The Great Geek Manual

From Around the Web

241543903 – If you do a Google image search on the number “241543903″ you will see a collection of photos in which people have their heads in a freezer. You will also see instructions for doing so. This meme appears to have begun with David Horvitz.

25 awesome Yahoo! UI Prototype JavaScript Components – Prototype JavaScript Framework is a JavaScript framework created by Sam Stephenson which provides an Ajax framework and other utilities to create dynamic web applications.

64 Things Every Geek Should Know – A techie geek is usually one who knows a little about everything, and is thus the person family and friends turn to whenever they have a question. If you’re that type of person and are looking for a few extra skills to pick up, or if you’re a newbie aiming to get a handhold on the honor that is geekhood, read on to find out what skills you need to know.

Artificial Intelligence Cracks 4,000-Year-Old Mystery – An ancient script that’s defied generations of archaeologists has yielded some of its secrets to artificially intelligent computers.

Build your Own High-Speed Book Scanner – Using nothing more than two old camera and a heap of junk, you can build a device capable of scanning in an entire book without so much as creasing the spin. Paired with Google’s free OCR software, you’ve got yourself a powerful e-book converter. Read the rest of this entry » » »

There’s moments in your life that make you, that set the course of who you’re gonna be. Sometimes they’re little, subtle moments. Sometimes, they’re not. […] Bottom line is, even if you see ‘em coming, you’re not ready for the big moments. No one asks for their life to change, not really. But it does. So what are we, helpless? Puppets? No. The big moments are gonna come. You can’t help that. It’s what you do afterwards that counts. That’s when you find out who you are.

- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Episode: “Becoming: Part One”
Character: Whistler, played by Max Perlich.

This ridiculously awesome forty minute Lord Of The Rings fan film, The Hunt For Gollum, was created “by fans for fans,” but it’s not your average amateur production. It’s “adapted from elements of the appendices,” and it boasts a set of jaw-dropping production values.

The world will be able to watch it for free online beginning May 3rd, after it’s been screened at the Sci-Fi London convention. You can still check out the first and second film trailers now, though, at the official fan site.

Comics

• Alan Moore reads Rorschach’s Journal far more chillingly than Jackie Haley.
• Underwire interviews Neil Gaiman about his Final Love Letter to Batman.

Film

• Review: Variety is calling J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek a SciFi nirvana.
• Enjoy scripting your own film with this Michael Bay Mad Lib from HolyTaco.com.
• John Scalzi looks ahead to analyze this summer’s nerd-worthy movie releases.
• Reddit users are all over this editorial on How to Fix Star Wars. It turns out, there aren’t two people on all the internet who would have changed it in the same way.

Internet

• Cracked.com names 6 Evil Henchmen Who Sucked at their Job, but if you ask me, the list is a bit redundant. Name just two that were good at their job. See?
• McSweeney’s presents an Internet-Age Writing Syllabus and Course Overview. ENG 371WR: Writing for Nonreaders in the Postprint Era.
• Zombie Bible. Need I say more?

Literature

• Review: Matt Staggs reviews Lin Carter’s Imaginary Worlds: The Art of Fantasy. The beginning of this book has been recommended to burgeoning writers for generation, but this is the first time I’ve ever seen an explanation as to why.

Television

• Cracked.com reveals The Awful Secrets of 25 Famous Cartoon Characters.

Writing

• The Wall Street Journal has some interesting thoughts on How the E-Book Will Change the Way We Read and Write.
• Strictly Writing shares Ten things Only Writers Understand.

While I’m not a fan of clowns, I love this film. It looks a lot like the effect used in Watchmen, only far more extensive.

Finally! Someone can make the Where’s Waldo film America has been waiting so long for!

Book: Turn Coat
ISBN-13: 978-0451462565

Author: Jim Butcher
Series: The Dresden Files
Publisher: Roc Hardcover
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Release: April 7, 2009
Length: 432 pages (Hardcover)

Rating: A (100 / 100)

Verdict

This is easily the best book I’ve read since the last Dresden Files novel, Small Favor, and the thought of having to wait another full year for the next one is absolutely excruciating. As always, Butcher delivers wildly careening action, meme-worthy humor, and poignant melancholy in perfect measure, unmatched by any franchise short of Dr. Who.

Returning readers will find themselves richly rewarded for their loyalty across the last ten installments in the series as Butcher begins to unveil some of the deep backstory of his plot while finally moving the long-developed, seldom-seen shadow conspiracy that’s been lurking in the distance since the beginning of the series to the fore. New readers are likely to find themselves lost on the finer points of the tale, but blissfully so, as Butcher rarely allows his readers time for such trivialities as wondering why a skull can talk or how a dog be so utterly put-upon.

If you aren’t already reading this series, run, don’t walk to the nearest bookstore. But reader beware! These novels are HIGHLY ADDICTIVE.

Synopsis

Official: Harry Dresden, PI and practitioner of magic, has done his best to keep his nose clean where the White Council of Wizards is concerned. Even so, his past misdeeds haven’t looked good to the council’s Wardens – and they take their responsibility to enforce the Laws of Magic very seriously. But this has placed him in a bit of a predicament. Morgan, formerly his chief persecutor among the Wardens, has been wrongly accused of treason. There’s only one punishment for that crime so he’s n the run, wants his name cleared, and needs someone with a knack for backing the underdog. Someone like Harry Dresden.

Dresden faces a daunting task. He must clear the less-than-agreeable Morgan’s name while simultaneously hiding him from the Wardens and the supernatural bounty hunters sent to find him, discover the identity of the true turncoat and, of course, avoid accusations of treachery of his own. A single mistake may mean that heads – quite literally – will roll.

And one of them might be his.
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1635
The first public school in the United States, the Boston Latin School, is founded in Boston, Massachusetts.

1827
William Rowan Hamilton presented his Theory of Systems of Rays at the Royal Irish Academy in Dublin. Although he is still only a 21 year old undergraduate, his work will become one of the important works in optics, providing a single function that unites mathematics, mechanics, and optics. The theory will lead to the wave theory of light, which establishes that light is a form of energy that travels in waves.

1867
The Zoetrope is patented by William E. Lincoln of Providence, Rhode Island. (US No. 64,117) The device is the first animated picture machine. It creates the illusion of animation to a sequence of pictures lining the inside wall of a shallow cylinder, with vertical slits between the images, when spun.

1896
The first movie shown to a paying theater audience in the US is presented using Thomas Edison’s Vitascope. The movie features a series of short scenes, and is part of a series of acts at Koster and Bial’s Music Hall, in New York City. The film scenes include a ballet performance, a burlesque boxing match, waves on a sea shore, and a comic allegory, “The Monroe Doctrine,” all of which are projected at about half life size.

1924
In England, King George V broadcasts from the opening of the British Empire Exhibition to a record audience of 10 million people. It’s the most people ever addressed by a head of state.
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We have come to look at our planet as a resource for our species, which is funny when you think that the planet has been around for about five billion years, and Homo sapiens for perhaps one hundred thousand. We have acquired an arrogance about ourselves that I find frightening. We have come to feel that we are so far apart from the rest of nature that we have but to command.

- Marston Bates, Horace M. Albright Conservation Lectureship at Berkeley, April 23, 1962.