.) The TiVo is an excellent example of a specialized device which has found the perfect balance. In fact, it bears exactly the same relationship to a personal computer that a blender bears to the NuTone kitchen appliance. Under the hood, it is a full-fledged Linux workstation pretending to be a VCR. (Looked at in this light, a blender might be considered an electric motor that has forgotten how to sharpen knives or slice carrots.) Let us see how it satisfies our three rules:

1. Everybody knows what a VCR does, and TiVo takes that as a starting point. You can record shows and watch them later; you can pause, rewind, and fast-forward. It then mixes in other fairly well understood tasks: organize saved shows; search for new programs; etc.
2. The average household spends a lot of time watching TV. Optimizing and improving this common activity produces a large payoff for this average household. For the occasional TV family, the benefit can still be high, since it increases the likelihood that the content they see will be both high-quality and easily viewed.
3. Initially, the initial cash outlay for TiVo was prohibitively high, and limited it to only those who would gain a serious benefit. This has been reduced greatly, and it is now within the reach of most households. The other costs are low, as the form-factor of a TiVo is well suited to the average TV cabinet, and can easily augment or replace standard VCRs. By simplifying the programming process, TiVo actually bears lower mental costs then the VCRs which preceded it.

That’s it for now, but I’ll probably return to this theme every now and then. If you spot any particularly good examples of over-specialization, under-specialization or “Goldilock’s approved” just-right-specialization, drop me a line. I’m always keeping an eye out.

Watch me soar!

This is a followup for my previous postings about "Serenity".  It seems that there are a few loose ends that I neglected:

• I mentioned how much I like the original Firefly theme song.  Michelle Dockrey of "Escape Key" has expanded it into the chorus of a full-length song.  Check out the lyrics and the BitTorrent at the Escape Key song page.
• Somehow my review failed to mention that the movie introduced two new major characters who weren’t in Firefly.  David Krumholtz, who I’ve mentioned before for his role in "Numb3rs" plays another fascinatingly quirky character as "Mr. Universe"; while Chiwetel Ejiofor does a truly excellent job as the unnamed villain.  As Tom Smith has noted, most modern movies don’t know how to portray a proper villain, but this fellow was definitely worthy of the name.
• Stackable Bards has done a round-up of other reviews of Serenity from around the Blogosphere.  (Update: Blogcritics has done likewise, with an almost disjoint set of reviews.)  It looks like the initial buzz is pretty darned good.

Can’t Stop the Signal!

As promised, my lady and I went tonight to the advanced screening of Serenity, and I am now reporting back. I’ll render the short version first, in blogger-speak: SqueeOMGWowSquee! However, since I strive for a touch more nuance in my writing, I will proceed to expound at greater length for your edification.

First, a note about the showing itself. The crowd at the theater was moderately sized but enthusiastic. This means that the folks promoting the event did not, as I had feared, over-book the hall and reached exactly the sorts of folks who should hopefully make good reviewers. I met up with Rob of Unspace and his wife Nancy in the lobby, and enjoyed chatting with them before the show. It’s always good to meet fellow bloggers in person. Universal representatives were tossing out t-shirts, baseball caps and posters to anyone who could catch them. My years as a juggler paid off, allowing me to snag a t-shirt on the way by, while Rob and Nancy ended up with a cap and a t-shirt — so we were all happy. But that’s not the important part — you want to hear about the danged movie….

First impression: it’s tight and it’s solid. The first two minutes catapulted us through three levels of reality in clean succession; then tossed us into another scene just as tightly paced. From there, we knew we were in for a wild ride, and we were right. There were a few (intentionally) slow moments to let us catch our breaths, but it was a serious roller coaster ride. There were many great lines; laugh out loud moments; tear-jerkers; and profundities. There will be things you don’t expect, even if you’ve got the TV series memorized; and you will care about the universe and the characters even if you’ve never seen the TV series. Lest you’re worried that all the good moments were in the trailers…well, they’re not. Half of those were from the first ten minutes of the film.

I want to expand upon the notion of familiarity. I watched the whole series when it first aired, but intentionally avoided watching the second run so that I could enjoy the movie as a stand-alone, and I really think that it will work either way. It does not spend a lot of time introducing you to the cast of characters, but they feel very real and complete from the first second you see them because their history has been written and played out, and both the actors and writers know exactly how they need to interact. Best of all, once you see the movie and fall in love, you can go back and watch 14 hours worth of character definition, back-story, and rollicking good fun. I have it from good authority (i.e. most of the theater) that if you’ve recently re-watched every episode it is still a great movie and a wonderful completion of the tale.

And what of the plot? Well, I’m not going to give away any details beyond the tiny snippets you got above. But it is certainly very well structured, grand in scope, and kept me (quite literally) on the edge of my seat for much of the movie. If there are no more stories in the Firefly universe, I will be quite satisfied that Joss told the story he needed to tell, and told it in glorious style. If there should happen to be more, well, Mr. Whedon has established his credentials — he’s just as good on the large screen as the small, and I trust him to do right by us.

Here’s a hint as to how much the movie involved us. Approximately 15 minutes before the end of the movie, the film broke — sudden flash of white; no sound; interruption of a very important scene. This was actually the first time I got to hear what I sound like when I scream in actual horror. (I’ve been in auto accidents — I just go quiet and brace myself; I scream on roller coasters, but that’s just for fun, and obviously fake; horror movies just make me gasp.) I wasn’t the only one. I think that many folks briefly thought that this was part of the marketing gimmick — that they were going to make us wait till friday to see the ending — and it would have gotten very ugly. Luckily, we realized that it was an honest accident and calmed ourselves down fairly quickly. The folks from the theater were very nice about it and kept us informed, and the projection crew rewound the film enough that we didn’t lose any context. Still, the whole thing made all of us realize how much we had become engrossed in the film. It had grabbed us all where it counted.

Now I’ve got to ask: Is there anything that disappointed me about the movie? Yes, actually, there was one thing. I really love the theme song from the show, and was disappointed that they didn’t sing it during the closing credits. So I’m going to close with the final words of the song:

Have no place I can be; since I found Serenity.
But you can’t take the sky from me.

You can’t take the sky from me…

I just found out from Instapundit that Joss Whedon’s Serenity is showing an advance screening here in Pittsburgh next Tuesday.  Even better, there handing out press credentials to bloggers who sign up in advance.  (You don’t have to promise to do a review of the movie, much less a positive one, but clearly they are banking on us liking the movie enough to do so.)  I’ve got mine, and am certainly looking forward to being the first guy in my lab to see the movie.  (There were "rough cut" advance screenings as early as May 6th, so I certainly won’t be the first person I know who’s seen the movie, but that doesn’t keep me from being excited.)  For those who don’t want to rush out to the advance screening, the official theatrical release is on Friday, September 30th.

So what is Serenity anyway, and why the odd quote in the subject line?  That’s a long story.  (Those of you who already know it can skip to the next post, or stick around.  You might learn something.)

Joss Whedon is the man behind Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Angel.  He is a genius.  (For definitive evidence, consider "Once More with Feeling", the Buffy musical.  Sure, it’s a grand romp through the BuffyVerse.  Sure, the songs are excellent, with some truly excellent wordplay.  Sure, it’ll rip your heart out and leave you in tears at the end.  But the true genius shows when you realize that this apparent throwaway episode also fits in flawlessly as a vital part of the show’s continuity.  But I digress.)  So when he set his mind to a science fiction series, many of us were hooked before ever he started filming.  Once we actually saw the result, we came to realize that he hadn’t let us down.  The show was quirky, with a "hero" who thought nothing of kicking the bad guys into a jet engine to get their attention; an engineer who’s love for her engines isn’t necessarily  just platonic; a mercenary who has to really stretch to be considered any sort of a good guy (and yet who has an entire mining colony literally singing his praises); and a half dozen others just as odd and interesting.  As you might guess from the above, it was largely character driven, with the plot-lines (while solid) taking a back seat to the interactions of the very real and interesting people who crew the starship Serenity.  Dedicated Whedonites everywhere settled comfortably into their couches, secure in the fact that Joss had indeed scored another home run.

Alas, the show aired on FoxTV, who did a pretty good job of crippling it’s chances.  They showed the episodes out of order; they pre-empted them regularly; and after twelve episodes (with three more filmed but never aired) they yanked the series.  Now Joss Whedon, as well as being a genius, also cares about his people and his shows, so he vowed to find some way to bring the show back.  I don’t know what wheeling and dealing went on, but instead of moving to a different channel, it was reborn as the movie Serenity.

I’d guess that the studio expected this to be a fairly small release, with a built-in audience and enough explosions and action to rope in the people who’d never seen the show.  Apparently they did not expect their initial trial showing to be invaded by dedicated "browncoats" (Firefly fanatics) who gave it rave reviews.  So apparently, they sent it back to get a budget upgrade, and some really inspired marketing.  You see, on the same day they released the trailer, they announced that they’d be showing a "rough cut" half completed version of the film in a very small number of theaters on May 6th.  The dedicated fans went crazy, booked flights to appropriate cities to see it, and gave it rave reviews.  The response was so good that they did the same thing twice more, to steadily larger crowds.  (Remember, this wasn’t the final movie, which is finally completed now and being released on September 30th.)  I was, alas, not part of the original crowd.  I’m not fond of flying, and Chicago was a bit farther than I was prepared to go.

Now there doing this one more time.  Rather than relying on jaded professional reviewers, the folks behind the movie are recruiting the blogosphere to check out the movie and bring word back to the world at large.  I, for one, thank them for the opportunity, and will do my part.  Tune in next Tuesday night, and I’ll let you know what I think.

Update: My review is now up.

Special RelaTiVoty, or How Long is a One Hour Show?

Recently I’ve been musing on the possibility that modern media, and especially television, might be turning us into a society of passive observers.  (Actually, since I try not to be too much of a busybody, I’ve focused primarily on whether it is turning me into a passive observer, and whether I’m going to sit still for it [sic] if so.)  It’s an issue that I’ll probably keep coming back to, since it’s difficult to find the right balance between "do what you enjoy" and "get off your donkey and do something worthwhile".  (In the meantime, there’s a fascinating post at Irredenta that implies that some of our guesses about "healthy" and "unhealthy" may be wrong.)

However, my lady pointed out that our TV watching habits have changed since we became TiVo devotees.  Many folks have praised TiVo for its ability to skip commercials, thus allowing you to compress a one hour show into 45 minutes.  For some shows, this is what we do — as long as the commercials are all old repeats.  (We usually back up and watch the interesting new commercials, since the best of them are actually quality film-making in their own right.  Besides, free broadcasts aren’t free, and as long as they keep up their end of the deal by making the commercials watchable, I’ll keep up my end.)   Other one hour shows may take 20 minutes:  with closed-captioning turned on, you can zip through a news program at triple speed and still follow what’s going on, slowing down only for vital stories or film clips for which you need more subtle details.  (We don’t do this much, but it’s nice to know we can.)

Those applications are all very well.  On the other hand, when we watch our favorite shows, we tend to find that a one hour program runs to more like 90 minutes, as TiVo helps us become fully engaged.  Part of this is simply taking advantage of the 8 second instant replay to finally catch all of the clever dialog.  (I have no idea how anyone could watch "West Wing" without a TiVo.)  A larger part is in feeling free to pause and discuss developments.  Thus you hear quotes like:

• "I can’t believe they’re going to rely on hydraulics.  That trick never works."
• "I thought I’d seen Lurch in other roles.  Did you know that he had three Star Trek roles as well as playing "Thing"?"
• "Time out.  Want to place a bet on whether the shooter is a regular character?"
• "So that’s where the polar bear came from.  Now what other mysteries can we clear up?"
• "Hold on.  This is just too good a show to watch without popcorn."  (Okay, so the pauses aren’t always relevant.)

To make this easier, we keep two remote controls on hand, so that either of us can stop the action.  (This sometimes leads to the "two pauses don’t make a stop" problem, but on the whole it’s worthwhile.)  We find that we really do get more out of our favorite shows this way:  we can comment freely during the shows because we know we can always back up easily to catch missed dialog;  we feel that we’re actually participating in a shared activity rather than just sitting in the same room at the same time; and most importantly, we just have more fun.

All of this, of course, brings up the question of what we might be able to do with true interactive media.  Certainly I’d love to see headline news with hyperlinks to take me to the full story.  I’d be thrilled to see the obligatory mid-show recaps and rule summaries in "competition" programming become optional.  ("Yes, I know that it’s 5 points for a bulls-eye and 2 points for anywhere else on the target — you’ve told me 4 times already.")  How about a fully annotated soap-opera for those who can’t keep track of all 73 subplots?   Would you like a version of "Jeopardy" that holds off on the answer while you are pondering?  While they would require some technical changes, none of these should require a substantial increase in production costs, and I believe that they could all be feasible.  Once the technology catches on, then we could hopefully start pushing the boundaries of interactivity and turn TV night into a full-fledged activity rather than a slouch.

Geek Hall of Fame, part 2

In a previous post, I compiled a list of TV characters who cast geeks in a positive light by actually placing them in starring roles.  This list was present in the hopes that it might encourage folks to seek out and promote geek-friendly TV and geek role-models.  Since that list was posted, I received several suggested additions: Stargate SG-1‘s Daniel Jackson and Samantha Carter; the whole crew at CSI; and "Bug" from Crossing Jordan.  I’ve omitted them because they are not starring roles, but it is clear that I need to start a "supporting role hall of fame" to supplement the "star gallery".  In the meantime, I do have one new entry for the star’s list:

• Alton Brown: As writer and star of the Food Network’s Good Eats, and as commentator for Iron Chef America, Alton is the quintessential cooking geek.  Between his regular pauses to consult with nutritional anthropologists; his on-air science experiments and improvised molecular models; and the need for an annotated script to catch all of the puns he sneaks in — this is quality geek-TV.  (Oh, and my lady recommends all three of his books and his line of Kershaw knives.  If you head to his site to buy them, tell him Gclectic sent you — although he won’t know who the heck you’re talking about.)

My blithe use of the phrase "cooking geek" brings up a very important question:  what is a geek anyway?  Isn’t it just another word for "science nerd"?  Well, I’m glad my hypothetical reader asked, because I’ve given that question a bit of thought.  The traditional definition, of course, refers to a person who bites the heads off of chickens.  I do not, personally, subscribe to that definition.  The negative connotations are nicely summed up in the wikipedia entry, which begins "A derogatory term for one with low social skills, often with average intelligence, as opposed to nerds, who are generally viewed as having low social skills but high intelligence."  I’ve personally always regarded the derogatory usages of "nerd" and "geek" to be equivalent, but I no longer subscribe to the derogatory interpretation either, so I won’t quibble.  This brings us to my current definition of "geek":

One who is preoccupied with a specialized interest beyond the limits of conventional social acceptability.

On the surface, this would seem to imply that geekhood was a negative trait.  However, this is only true if you believe that the standards of conventional society are correct ones.  To my mind these standards are the reason cocktail party conversations center around "What do you think of the weather?" and "So where do you work?".  (See my earlier post on the advantages of partying with opinionated people.)  In some cases, it even goes so far as "My daddy told me what I’m allowed to be interested in, and your hobby isn’t on the list".  Thus, it is perfectly acceptable to hold forth at great length on the subject of football and baseball, but not on Buffy the Vampire Slayer or the upcoming release of Serenity.  (Hey, I already admitted that I was a geek.  I’ll take a Joss Whedon production over sports any day of the week.)  Of course, I can always talk about cooking instead:  "Hey Alton, when’s the episode on kimchi coming out?"

The body of a geek god….

For decades, the heroes of our TV shows have basically been frat boys:  jocks,
rich kids, and all around beautiful people.  I’m not one of those people.  I’m a geek — the sort of person
that Thomas Sullivan Magnum, III would have shoved into a locker in high
school. Benjamin Franklin Pierce may have been a brilliant surgeon, but he’d never have
tripped over me at the university library — he was holed up with a keg of
beer and three nurses.  So it goes across the board: the "nerds", "geeks",
"greasy grinds", "egg-heads", and "four-eyed brainiacs" do not get the starring
roles.  (We get to be the comic relief, and sometimes even have the best
characters: Wilson and Al Borland rocked on "Home
Improvement" and certainly mousy little Kay Simmons was one of the bright lights on "V.I.P.".  But that’s not the point — we’re still being
shoved into lockers.)

Now in 1985 we got a brief respite.  Angus MacGyver may have been eye-candy for the ladies, but he actually stayed awake through all of his science and engineering classes.  (I don’t know if they ever made clear how much he learned in class at Western Tech and how much he learned from special forces training.)  Shove him into a locker and he’d not only find 27 items to help him get
out, but also some useful materials to make sure the Mustang your daddy
bought you doesn’t run so well tomorrow. With a seven year run, the show certainly made MacGyver a household word, and started the process of making practical engineering "cool".  Unfortunately, the usual swarm of shameless imitators failed to appear.

As far as I can recall, we had no other high quality geek leading men until this year, with the premier of "Numb3rs".  For some reason, all the cast listings give Don Eppes the top billing, but we know who the true stars are:  the mathematical theories, the consultants who keep them more or less accurate, and Charlie Eppes.  When Charlie gives his "Math is nature’s language" speech and the ladies’ eyes glaze over — not with boredom but with wonder — you know that they’ve done something very right.  (Okay, the actress may have reacted that way because the script said to; and my own lady lusts after his body as well as his mind; but I was grooving on the poetry of it, and I like to think everyone else was too.)  You certainly will trip over Charlie at the university library, and the beer kegs are suspiciously absent.  (We don’t know if he was snagged by any nurses as an undergrad, but if so they were presumably turned off by a guy more interested in Traveling Salesmen than shoe salesmen.  Their loss.)  This show is a winner all around — it portrays mathematics as both interesting and useful; it gets the details right; and it will inspire the watchers to actually re-examine that "dry, dusty" subject.  And just as importantly, it’s darned good entertainment.

As far as TV drama goes, that’s about it.  It’s pretty slim pickings, but I’m hoping that the success of Numb3rs will inspire more producers to take a chance.  In the meantime, there’s another orchard that’s borne some tasty fruit, and it’s one that usually produces bitter lemons: reality TV.

What we get here is a true marvel.  We have real people, who are not merely allowed to show their true geek colors but rewarded for applying their full nerd potential to real problems.  Instead of useless challenges like eating bugs (which have few practical applications in urbanized western Pennsylvania), we get to see people exercising their true potential by building an automated hockey-playing machine.  And, while tensions do arise in the build-bays, the true drama of the shows is where it should be: in battling to apply creativity to solve hard problems, and to applying your skills to the utmost the make sure that your creation beats the [insert your favorite four letter word here] out of the competition’s device.

The formula shone marvelously in Scrapheap Challenge, Junkyard Wars, BattleBots, Panic Mechanics, Full Metal Challenge and Master Blasters.  These are the shows that actually kept me glued to the TV set; that had me watching in nearly real time because I couldn’t wait, rather than letting the TiVo time-shift them to whatever day or week was convenient.  These are, alas, the shows that blazed across the broadcast firmament for a few brief seasons, and then disappeared from American TV, to the vast disappointment of the teeming masses of nerd sympathizers and geek groupies.  (I’m the former, while my lady falls into both categories.  I don’t think there’s a star mentioned in this post that she hasn’t lusted after at one time or another.  Luckily, I got to her first.)

Now, in researching this post, I find that the shows aren’t gone.  Scrapheap Challenge has aired an extra season that apparently isn’t going to be shown anywhere in the US, and there’s a spin-off series called "Scrappy Races".  BattleBots are apparently still going strong, but nobody is bothering to televise them.  What’s up guys?  Did TLC and Discovery network not notice that they were getting a perfect demographic and attracting advertisers that are never going to profit off of "Dawson’s Creek"?  Did they think that we weren’t paying attention, or that we were all using our TiVos and ReplayTVs to skip the commercials?  (Here’s a hint guys.  show good commercials, and don’t over-saturate the time-slot.  We actually watched each new commercial on these shows. TiVo makes it easy to say "Hey wait a minute.  I haven’t seen that one before.")  Did Comedy Central not notice that BattleBots was a hit, and even so, did nobody else care to pick it up?  Heck, give us a special GeekTV channel for this stuff if that’s what it takes.  (I don’t know why the existing ZDTV/TechTV/G4 hasn’t been carrying this stuff.  Perhaps they assume the video game generation doesn’t have the attention span for Junkyard Wars, but they should love BattleBots.)

Lesser credit goes to Escape from Experiment Island, Monster Garage, and Beauty and the Geek.  They did some really cool things, and weren’t afraid to show real people (or "LA real", in the case of Monster Garage) but they felt obliged to go back the classic reality show staple of bickering as entertainment.  For me, this gets old quick.  Engineering on the other hand, just keeps getting stronger after a whole lot of millenia.  You should go with the tried and tested….

But I digress.  (It’s what I’m best at.)  This post is about the stars and heroes –  the men that little geek children will look to in generation to come and say: "I want to be just like him".  (I love geekettes too, BTW, and would love to revisit them later.  However, gender roles in sciences and engineering are too big an issue for this post.  I don’t digress that much.)  Therefore, here is one geek’s list of top geek TV roles:

1. Charlie Eppes:  What can I say.  He’s a fresh new face, and he’s got what it takes.  See above.
2. Angus MacGyver:  Not so new, but likewise.
3. Captain Montgomery Scott:  Seriously old school, and some would say he wasn’t the star, but those are just quibbles.  He had the right stuff.
4. William "Crash" Yerazunis: Crash, like all of those who follow, is a real person.  With a PhD in AI and 19 US patents, his geek credentials are impeccable.  Nor does he depend upon credentials alone — he had serious star-power on Junkyard Wars and appears to hold the current record for best spam filter.
5. Lt. Col Dick Strawbridge, MBE: Another old-school entry, Dick has an incredibly impressive resume, with a long military career, multiple TV shows, vast experience in bodgery, and (apparently) several more polished inventions ready to be patented and marketed.
6. Grant Imahara:  Grant is a triple threat, with appearances on BattleBots, Junkyard (Mega)Wars and Mythbusters.  His resume is a geek playground, with an ILM career than includes, amongst other highlights, "flight time" on both R2D2 and the Energizer Bunny.
7. Terry Stroud: Actually, both Dan and Terry of team "Master Blasters" deserve the nod here.  They both have excellent geek credentials, and a winning attitude.  I gave the edge to Terry because he sports the perfect geek look.  I’m still new to their show, so I can’t swear they’ve got the sheer nerd-stamina to hold out for the long haul, but I’m rooting for them.

There you have it.  My heroes.  The guys who believe quality TV has more to do with getting the job done than perfectly groomed hair.  Every one of them is a great role model.  (BTW, If you are just now choosing your path and think that the babes don’t go for guys like that — guess again.  Maybe I’m just lucky that I landed the perfect lady in spite of being a geek, but if I ever lose her it’ll be to one of these guys, not a jock.  And there really are lots of other ladies like her out there.  They aren’t on the cheerleading squad, and you may have to look around the paperback book and past the glasses, but they exist.  Better yet, enjoy the glasses.  Glasses are sexy.)   Did I miss your favorite geek hero, or geek-positive show?  Let me know.  Maybe together, we can show the world that being smart, creative, and a bit obsessive is not an insurmountable handicap.