Geek Quote of the Day
The Internet is so big, so powerful and pointless that for some people it is a complete substitute for life.
- - Andrew Brown
Geek Media Round-Up: June 2, 2009
Art
- io9 has posted a small gallery of steampunk-esque paintings of Tesla’s Lightning-Eating Mansion in Upstate New York
Comics
- Grant Morrison Talks About Batman and Robin.
- Mania names the Most Sharp Dressed Superheroes, starting with Flash and the Green Lantern.
Film
- Den of Geek looks back at The Evolution of the Harry Potter films.
- John Scalzi Rates SciFi Movies by Their EXPLOSIONS!
Internet
- This just makes me smile: Shia LaBeouf has a huge crush on Megan Fox and is upset she only wants to be friends. Somehow the universe just seems fairer.
This Day in Geek History: July 2
1698
Thomas Savery patents the first steam engine.
1858
The Donati Comet was first seen and named after its discoverer.
1875
While Alexander Bell and his assistant Thomas Watson are working on Edison’s “harmonic telegraph,” they stumble upon the inspiration that will eventually lead to the creation of the first telephone. In the transmitter room, Watson produces a twang while trying to free a reed that had been wound too tightly to the pole of its electromagnet. Bell, working in the receiving room, hears the twang and realizes that his dream of speech transmission must be possible, because the complex overtones and timbre of the twang he had just heard bore a striking similarity to the sound of the human voice.
1889
A hydroelectric power plant generates alternating current electricity available to consumers for the first time. A thirteen mile power line links the Willamette Falls Electric Co. power plant to Portland, Oregon. Two 300hp Stilwell & Bierce waterwheels together drove a single phase, 720 kilowatt generator. It isn’t the first hydroelectric power plant. Another one had been demonstrated in Appleton, Wisconsin, on September 30, 1882 with a small dynamo. It is the use of alternating current that makes this station significant because it makes it possible to transmit power over great distances.
Read the rest of this entry » » »
Geek Quote of the Day
A Mission Statement is a dense slab of words that a large organization produces when it needs to establish that its workers are not just sitting around downloading Internet porn.
- - Dave Barry Hits Below the Beltway by Dave Barry, 2001.
Link Round-Up: July 1, 2009
Resources
5 Things to Know About The Pirate Bay Sale – The sale of The Pirate Bay to a Swedish software company, which plans to revamp the site and launch a new business model to compensate rights holders, has most everyone in the P2P community scratching their heads today.
16 Bitchin’ commands and shortcuts for Twitter – Everyone’s favorite social engine has a surprising range of search line commands.
How to Crack a Wi-Fi Network’s WEP Password with BackTrack – You already know that if you want to lock down your Wi-Fi network, you should opt for WPA encryption because WEP is easy to crack. But did you know how easy? Take a look.
How to Create the Ultimate Gaming Laptop Setup – As with any passion, you’re not satisfied with a mediocre setup. Some people pimp out their cars, other obsess over knickknacks, why shouldn’t you treat your passion with the same respect? Here are several tips on creating the ultimate gaming setup.
Readability – This amazing little script makes read articles on the web more enjoyable by removing all the clutter from webpages. It is a must if you read newspapers online with any frequency. It’s project page is over at Google Code.
Read the rest of this entry » » »
Geek Media Round-Up: July 1, 2009
Film
- According to Vanity Fair, Heath Ledger hoped his performance as the Joker would be so far-out he’d be fired.
- GiantFreakinRobot pleads Transformers 2: It’s Not The Fanboys Fault, in response to Ebert’s recent review.
- Heckler Spray counts down the Top 20 Movie Monsters.
Internet
- Switched wonders if E-mail Made the Thank You Note Obsolete?
Literature
- Free Fiction: Jeff VanderMeer is offering Finch as a podcast.
- Free Fiction: Listen to “On the Banks of the River of Heaven” by Richard Parks.
- Free Fiction: Read Homeostasis by Carlos Hernadez at Futurismic.
Photos: Anonymous for 15 Minutes
This Day in Geek History: July 1
1874
After much preparation at home and abroad, the Philadelphia Zoo, the first zoological gardens in the United States opens to the public with several hundred native and exotic specimens on the grounds of Solitude, the last estate in the area owned by the Penn family, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was originally chartered by the Pennsylvania state legislature on March 21, 1859 as the Zoological Society of Philadelphia whose core purpose is to oversee “the purchase and collection of living wild and other animals” and “for the instruction and recreation of the people.” Rumors of a civil war make it a difficult time for private undertakings, and delayed the opening. In 1875, this zoo will become the first US zoo to exhibit a male Indian rhinoceros.
1881
The first international telephone call is made between Calais, Maine in the United States and St. Stephen, New Brunswick in Canada.
1886
The first Linotype machine to be put into commercial use in the US is installed at the Tribune newspaper in New York City. It will be immediately successful. By the end of 1886, a dozen of the machine will be put to use by the Tribune. Within a decade, thousands of Linotype machines will be in use around the world. With a Linotype machine one keyboard operator can cast a line of type at a time, doing the work of the three men required to hand-set the type of other printing presses. It is because the machine sets type one line at a time that Whitelaw Reid, the editor of the New York Tribune, gave the Linotype its name. The machine was invented, patented, and improve by Ottmar Mergenthaler.
Read the rest of this entry » » »
Link Round-Up: June 30, 2009
Resources
6 Gorgeous Twitter Visualizations – Mashable takes a look at ways to graphically visualize the Twittersphere.
How to drive a Model T – Henry Ford Estate volunteer, Ed Hebb describes the intricacies of driving the ubiquitous Model T. Produced for the Henry Ford Estate’s “Centennial of the Model T ” celebration.
Inside the World’s Greatest Keyboard – PC World salutes the greatest keyboard EVER made, the IBM Model-M, the standard by which all other keyboards must be judged. (Check the Flickr photos.)
Never reboot Ubuntu Again – Ksplice Uptrack is a new service that lets you effortlessly keep your systems up to date and secure, without rebooting.
Top 10 Firefox 3.5 Features – Firefox 3.5 is a pretty substantial update to the popular open-source browser, and it’s just around the corner. See what features, fixes, and clever new tools are worth getting excited about in the next big release.
Read the rest of this entry » » »
Geek Media Round-Up: June 30, 2009
Internet
- College Humor presents Web Site Story, a modern take on a classic musical. (Come to think of it, Pandora is just like hanging out at a hipster bar.)
Literature
- Free Fiction: “Droidmaker” by Michael Rubin is now available as a free download. Droidmaker is a history of Lucasfilm, the creation of Pixar, and more.
- The Electric Velocipede Blog asks Have you ever bought a Book for its Design?
- When The Lord of the Rings doesn’t cut it: Confessions of a fantasy junkie.
Science
- NASA has found the missing Moon landing tapes. Viewers have only ever seen poor quality footage of the original landing because the original analogue tapes containing the pictures beamed direct from the lunar surface were lost almost as soon as they were recorded.
Television
- Breaking news from Stephen Colbert: The Dead Can Twitter.
- Michael Emerson discusses the coming season of Lost.
Video Games
- Neatorama has posted a stop motion video of Classic Arcade Games recreated with Legos.
- Soon, WoW players will be able to switch sides… could this mean the end of the Alliance?
Book Releases for the Week of June 29, 2009
New Releases
2042: The Battle is Coming by Frederick Ransom Gray
Tate Publishing. (ISBN-13: 978-1606965443) Paperback. Length: 284pp
Everyone fights. Few survive… In 2042: The Battle is Coming, brilliant bio-chemical discoveries elevate the Dark Forces of Evil (DFOE) to superpower status. Emperor Vuunderjahr’s relentless pursuit of global domination leads him to a systematic enslavement and dehumanization of the world’s population. Only three wayward field operatives remain active from the once-prominent Free World. The agents unexpectedly join allegiance with wacky rebels, known as Beaters. Their mission: vanquish Dr. Vuunderjahr and the DFOE empire, thereby restoring freedoms to a lost world. Meanwhile, they’re all too familiar with the realization that The Battle is Coming.
Hazards by Mike Resnick
Subterranean. (ISBN-13: 978-1596062306) Hardcover. Length: 280pp
After his Adventures in Africa, his Exploits in Asia, and his Encounters in Europe, everyone’s favorite man of the cloth, the irrepressible Right Reverend Honorable Doctor Lucifer Jones, is back to tell you about the Hazards he encounters in South America. They include the terrifying Island of Annoyed Souls, the discovery of the Lost Continent of Moo (spelled correctly for a change), a battle with safari ants that even Charlton Heston wouldn’t want any part of, and a pair of Bird Girls who live in matching Chartreuse Mansions.
Read the rest of this entry » » »
This Day in Geek History: June 30
1879
The first electric company in the US to produce and sell electricity California Electric Light Company is established in San Francisco, California.
1905
Albert Einstein publishes the article “On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies“, wherein he introduces the concept of special relativity.
1908
At around 7:15am, northwest of Lake Baikal, Russia, a huge fireball nearly as bright as the Sun is seen crossing the sky. Minutes later, there is a huge flash and a shock wave felt up to 400 miles (650km) away. Over Tunguska, a meteorite traveling at over 60,000mph (25km per second) penetrates Earth’s atmosphere, heats to about 10,000°C, and detonates 3 to 4 miles (6 to 10km) above the ground. The blast releases the energy of 10-50 Megatons of TNT, destroying 830 square miles (2,150 sq km) of forest (approximately 80 million trees) and leaving no trace of life. The Tunguska rock came out of the Taurid Meteor storm that crosses Earth’s orbit twice a year. Read more about The Tunguska Event.
1930
The first US broadcast to be transmitted globally takes place, using a series of short-wave radio relays with only a one-eighth of a second delay. The broadcast, a live oration from Clyde D. Wagoner, originates at station W2XAD in Schenectady, New York.
Read the rest of this entry » » »
Geek Quote of the Day
A man has no reason to be ashamed of having an ape for his grandfather. If there were an ancestor whom I should feel shame in recalling it would rather be a man — a man of restless and versatile intellect — who… plunges into scientific questions with which he has no real acquaintance, only to obscure them by an aimless rhetoric, and distract the attention of his hearers from the real point at issue by eloquent digressions and skilled appeals to religious prejudice.
- - Thomas Henry Huxley, replying to Bishop Samuel Wilberforce during a debate on Darwin’s theory of evolution at the meeting of the British Association at Oxford, June 30, 1860.
Geek Media Round-Up: June 29, 2009
Film
- According to sources, Stan Lee is set to appear in Iron Man 2 as Larry King.
- IGN names the Top Ten Summer Soldiers of the silver screen, starting with Vasquez from Aliens.
Internet
- Bloggasm wonders if Tor Books is seeking to become the Amazon of science fiction and fantasy?
- Check out CNN’s coverage of this year’s Webby Awards and its recipients’ five-word acceptance speeches.
- OnlineDegreesHubs has compiled a list of 12 Celebs Who Give Geeks Hope for Fame and Fortune.
- There, I Fixed It is the latest internet meme to gain steam. It feature pictures of half-assed repairs and mods of everything from cars to silverware.
