The Great Geek Manual

“Mammals of every species indulge in play. Games are Nature’s way of preparing us to face difficult realities.”

Daemon by Daniel Suarez, 2006.
Chapter 45: Respawning, Character: Sobel

Art

• The Tiny Art Director tells the tale of an artist struggling to create art that meets with his daughter’s approval. Cute in a LOLCats sorta way.

Film

• Entertainment Weekly has a Watchmen Primer for all the Watchmen virgins out there.
• The first response to the Watchmen film is in from Wil Wheaton.
• How fraked up is this? The little kids who starred in the now world-famous Slumdog Millionaire are still living in the slums.

Internet

• io9 takes a look at the most ridiculous evil twins in science fiction.
• Not a Planet Anymore runs down a list of the Top 10 Doctors of Sci-Fi, but bizarrely, omits Dr. Who.
• SFX asks who The Greatest Screen Vampires of All Time are. Funny, I’m reading through the forums and no one has nominated the Twilight crew. Hmmm…

Literature

• Free Fiction: Read “Last Men in London” by Olaf Stapledon and “My Father, the Cat” by Henry Slesar at ManyBooks.
• Free Fiction: Read “The Man Who Saw the Future” by Edward Hamilton and “Reluctant Genius” by Henry Slesar at Feedbooks.

Television

• The fans are growing desperate. They’ve begun explaining Why you shouldn’t quit watching Dollhouse.
• Lisa Paitz Spindler has attempted to get a handle on the BattleStar Galactica series by creating her own BSG Timeline.
• With Conan O’Brien moving up the ladder to The Tonight Show soon, Manofest takes a look back at The 15 Funniest Moments in Late Night with Conan O’Brien History.

Video Games

• Despite the rising popularity of video games, PC Gaming is on the decline.
• Media Shift discusses the Gartner Hype Cycle as it applies to Second Life as Reuters closes its Second Life Bureau.

1792
US President George Washington signs the Postal Service Act, creating the United States Postal Service. Under the act, letters can be delivered within thirty miles for six cents and within one hundred fifty miles for twelve and a half cents.

1937
The first successful automobile-airplane hybrid, the Arrowbile, is completed. Its first flight will take place the next day, February 21, 1937. The vehicle has a top speed of 120mph in the air and 70mph on the ground. The Arrowbile was designed by aeroengineer Waldo Dean Waterman and five were built by the Westerman Arrowplane Corporation of Santa Monica, California. The Studebaker Corporation, which supplied the hundred horsepower engines, eventually took delivery of the Arrowbiles.
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“You never understood games. Maybe that’s why the world was such a mystery to you.”

Daemon by Daniel Suarez, 2006.
Chapter 45: Respawning, Character: Sobel
The Great Geek Manual
is proud to be sponsored by Host Color
 

Art

• io9 has posted Tron 2 concept art that will make fanboys everywhere squee with delight. …except… where exactly do you sit on that light cycle?

Film

• io9 lists 9 Scifi Books That Deserve To Be Films.

Internet

• condition:human is a new science fiction web series. The trailer looks very stylish and is all the more impressive given it’s made with no budget. The finished series is going to be six fifteen minute episodes. The story sounds Bladerunner-esque: near future, AI level companion robots, moral questions about the robots.
• Den of Geek runs down 10 Twinkie sightings in films and TV.
• From the desk of “Oh Jesus, It’s happening for real” comes news that the first clone of an extinct animal has been created.

Literature

• Free Fiction: Preview “White Witch, Black Curse” by Kim Harrison. Buy it February 24th.
• Free Fiction: Read the zombie novel “The Nymphos of Rocky Flats” by Mario Acevedo free today through February 24th at the HarperCollins website.
• Author Richard K. Morgan discusses Tolkien at Suvudu. “The great shame is, of course, that Tolkien was not able (or inclined) to mine this vein of experience for what it was really worth – in fact he seemed to be in full, panic-stricken flight from it.”
• It’s official. Terry Pratchett has been knighted.
• Science spends millions proving what every little kid already knew: Brain scans suggest that readers build vivid mental simulations of narrative situations.

This is a guest post from laptopLogic.com – make sure to check out their big selection of laptop reviews where you can find your ultimate inexpensive laptop.

With the Kindle 2 coming out, there’s a mass flurry over eBooks once again. The idea of carrying a digital library in ones pocket is absolutely thrilling to some (and sacrilege to others).

Who wants to spend hundreds of dollars on an ebook reader, though? Do you read enough books in a year to justify that cost? Assuming you spend a ‘mere’ $200 on an eReader, you could by 33 $5.99 paperbacks–or almost three books a month every month. Do you read that often?

If you’ve already got a smartphone of some sorts (or an audio player that is similar, a la iPod Touch), then you’ve already got the hardware to make your own eReader. With a few simple steps, you can have your own pocket library for less than $20.
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1856
The first US patent for the tintype photographic picture process is issued to Professor Hamilton L. Smith of Gambier, Ohio, “For the Use of Japanned Metallic Plates in Photography” to obtain “positive impressions upon a japanned surface previously prepared upon an iron or other metallic plate or sheets; and it consists in the use of collodion and a solution of a salt of silver and an ordinary camera.” (US No. 14,300) The patent describes the preparation of the black varnish, along with the varnish’s application and baking.

1878
Thomas Edison patents the phonograph. His first recording is of himself reciting “Mary Had a Little Lamb” by speaking into the device’s large horn, which transmits vibrations to a needle, which inscribes a recording onto a tin-foil cylinder, which is rotated by hand. (US No. 200,521) Read an excellent history of the Edison phonograph at the US Library of Congress website.

1946
Alan Turing presents the “Proposal for the Development in the Mathematics Division of an Automatic Computing Engine (ACE)” to a meeting of the Executive Committee of the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) in Teddington, England.

1970
The Soviet Union launches the Sputnik 52 space probe and the Molniya 1-13 communications satellite.
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Our first computers were born not out of greed or ego but in the revolutionary spirit of helping common people rise above the most powerful institutions.

- Steve Wozniak in a Newsweek review, February 19, 1996.