I think I am becoming a nerd as I have asked Mrs. S to get me a hobby electronics kit, some tools, wires, batteries etc. for xmas.

Perhaps that knock on the belly way back in October has turned me this way?

I think a suitable SI unit for nerdiness would be the Gonk (Gk).

I estimate my desire to start dabbling in all things resistive and capacitive put me at about 3Gk. But the fact that I have just enjoyed a bag of roast beef monster munch reduces this by 500mGk to 2Gk.

What do you lot think about this? Is the Gonk a suitable unit?

Your suggestions please.

This all sounds alarmingly semi-quantitative.

Spectacle – for a group noun

Well the imperial units are bods and boffins. What the conversion formula?

who is gonk named after – if it is not a surname such as Farady, Coulomb or Ampere. it should probably have a small g.

🙄 😀

"The Gonk" is the mall music from Dawn of the Dead (orig). HTH

Do you want some fertilizer to go with that 8O.

Christ – look at the legs on this baby:

it that a spider?

Myself and the other half happen to considerThe Gonk to be 'our tune'.

I think you might have something with the stomach trauma / electronic noodlery connection. I'm sitting at home recuperating from hernia surgery and have got a set of nixie tubes that I think I'll try and turn into a clock.

You want one of these:

http://www.coolcomponents.co.uk/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=50&products_id=335

Fantastic little toy.

Boffins

If nerdiness is the action of doing something (making an electronics kit etc) then isn't there an equivalent measure of geekiness which describes the potential for nerdy action? In which case I propose the Spod (Sp) as the measure for geekiness – perhaps related in a similar way to electrical current and charge, or perhaps not. It'll need someone with a higher Spod reading than me to define that one I reckon.

Building ones own headphone amps seems to meet some deep set technical need.

The nerd units are "Spods" innit.

Flaperon – Member
You want one of these:

http://www.coolcomponents.co.uk/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=50&products_id=335

A USB coin dispenser?

I estimate my desire to start dabbling in all things resistive and capacitive put me at about 3Gk. But the fact that I have just enjoyed a bag of roast beef monster munch reduces this by 500mGk to 2Gk.

Surely if you reduce 3Gk by 500mGk you are are now at 2.5Gk?

Ahhh, but he said "about 3Gk" so give or take half a Gk he's not strictly wrong

JulianA – well spotted. You win a breadbin 😕

Jools, what amp is that?

If you want some geeky stuff then I recommend http://hackaday.com/ and http://blog.makezine.com/

derek_starship – Member
JulianA – well spotted. You win a breadbin

Thank you. Does it come with a sensor telling me when I'm short of bread? And can I set my level of bread-deficiency to allow for different levels of bread-deliverability from varying sources?

It's got to be a Job of geeks, surely 🙂

As far as I am aware there are only seven SI units (m, s, kg, A, mol, cd, K) and anything that can be expressed using combinations of these (Hz, Pa, J, W, etc.) are derived SI units. So if you can define nerdiness using any of the above terms than I guess you can have a derived SI unit for nerdiness.

Whatever they are called I think I rate a lot of them 😐

[pedant]

Shackleton – the ampere is a measurement of electric charge passing a point per unit time, so technically your list should be (m, s, kg, Q, mol, cd, K).

[/pedant]

Edit: What does that get me on the nerdiness scale?

Carefull how you go there Mr Starship. Dabble too much with the ways of things electrical and you may end up like African Eddy* whose personality in SI units is 1MCt.

*very in joke as me and DS work together, and before I get accused of being racist African Eddy is neither African or called Eddy.