Ah, the office prank. Got to love 'em, provided they're not pointed in one's own direction, of course. There's a million and one of them out there on the intertubes to inspire, ape and have a good giggle at but we are of the geeky persuasion, are we not? For us few, us happy few, it is not simply enough to place a load of golf balls in someone's car - bloody funny though that is.

No, instead we must strive to add a sense of the tech to practical joking at work. So here, for all our amusement are the 10 best office pranks for geeks.

(via Office Prankster)

The old Scotch Tape under the mouse routine

Nice, simple, easy to do and very sneaky is this one. Simply head over to your co-worker's desk armed with some Sellotape and a pair of scissors. Snip off a small square of sticky and pop it directly over the optical mouse sensor on the underside of the desktop peripheral. It won't render the unit inoperable just bloody annoying, and it might be quite a few days before your buddy figures it out. This will not work on a mechanical mouse.

The old Microsoft Office alarm routine

Really nice geek honey trap is this one. As the video indicates, go and find an empty Microsoft Office software box, fit a heavy duty sonic alarm and then plant the bait somewhere your fellow employees will notice it. It's up to you whether you film their fright or not.

The old green keyboard routine

If you really want to go to town here, the best way to do the old grass in the keyboard routine is to actually find an identical keyboard to your colleague's and spend a few days growing cress seed on it before making the switch when they go out to lunch. Otherwise, it's a case of heading out to the nearest garden, plucking up a load of strands and stuffing them in the cracks. This will not go down well if they have a state of the art finger tapper. Trust us here.

The old iOffice routine

If you happen to know an Apple fanboy or girl in the same company as you banging on about their iPad, iPhone or the latest amazing app they just bought, then this is the prank to dish out to them. They live for Apple, so just make sure that they go that extra mile which they were probably afraid to stretch to in polite company. Get yourself on eBay and Etsy, bag every single piece of iTatt you can find and plaster their cubicle with the lot. The sad thing is that they'll probably love it.

The old Mario boxes routine

The circumstances as to when or why you might put a bunch of Mario blocks by someone's desk are rather unclear, but it's obvious this is the work of a geek in the office somewhere. The hard part is finding the question mark JPEG, but after that's sorted, it's a simple print and stick operation.

(via Kotaku)

The old Sega desktop routine

The Sega desktop is a case of serious dedication to the geek prank cause, and you'll need your buddy to be on holiday for at least a day or two to get it sorted. Fortunately for the bods in the Sega office, community manager Aaron Webber was off for 3 weeks which gave them time enough to recreate the Green Hill Zone even down to the rings. Excellent work.

The old key switch routine

The keyboard switcheroo works as well with any letters and you don't have to lay down quite the same insult as the picture above. A simple message of "pwned" would do just as well. It's a nice, simple prank to play but does rely on your co-worker having an old enough keyboard to do it on without breaking the thing.

The old water cups routine

The room of water cups is a very neat trick and will take the kind of steady hand required to set a world record for domino rally. Notice the neat touch of the word "pwnd" just to make sure that the prankee doesn't think it was an accident.

The old Blue Screen of Death routine

Another very simple, non-invasive and speedy office prank is the old BSOD screen saver, which will doubtless put the frighteners on your office chums when they come back to their displays and find that their computer has crashed. Whether it's a case of thinking they've lost all their work or the fear that the IT team will uncover something that shouldn't have been on there in the first place doesn't matter. That fact is, it's a stomach turner. You can download it here.

The old screen flip routine

The screen inversion takes a matter of seconds and will leave the geekier in the office sniggering away while those less tech savvy curse and scream. It's a simple trick. Just click Ctrl+Alt+the down arrow and the display will flip vertically and the mouse controls with it. Impossible to get out of unless you know the shortcut which is the same, but with the up arrow instead.

And what of your geek office pranks? Do you have any master strokes of practical joke genius up your sleeve or are there any killer japes on the net that we should know about? Do tell in the comments below.