The Great Geek Manual

1477
William Caxton issues his first dated printed book in England, Dictes or Sayengis of the Philosophres (“Sayings of the Philosophers). Caxton will produce approximately one hundred copies of the work.

1879
Eugen Skladanowsky presents the first public projection of photographs at the Floria Theatre in Berlin.

1894
The “New York World” published the first regular Sunday comic section.

1929
Vladimir Kozmich Zworykin demonstrates a television receiving system called the Kinescope to the Institute of Radio Engineers in the US.

1951
See It Now hosted by Edward R. Murrow becomes the first live coast-to-coast commercial television broadcast in the US. The program will become well know for its high journalistic standards.
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Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes.
Art is knowing which ones to keep.

- The Dilbert Principle by Scott Adams, 1996.

Geeks take cover! It’s going to be a rough weekend at theaters. Not even the testosterone fest that is Quantum of Solace will be enough to counter-balance the millions of teenage girls who will be flooding theaters this weekend to see Twilight (PG-13) or the squealing hordes of nose-pickers that poor in to see the latest animated offering, Bolt (PG).

Video Releases

• Wall-E (G)

Television

• Bones: Season 3
• Complete Monty Python Flying Circus
• Doctor Who: The Complete Fourth Series
• Star Trek: The Original Series – Season 3

Re-Releases & New Formats

• 300 [Collector's Edition]
• Zombie Diaries [WS]

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1947
The first transistor, a solid-state amplifier made of germanium, plastic, and gold, is invented by Walter Brattain and John Bardeen in a series of experiments conducted between November 17 and December 23.

1960
Customer trials of the world’s first electronic Telephone Central Office in Morris, Illinois begin.

1967
Surveyor 6 becomes first man-made object to lift off the Moon.

1970
Douglas Engelbart receives a patent for the first computer mouse. (US No. 3541541) The patent, titled “X-Y Position Indicator for a Display System,” is a simple hollowed-out wooden block, with a single push button on top.
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You can never underestimate the stupidity of the general public.

- The Dilbert Future by Scott Adams, 1997.

1904
John Ambrose Fleming invents the vacuum tube, otherwise known as the thermionic valve. The valve consists of a carbon or tungsten filament lamp with a metal plate insulated from the filament and a wire through the glass wall of the bulb to a third terminal outside. When battery current is applied to the filament, the space between the filament and the insulated plate will conduct electrons in just one direction. Vacuum tubes are used to amplify, switch, or otherwise modify, a signal by controlling the movement of electrons in an evacuated space, and they will remain the basis of electronic technology for decades to come.

1942
Construction of an experimental atomic pile begins. The pile will be used to investigate the world’s first artificial nuclear chain reaction under Stagg Field at the University of Chicago. The later research will be an important contribution to the Manhattan Project, a project to develop nuclear weapons.

1962
The International Business Machines (IBM) Data Processing Division (DPD) announces the IBM 1062 teller terminal and the IBM 7710 data communication unit.

1965
The Soviet Union launches the Venera 3 space probe on a mission to land on the surface of Venus, though the pressure of the planet’s atmosphere crushed the probe before it relayed any data.
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Science fiction is the search for a definition of mankind and his status in the universe which will stand in our advance but confused state of knowledge (science), and is characteristically cast in the Gothic or post-Gothic mode.

- Trillion Year Spree by Brian Aldiss, 1986.

Movie: “Quantum of Solace”

Rating: Rated PG-13 for intense violence and action, some sexual content.
Release: November 14
Running Time: 1 hr 35 min
Starring: Daniel Craig, Mathieu Amalric, Olga Kurylenko, Gemma Arterton, Judi Dench… IMDB listing

Verdict: Daniel Craig falls far short of his processors in the role of Bond and I was heart-broken that there was no scene with Q or some other gadget guy, but Quantum of Solace has all the marvelously cliche thrills you’ve come to expect from the James Bond franchise, so goes down as a “must see” in my book.

Seriously, I don’t know why you’re even reading a review. Every straight male under sixty and over ten in the western world is going to see this film at some point in the next eighteen months. Just give in, and go see it on the big screen where it was meant to be seen, already!

Synopsis:
Picking up just hours after the end of the previous Bond film, Casino Royale, Bond’s turns his captive, Mr. White over to M, only to have him assassinated right under their nose. Bond’s only link to truth regarding his fallen lover Vesper is a hotel room number linked to the dirty agent who pulled off the assassination.

Striking out on his own, Bond pursues the lead to Haiti in search of the mastermind behind the secret organization of which White spoke before dying. There, driven by a need to unravel the truth behind Vesper’s death, he kicks off a rocky relationship with a mysterious maiden in distress, is forced to flee MI6 agent, and is drawn deeper into the mysterious organization plotting to exploit the planet’s most precious natural resource.
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