It’s spring. Love is in the air. So, if you’re a geek, madly in love, and dead set on getting married to your sweetheart, how do you go about it?
Maybe this will give you some inspiration. Here are bunch of marriage proposals, geek style.
(After the big report yesterday, we thought it was time to lighten things up a bit. 🙂 )
Propose in an online comic
If you’re the creator of a popular online comic, this one is easy, as proven by Mike Krahulik, one of the guys behind Penny Arcade.
But even if you’re not a comics creator, you may be able to enlist the help of one. The guys behind Joy of Tech helped one of their readers make this a reality.
Propose on Twitter
Twitter getting increasingly popular, and apparently, so is proposing on Twitter.
Aside from the above example, it’s happened again and again.
Propose in a video game
Proposing by modifying video game maps seems to be something of a trend. Here is one actual proposal made in Halo 3:
Here is another one made in Super Smash Bros:
And one made in Little Big Planet (video):
But the price has to go to this guy who wrote an actual Bejeweled clone from scratch for the Nintendo DS so he could surprise his girl (it was her favorite game). After a certain score had been reached, a ring popped up.
Propose in an O’Reilly book
Author Dave Nielsen proposed in the acknowledgements section of his book, Paypal Hacks, published by O’Reilly. He had to wait three months for the book to be published before he could get his answer (she said yes).
The acknowledgement read:
I’d like to thank […] and Erika, my inspiration, who makes me smile every day. Erika, I feel so lucky to have found you. With you, every day is beautiful and new. Nothing would make me happier than to spend the rest of my life with you…Erika Anderson, will you marry me?
Propose via Google Street View
Here is a proposal made by a Google employee using Google Street View. He even created a special website for it (MarryMeLeslie.com) where people could vote if the should say yes or no.
Propose via a search engine
Here is a marriage proposal that was made possible by the help of the Ask Jeeves team. The girl in question got her proposal when she searched for her own name.
Propose with a string of amino acids
We found this story in the comments to a Wired article about geeky proposals and thought it deserved a mention here.
My wife was a college professor when we were dating; I was studying biochemistry. I wrote a perl script that treated the letters of my proposal as a string of amino acids, translating them to a corresponding mRNA transcript. Then I sent her an email, claiming I needed help with my biochem homework: translating an mRNA to amino acids.
Later, in her office, she fired up DNAstar, translated the message, looked at the peptide sequence a while, then said, “This mRNA is messed up: the first residue isn’t even a methionine… it’s not polyadenylated… HEY!!” Once she saw her name at the beginning of the sequence, it was all over.
This year is our sixth anniversary, and we have a beautiful 4 1/2-year-old daughter.
These two literally had good chemistry…
Propose via your favorite SFF author
How about this: Someone enlisted none other than author and comic book legend Neil Gaiman to help him propose to his girlfriend during a book signing. Gaiman wrote “Will you marry Jason?” when he signed her book, but the girl in question was so star-struck that the author had to point it out to her three times before she actually noticed what it said.
Propose with charts
A post on the I Can Has Cheezburger sister site GraphJam contained a proposal in graph format. Sadly she said no, so hopefully it didn’t end up on the other I Can Has Cheezburger sister site: the Fail Blog.
Propose on a geek news site
Slashdot founder Rob Malda (CmdrTaco) proposed to his girlfriend with a news story on Slashdot. 15 minutes later he had a yes.
Propose with Apple hardware
Apple hardware engraved with proposals seems to be popular, especially iPods.
Enlist the help of video game legends
When 1UP editor-in-chief James Mielke decided to propose to his girlfriend, he managed to get two of the creators of the legendary Final Fantasy series to help him out. Artist/designer Yoshitaka Amano designed a ring for him, and composer Nobuo Uematsu wrote a melody that was played as he proposed. (Both Mielke and his bride-to-be are huge Final Fantasy fans.)
Propose with a patent application
There are a lot of different kinds of geeks, and we suspect this guy may well be a patent lawyer aficionado. Who else would propose with a 12-page patent application? 🙂
Small sample (emphasis added by us):
The purpose of this invention is to provide an improved method of proposing marriage to an individual. The method of proposing to an individual generally comprising the steps of meeting the individual; exchanging names with the individual; dating the individual (not necessary); drafting a government document having a proposal to marry the individual incorporated therein; and showing the government document to the individual. The government document may be a patent application. The patent application may claim the method by which the proposor will make a marriage proposal to the individual. The proposor could then use the method claimed in the patent application to propose to the individual. The patent application could be the actual marriage proposal.
Propose with a lolcat
This is the second entry from I Can Has Cheezburger, a proposal in true lol fashion.
What’s your favorite geeky proposal?
We here at Pingdom are definitely geeks (and proud of it), but we pale in comparison to some of the guys above.
Believe it or not, the examples we have listed above are just the tip of the iceberg, and most of them seem to have been successful. There are a ton of good stories out there. If you feel we missed any other great examples (we probably have), let us know in the comments!
