The Great Geek Manual

Create wall-sized rasterized images for free with Rasterbator.

Gizmodo has a gallery of Famous Art “Improved” with modern technology.

Holy Crap! A man was killed by an exploding Lava Lamp. Time to rethink my decor.

Finally! A place where you can Snicker at Tip Jars without feeling bad.

I’ll ignore this list of Fifty Ways to Take Your Blog to the Next Level, but maybe they’ll help you.

Looks like Penny Arcade didn’t like the new Microsoft commercials any more than the rest of us did.

Mashable shares Eleven Tools to Help You Save Sites for Reading Later.

Smashing Magazine shares 75 Useful Javascript Techniques and links to even more.

The Top Eleven Ways Geeks Are Surviving the Financial Meltdown, including Cryogenic stasis.

These Six Tools to Help you Analyze a Web Host are helpful when tracking someone down.

1662
John Flamsteed records his first astronomical observations during a solar eclipse from his home in Derby at the age of sixteen. He corresponds with other astronomers regarding the observations, beginning a long career that will eventually lead him to become the Astronomer Royal of England.

1835
Charles Darwin arrives at the Galapagos Islands aboard the HMS Beagle. Over the coming five weeks, he will study the wildlife, which will inspire his theory of natural selection.

1908
Automotive manufacturer General Motors is founded. Visit the official GM website.

1983
Imagic eliminates forty of its one hundred seventy employees, due to the slowdown in the video game industry.

Infocom releases the interactive fiction game Infidel for personal computers. It is Infocom’s tenth game.
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If we had a reliable way to label our toys good and bad, it would be easy to regulate technology wisely. But we can rarely see far enough ahead to know which road leads to damnation. Whoever concerns himself with big technology, either to push it forward or to stop it, is gambling in human lives.

- Disturbing the Universe by Freeman Dyson, 1979.

1616
The first non-aristocratic, free public school in Europe opens in Frascati, Italy.

1835
Charles Darwin reaches the Galápagos Islands aboard the HMS Beagle.

1910
Cosmic radiation is first suggested as the subject of a paper published in Physikalische Zeitchrift by amateur physicist Theodor Wulf. He reports the results of four days of observations he made the previous Spring from the top of the Eiffel Tower. He suggests that the Earth is under constant bombardment from radiation from outer space, from sources other than the Sun.

1916
The first tanks in history, the British D1 takes, are used for the first time in history at the Battle of the Somme, during the course of World War I.

1928
A.H. Renfell and Captain Rickards demonstrate the first robot made in Britain at the Model Engineering Exhibition in London.
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When we can drain the Ocean into mill-ponds, and bottle up the Force of Gravity by retail, in gas jars; then may we hope to comprehend the infinitudes of man’s soul under formulas of Profit and Loss; and rule over this too, as over a patent engine, by checks, and valves, and balances.

- Signs of the Times by Thomas Carlyle, 1829.

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1886
The first US patent for a typewriter ribbon is issued to George Kerr Anderson of Memphis, Tennessee. (US No. 349,026) The ribbons each contain a portion near the end of the ribbon that is colored differently from the rest to notify the operator that the direction of the ribbon feed needs to be reversed. Although the innovation results in type of a different color, it’s text isn’t lost. Previous uniformly colored ribbons would result in rapidly fading type as a consequence of the ribbon coming to the end of its reel and being left in its place.

1920
Paul Specht & His Orchestra become the first dance band to be broadcast over the radio in the US, on station WWJ in Detroit, Michigan.

1927
Gene Austin records My Blue Heaven for Victor Records. It will be the first “modern song” to become a major hit, selling an estimated five million copies.

1958
The first German post-war rockets, designed by the German engineer Ernst Mohr, reach the upper atmosphere.
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Science and technology multiply around us. To an increasing extent they the languages in which we speak and think. Either we use those languages, or we remain mute.

- J.G. Ballard in the introduction ot the French edition of Crash, 1974.

1898
Reverend Hannibal Williston Goodwin receives a patent for his celluloid photographic film, which he describes as “nitro cellulose transparent flexible photographic film pellicles.” (US No. 610,861)

1899
The first American automobile fatality occurs when Henry H. Bliss is run over as he exits a streetcar at the intersection of Central Park West and 74th Street in New York City. He steps into the path of an approaching horseless carriage driven by Arthur Smith. Bliss, age 68, is taken to a hospital, where he will die of his injuries. The driver is arrested and held on US$1,000 bail.

1922
The world’s highest shade temperature is recorded at the African village of Al Aziziyah, about twenty-five miles (40km) south of Tripoli, the capital of Libya. Temperatures reach upwards of 136.4 ºF (58 ºC). The village is a major trade center of the Jifarah plain, just a few miles south of the Mediterranean Sea.

1956
International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) introduces the first commercial computer to feature a magnetic disk storage system (hard drive), the IBM 305 RAMAC. The drive itself, which was introduced on September 4, features fifty double-sided twenty-four inch diameter disks or “platters,” each of which is operated by an arm and one read/write head. Each disk has a capacity of about 5MB each, with a transfer rate is 8800 characters per second. RAMAC is an acronym for “Random Access Method of Accounting and Control.” It marks a revolution in computing as it the first business computer designed to provide businesses with real time accounting. In 1957, the first RAMAC will be installed at Chrysler’s MOPAR Division.
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