Nerd or Non-Nerd?

[Pfreddee]

I think the condition is now known as Asberger's Syndrome...

With best regards.

Pfreddee(Stephen)

 

[M4cr0s]

Definitely a nerd, when it comes to photo, history, literature and technology. Yet..also a geek, obsessing and getting extremely into certain things, without necessarily being accomplished (photography for one ). For me both words are honorary terms and hold nothing negative. Nerds and geeks are my crowd, my people and I've defined myself as one since I was a teenager. The various attempts of defining what each word means in this thread are good, but for me personally they fade into each others and I don't quite know where the stereotype socially awkward nerd begins or where the obsessive-compulsive geek ends. I don't care


Also, this is my better half. She's got a master in computer science on game design theory and now work in a major TV channel. (No, I did not take that cellie-cam photo )

Happy nerding/geeking and photographing guys. Good thread and many laughs!

Mac

 

[Mr_Flibble]

Heh, nerds, geeks, wonks...

...I prefer the term "Anorak" myself

 

[johannielscom]

I stopped talking about any photographic matter to anyone years ago. I shoot alone and don't belong to any group. RFF is the only forum I post in. That's why I'm such a nerd here.

Cheers,

Juan

That's just sooo....... me!

 

[nikon_sam]

A Photography Nerd...Yes, I am...
When I get a chance to talk with someone about photography they often reply with ..."Gee, I didn't know you were so passionate about photography."
It's those moments that I realize just how much I love this thing called "Photography"...

 

[f/8andBe]

I think the difference between Geek and Nerd isn't so much degrees of separation, but approach. Maybe it's just the association with the movie, "Revenge of the Nerds" but to me nerd is a way of life, whereas geek is a passionate pursuit. A photo-nerd wears their Domke vest 24/7 and worships at the alter of Fred Picker (justifiably).

A photo geek might engage in a debate between zoom and fixed lens, but would rather be in the soup.

To me a nerd is almost more about identity and geek is all about passion. A nerd talks about taking pictures, a geek takes pictures.

Now I'm not saying that one is better than the other, or that anyone who's chosen to be identified as a "photo-nerd" in this poll is a nerd as I've described, I'm just saying that this is my distinction between the two labels.

The one thing the nerd and the geek have in common though, is that if either is a "Canon-guy/gal" or a "Nikon-guy/gal" good luck in persuading them otherwise.

 

[al1966]

I don't talk gear apart from occasional comments on forums. Its boring to people who don't have an interest in cameras, but I will talk about meanings to those that are interested.

 

[atlcruiser]

I have been described as an American trainspotter

 

[ederek]

I posted this in W/NW: Signage earlier, please excuse the double post, just remembered this thread!

 

[amateriat]

I have been described as an American trainspotter

Ah, I've heard of the "trainspotting" sort: sighting a bit of railway rolling stock and jotting down its designation/number, etc. Back over on this side of the Atlantic, I've spent parts of my past tracking down locomotives of certain types in various parts of the country, and–wait for it–photographed them. (For the record, my major "bagging" was of Norfolk & Western "J" class 611, as seen here in summer 1983:

Me and N&W 611 ("born" six years before me), late July, 1983

To paraphrase a late-60s pop song: you've got your neuroses, I've got mine.


- Barrett

 

[Pherdinand]

Sure, no one wants to know how we got the term "Hacker" in the early 70's. That one I know. Someone that makes furniture using a sledge hammer. I knew a programmer that wrote a code to make a disk drive walk across the room. They were big, like small refrigerators. He made the heads seek (move) back and forth so quickly it rocked the disk drive to it started moving across the floor.

I think Nerd came before Geek. We were Nerds. Some of us wore contact lenses.

hehe that's a good example Brian.

I still remember a computer virus in the early nineties, which told the harddrive to seek for some data on track n+1 when the harddrive had only n tracks, and by this mechanically damaging the head hardware...
was it Michelangelo, or another one, dunno anymore

 

[Pherdinand]

By the way i just changed the harddrive of my macbook from the original 56 GB one to an "500GB " (465, actually) version and transferred the system too. Seems to work well!
I saved a few hundreds by not going to an "apple genius" with it...

does this make me a nerd, or a geek?

 

[sanmich]

LOL
The theory of relativity according to Our man in Tangier (and where is the name from, if you don't mind me asking?)

 

[ederek]

Interesting photographic pursuit there Barrett.

Hmmm, the slight purple hues in the "N" and "E" of the NERD XING sign didn't quite sit right. A little playing revealed that the sign creator used electrical tape. Given the nerd is carrying a 5 1/4" (or 8" ??) floppy disk, they were probably in the EE department (feeling like a cultural anthropologist today!).

Some manipulations of levels in the raw file reveals the taping pattern...

A bit more manipulation to abstract the image provides a nice graphic: