The Great Geek Manual

Humor is everywhere,
in that there’s irony in just about anything a human does.

- Bill Nye
“The Science Guy Grows Up,” an interview with Wired.com, April 2005.

Read the complete interview online at Wired.com.

1856
The US Copyright Act is extended to include dramatic works.

1868
French astronomer Pierre Jules César Janssen discovers helium in the solar spectrum during an eclipse.

1869
Canadian Patent Number 1 is issued to W. Hamilton. The very first Canadian patent, issued before the official numbering series, was granted in 1791 by the Governor General to Angus MacDonnel, a Scottish soldier garrisoned in Quebec City.

1904
The Belle Isle Aquarium opens in the Detroit, Michigan, in the United States. Visit the park’s official website.
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1877
Asaph Hall discovers the moon Phobos in orbit around Mars.

1891
The automobile electric self-starter is patented.

1896
Bridget Driscoll of Croydon, Surrey becomes the first pedestrian killed by a motor vehicle in Britain. While on a terrace in the grounds of Crystal Palace, London, she was knocked down by a car traveling at four miles per hour, and she subsequently dies minutes later of head injuries. The car, owned by the Anglo-French Motor Car (Roger-Benz) Company, was being demonstrated to the public by employee Arthur Edsell. According to accounts, he was talking to a young female passenger beside him. He had had only been driving for three weeks, and had tampered with an engine belt to make the car travel faster. After a six-hour inquest, a jury will return a verdict of “accidental death.” and no prosecution resulted against the driver or the company.
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Life isn’t divided into genres. It’s a horrifying, romantic, tragic, comical, science-fiction cowboy detective novel.
You know, with a bit of pornography if you’re lucky.

- Alan Moore
In an interview with The Mustard magazine, January 2005.

1858
Queen Victoria sends the first official telegraph message across the Atlantic Ocean from London to United States President James Buchanan, in Washington D.C. Transmission of the congratulatory message begins at 10:50am and won’t be completed until 4:30am the next day, taking nearly eighteen hours to reach Newfoundland, Canada. Ninety-nine words, containing five hundred nine letters, is transmitted at a rate of about two minutes per letter. The message is forwarded from Newfoundland via above ground wires, across the Cabot Strait by submarine cable to Aspy Bay in Cape Breton, and across eastern Canada and Maine, via Boston to New York by an overhead wire. A test messages were exchanged for ten days before this inaugural. Due to the weak signal strength of the connection, the service will be shutdown within a few weeks.

1890
The United States Census Bureau announces the results from the latest census, which have been tabulated using the new mechanical punch card tabulator invented by Herman Hollerith. The machine is capable of processing ten time as much data as a human clerk, drastically reducing the amount of time it required to compile the results of the census.
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To me, the basic technology is the word, I mean that’s not technology, that is a fruit of technology. The clue with technology is the “logy” bit – technology means writing about a body of knowledge. The word is the mother technology, all technologies are based upon the word, the word is the primal technology. Dealing with language, dealing with being a writer, you’re gonna be dealing with language. If it’s comics, then that will involve a pictorial element, but a lot of the basic things are the same.

- Alan Moore in “The Craft” an interview by Daniel Whiston
Engine Comics, January 2005.

1877
Thomas Alva Edison coins the word “Hello” as a greeting as an alternative to the one suggested by inventor Alexander Bell, “Ahoy, Ahoy.” He remarks in a letter to a friend in Pittsburgh, “I don’t think we shall need a call bell as Hello! can be heard 10 to 20 feet away. What do you think?”

Thomas Edison makes the first-ever audio recording, “Mary Had a Little Lamb.”
Hear the recording at NPR Radio

1918
The Sinking of the Lusitania, written and directed by Winsor McCay, is released in the US. It is the first full-length feature cartoon film, featuring over twenty five thousand individual drawings which took twenty-two months to produce. The twelve minute silent film is a an educational explanation of the sinking of the RMS Lusitania. It’s the first of many such films published with the express intent of generating anti-German sentiment during World War I.

1939
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) premieres the fantasy film The Wizard of Oz, directed by Victor Fleming, among several other uncredited directors, and starring Judy Garland, Frank Morgan, Ray Bolger, Jack Haley, Bert Lahr, Billie Burke, and Margaret Hamilton, at Grauman’s Chinese Theater in Hollywood, California. While it isn’t the first film presented in color, it’s the film that brings Technicolor into the mainstream. It will be released nationwide August 25, 1939. IMDB listing MPAA Rating: G
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A collection of amazing Physics Tattoos, including a whole lotta Pi!

A New Morning has a great tutorial on How to Create The Ultimate Windows XP Installation CD/DVD.

Girls Do Play D&D. Eat your heart out boys.

Jason Scott’s collection of BBS-era graphics and advertisements are guaranteed to make you feel as if you’ve actually been there.

Ntndo is a blog of all things Mario.

Springfield Punx, which Simpsonizes superheroes and celebrities. Unsurprisingly, Aquaman still looks gay as ever.

This list of Retired Ben & Jerry’s Flavors is very likely going to leave you hungry.

Can’t survive without your Wiki? WikiTax is a portable application that lets you carry the wiki of your choice with you.

Working on group projects for school or the office is much easier with these 10 Free Tools for Collaboration.