The Great Geek Manual

So guess what I just got in the mail last night?

A pumpkin from the promotional team of the upcoming film, Coraline!

I was completely surprised. They wrote to tell me that they were sending “promotional materials,” but I never would have guessed that they’d FedEx me a pumpkin. As if they needed to send me a pumpkin to get me excited about a movie based on a Neil Gaiman novel.

Coraline will be released February 6, 2009. If you haven’t already read the book, you should pick it up. It’s one of those kids’ books, like Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Momo that does a great job capturing the imagination of adults as well as kids. As a matter of fact, there’s enough homage in Coraline to both Alice and Momo to fuel a thesis, but I digress…

Oh, the pumpkin even came with a card from the film’s director, Henry Selick:
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The harvest moon hangs round and high
It dodges clouds high in the sky,
The stars wink down their love and mirth
The Autumn season is giving birth.
Oh, it must be October
The leaves of red bright gold and brown,
To Mother Earth come tumbling down,
The breezy nights the ghostly sights,
The eerie spooky far off sounds
Are signs that it’s October.
The pumpkins yellow,. big and round
Are carried by costumed clumsy clowns
It’s Halloween - let’s celebrate.

- It Must be October by Pearl N. Sorrels.

Art

• I have officially discovered the most annoying song EVER! The Halloween Theme Song. It’s going to take me weeks to get it out of my head.

Film

• In case you were curious, the LA Times scared up a list of the The 20 Horror Movies with the Biggest Opening Weekends. The Grudge tops the list at US$39 million.
• Topless Robot lists The 8 Least Terrifying Ghosts of All Time, utterly forgetting Bill Cosby in Ghost Dad and Bruce Willis in the Sixth Sense!

Internet

• The Atlas of Cyberspace is now available online for free, so you can print out the illustrations or set them as desktops, which is what I wished I could do the entire time I was browsing the hardcopy.

Literature

• Free Fiction: Listen to part one and part two of “The Creature from Cleveland Depths” by Fritz Leiber.
• Free Fiction: Listen old time radio programs including the infamous “War of the Worlds” over at Listening Booth.

Television

• Interview: The Galactica Sitrep Blog has posted an extensive interview with producer and writer, Michael Taylor, who talks about the writing process.
• A ten minute preview of Sam Raimi’s Legend of the Seeker, the series based on Wizard’s First Rule, is online, and the first thirty minutes of the premiere episode are free on iTunes.

Video Games

• According to a recent study eleven percent of gamers have unopened games.

13 Haunted Houses That Will Make You Wet Your Pants in 2007!

Become one of the web dead. Erase Your Online Identity in 10 Steps.

Build your own Steampunk Cane, inspired by the GirlGenius webcomic.

Did anyone known that Ctrl-Alt-Delete’s Tim Buckley is one of the Internet’s 10 Most Hated People?

Dvice has posted an awesome gallery of Amazing Star Wars Dollar Bill Origami, including the Millenium Falcon.

Effectize posted a fairly cool list: 89 Ways for You to Become the Coolest Programmer in the World.

Five crazy real world Situations that began with World of Warcraft, most of them depressingly pathetic.

One costume sure to either clear out the room or bring out the perverts: PedoBear!

The Guardian has published a photo gallery on the History of the JetPack

This gallery of Amazing Jack-O-Lanterns is sure to leave you feeling inadequate, but it’s cool anyway.

In the United States, today is National Candy Corn Day as well as Mischief Night, which, is also known as Devil’s Night in some areas.

1888
John L. Loud of Weymouth, Massachusetts is granted the first U.S. patent on a ballpoint pen. (US No. 392,046) The pen uses a revolving spherical marking point held in place by three smaller anti-friction bearings, which are held in place in turn by a spring-loaded rod. The pen was designed to be used on rough surfaces unsuitable for the nib of a traditional pen. Fifty-seven years later, the first mass-produced pens would be sold at Gimbels Department Stores in New York City for US$12.95.

1925
John Logie Baird completes Britain’s first television transmitter and broadcasts the first television transmission in London, England, a moving image with greyscale gradations, from his attic workroom in 22 Frith Street. Baird built the from a tea chest, cardboard scanning discs, an empty biscuit box, old electric motors, darning needles, motorcycle lamp lenses, piano wire, glue, string, and sealing wax. The image he transmits is the head of a dummy.

1937
69230 Hermes passes within 485,000 miles of Earth, the closest approach to the Earth of any asteroid. It was discovered and photographed by Karl Reinmuth. Within five days of its discover, it will pass outside of observation distance, until it will be re-discovered in 2003.
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Never trust anything that can think for itself
if you can’t see where it keeps its brain.

- Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling, 1999.
Character: Arthur Weasley

Source: Initiative Deutschland

I honestly don’t know what’s up with the creepy little girl. She just started popping up everywhere a few days day. If anyone has an explanation other than the fact that the Internet loves viral memes, please share.

Update: I’ve found out that people call her Disaster Girl, but that her real name is Zoe and, evidently, she is the new Fail, thanks to BuzzFeed. Poor kid.

Suggest you own caption below!

1675
Leibniz introduces the long s (∫) to denote an integral in calculus equations.

1878
Willigot T. Odhner is granted a patent for a calculating machine that performs multiplications with repeated additions. The patent is a modified and compact version of the Gottfried von Leibniz stepped wheel.

1945
The first mass-produced ballpoint pen available in the US, the Reynolds’ Rocket pen, goes on sale at Gimbels Department Stores in New York for US$12.95 almost fifty-seven years to the day after the first U.S. patent for a ballpoint pen was granted . The item is an immediate success, selling US$100,000 worth in the first day on the market alone. The design is that of Laszlo Biró, discovered by Chicago businessman Milton Reynolds, while in Buenos Aires on unrelated business. He saw the Biro pen in a store and recognized the pen’s sales potential. He brought samples of the product back to America and, ignoring the patent rights of the Argentine manufacturer, the Eversharp Company, he began manufacturing the product four months later. The pens are extremely unreliable but incredibly popular. By 1948, the price of ink pens will drop to less than fifty cents, and Reynolds’ company will fail in 1951.

1956
The first hard disk drive is created at International Business Machines (IBM) by a team lead by Reynold B. Johnson. The IBM 305 RAMAC (Random Access Method of Accounting and Control) holds 5MB of data on fifty 24-inch disks which spin at 1,200 rpm in a case roughly the size of two refrigerators for at a price of about US$10,000 per megabyte. IBM leased the computers for US$3,200 per month.
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…the machine does not isolate man from the great problems of nature
but plunges him more deeply into them.

- Wind, Sand, and Stars by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, 1939.

Comics

• Bam Kapow has a great list of 10 Notable Pants Sh*ttingly Scary Comic Book Characters, starting with - you guessed it - the Joker.

Film

• The Chicago Tribune thinks that it’s compiled a list of the Top 25 scary Halloween Movies, but there’s not a single gore, splatter, or vintage zombie flick in the lot, leading me to believe this list’s author grew up in the early eighties, pre-cable. Still, more than a few of these gave me nightmares as a kid.
• Entertainment Weekly hops on the bandwagon with its own list of the Scariest Movies of all Time.
• Heartless Doll runs down the Top 10 Horror Movie Heroines.

Internet

• Topless Robot pointed us to a photo of a Slave Leia Pillow Fight over at Kontraband. No story, just a photo. It’s better that way, really. It leave us more latitude to imagine…

Literature

• Free Fiction: Read “The Girl Who Swallowed the Sky” by Jacqueline Bowen online at Aberrant Dreams.
• Free Fiction: Read “Souling Night” by Kelly Dunn online at Aberrant Dreams.
• Genre author Gregory Frost talks about the inevitable restrictions chain stores are placing on your book selection.
• Tor.com asks, What stops you from buying a book? My answer: it’s availability for free online, duh.

Television

• If the Star Trek reboot is a success, should they relaunch the original Star Trek series?

Video Games

• Heartless Doll has compiled a list of the Top 10 Ridiculous Awesome Undergarments Worn by Women in Video Games.

It is difficult not to wonder whether that combination of elements
which produces a machine for labor does not create also a soul of sorts,
a dull resentful metallic will, which can rebel at times.

- Pearl S. Buck, American author.

1636
A vote of the Great and General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony establishes the first college in what will later become the United States, The President and Fellows of Harvard College, which will later be renamed Harvard University.

1868
Thomas Alva Edison applies for his first patent, for an electrical vote recorder.

1946
A five-man commission of civilians is appointed by President Harry S. Truman to become The Atomic Energy Commission, which was established by the August 1, 1946 US Atomic Energy Act. The commission’s mission is to develop and utilize atomic energy for the public welfare, increasing the standard of living, strengthening free competition in private enterprise, and promoting world peace. It will first convene on November 13, 1946.

1970
The International Business Machines (IBM) Data Processing Division (DPD) announces two new products: the IBM System/3 Model 6 and IBM System/7, two low-cost computers for the factory, laboratory, and office.
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Come to think of it… a lot of superhero fashion is gay, and it seems like quite a few eighties icons were pushing the gay agenda…

New Releases

After the Downfall by Harry Turtledove
Night Shade Books. (ISBN: 978-1-59780-130-0) Hardcover. Price: $24.95 Length: 324pp
An alternate history fantasy novel in which the Russians invade Berlin in 1945, and a German officer finds himself transported to a magical world of wizards and unicorns. Publishers Weekly says the main character’s “slow enlightenment breaks no new ground, but his story will appeal to fans of Turtledove’s straightforward style and military know-how.”

The Company by K. J. Parker
Orbit. (ISBN: 978-0-316-03853-9) Hardcover. Length: 419pp Price: $24.99
A fantasy novel about five war veterans who colonize an abandoned island, whose friendship is strained by the discovery of gold. Publishers Weekly says “This exquisitely written novel by a pseudonymous popular author blends gritty military fantasy with the 18th-century ‘island story’ tradition.”

Dark Rain by Tony Richards
Harper. (ISBN: 978-0-06-147466-8) Mass market paperback. Length: 388pp Price: $7.99
Horror novel about a small town in Massachusetts inhabited by descendants of the witches who escaped the Salem witch trials.

Doomwyte by Brian Jacques
Philomel. (ISBN: 978-0-399-24544-2) Hardcover. Length: 373pp Price: $23.99
The latest young adult fantasy novel in the long-running Redwall animal fantasy series. This book tells the tale of the Doomwytes, sinister ravens in pursuit of a fabled treasure.

Foundation by Mercedes Lackey
DAW. (ISBN: 978-0-7564-0524-3) Hardcover. Length: 340pp Price: $25.95
A science fiction novel set in the Valdemar of Lackey’s earlier works, this book follows an orphan slave who is discovered to have special talents. Locus Magazine rather sardonically says that Lackey “returns to her tried-and-true formula: an abused child is rescued when Chosen by a Companion to become a Herald, and turns out to have special talents that may turn out to save the kingdom…”
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