The Great Geek Manual

Art

• Check out this Steampunk Headset over at Flickr.

Film

• Mental Floss runs down the Top Ten Movie Misquotations, which include some of (what I thought were) the best movie lines of all time!
• Who deserves the number one slot on the The 10 Most Talentless People In Movies, Arnold Schwarzenegger or Paris Hiltion? Cuz I’m thinking Paris.
• Wired’s Geeky Movies’ Top 10 Coolest Kids is completely invalidated by the fact that they place Princess Leia in slot number one, totally ignoring at least a half dozen candidates that I can think of right off the top of my head.

Internet

• To the list of The 10 Villains Who Deserved Better, may I just add the Green Goblin from the 2002 Spider-Man film?
• Queen’s University Belfast is offering a course entitled Feel the Force: How to Train in the Jedi Way that will teach the “real-life psychological techniques behind Jedi mind tricks”.
• These Stop-Motion Lego Videos keep The Original Star Wars spirit alive.

Literature

• Blood & Rhetoric looks at two trends in fantasy and science fiction, Mysterious Cloaked Figures and Bare, Tattooed Chests.
• GoodRead interviews Neil Gaiman on his upcoming novel, The Graveyard Book.
• The recipients of the British Fantasy Award have been announced.

… being a Linux user is sort of like living in a house inhabited by a large family of carpenters and architects. Every morning when you wake up, the house is a little different. Maybe there is a new turret, or some walls have moved. Or perhaps someone has temporarily removed the floor under your bed.

- Unix for Dummies, 2nd Edition by John R. Levine, 1995.

1642
Harvard College in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the oldest college in the United States, holds its first commencement exercises.

1837
Morse enters into an agreement with Alfred Vail, whose father owns Speedwell Iron Works. Morse develops his caveat showing the invention and alphabet code. It is sent to his old classmate and Commissioner of Patents, Henry L. Ellsworth, in Washington.

1846
German astronomer Johann Gottfried Galle verifies the position of the eighth planet, Neptune, as predicted through astronomical calculations made by French astronomer Urbain Jean Joseph Le Verrier and British astronomer John Couch Adams. Galle discovers Neptune after only an hour of searching, within one degree of the position that had been computed by Le Verrier. Independently of the English astronomer John C. Adams, Le Verrier had calculated the size and position of a previously unknown planet, which he assumed influenced the irregular orbit of Uranus, and he asked Galle to look for it.
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Alright, who the hell posted photos of my apartment… and did they make it out alive?

Dark Roasted Blend has posted a gallery of Over the Top Limousines to gawk at.

Mental Math Tricks to speed up the sums that come up in the course of the day.

Rely heavily on Firefox? These 28 Cool Firefox About:Config Tricks will come in handy.

TechRadar share 8 Hacks to Make Firefox Ridiculously Fast.

The Star Sower is a statue designed to be viewed at night.

The Ten Most Puzzling Ancient Artifacts ever discover includes a battery from 248 B.C.

These Indecent Hello Kitty Products are proof of how low a brand can stoop.

Website Warnings that would make the Internet a better place to live visit.

Wow! Check out this amazing Homemade Portable Nintendo 64.

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Suggest you own caption below!

1869
Richard Wagner’s opera Das Rheingold, the first of the four operas that comprise Der Ring des Nibelungen, debuts in Munich.

1888
The terms ampere, ohm, and volt are indoctrinated at the Electrical Conference in Paris, France.

1893
The Duryea Brothers publicly demonstrate their automobile, the first to be built in America, two days after it’s completion in Springfield, Illinois. In 1896, the brothers will found the first company in the world to manufacture gasoline powered automobiles.

1955
The first commercial television broadcast in Britain is transmitted by Rediffusion, an Independent Television (ITV) contractor, in London. The first advertisement shown at 9:12pm shows Gibbs SR toothpaste in a block of ice. The ad was produced by AB-Pathé.

1964
The televsion series The Man From U.N.C.L.E., staring Robert Vaughn as Napoleon Solo premieres on the NBC network with the episode “The Vulcan Affair.” The series will run for one hundred five episodes, or just less than four seasons. IMDB entry
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Some people never go crazy.
What truly horrible lives they must lead.

- “Betting on the Muse” by Charles Bukowski

1784
The Pennsylvania Packet and Daily Advertiser, the first daily paper in America, is first published.

1897
The The New York Sun runs a letter sent in by Virginia O’Hanlon, asking, “I am eight years old. Some of my friends say there is no Santa Claus. Papa says, ‘If you see it in “The Sun”, it’s so.’ Please tell me the truth. Is there a Santa Claus?” Along with the letter, the paper runs the famous response written by editor Frank Church. “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist. No Santa Claus? Thank God he lives and lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay ten times 10,000 years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.” Read the text of the original article and view digital images of the original newspaper.

strong>1937
The Hobbit written by J.R.R. Tolkien, a professor at Oxford University, is first published. Visit the official Tolkien website.

1972
Texas Instruments, Inc. (TI) enters the electronic calculator market with three new calculators. The TI-2500 or the Datamath offers four-function, full-floating decimal point with an eight-digit Light Emitting Diode (LED) display. The unit is also rechargeable and works with AC or DC power sources. It sells for US$119.95. The desktop models, the TI-3000 and TI-3500 sell for under US$85 and US$100 respectively. Both are four-function with gas-discharge displays. The TI-3000 has an eight digit display and the TI-3500 has a ten digit display. Dealers are required to order a minimum of 96 per model to stock them. They are the first patented calculators on the market.
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