The Great Geek Manual

1852
The theory of valence was announced by English chemist Sir Edward Frankland. The theory lays out the fundamental principal that any atom can combine with a certain, limited number of other atoms.

1860
The discovery of the element Caesium is announced by German chemists, Robert Bunsen and Gustav Robert Kirchoff to the Berlin Academy of Scientists.

1894
“Wireless” is born when Guglielmo Marconi sends a radio wave three-quarters of a mile. Three years later the Marconi Company will successfully communicate “ship to shore” over a distance of twelve miles.

1925
John Thomas Scopes is given a preliminary hearing before three judges. He had been arrested and charged under a new Tennessee’s state law, the Butler Act, which prohibited the teaching of Charles Darwin’s Theory of Evolution in public schools. Scopes had agreed to participate in a challenge to that law, with the support of the local town leaders in Dayton, Tennessee and the American Civil Liberties Union. A few weeks later, at what became known as the Scope’s Monkey Trial, he will be found guilty and fined US$100. Upon appeal, the fine will be ruled excessive and over-ruled, but the state law itself will not be found unconstitutional. Thereafter, the law will not be enforced, but it will not repealed until 1967.
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Education is an admirable thing. But it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.

- “A Few Maxims For The Instruction Of The Over-Educated” by Oscar Wilde, first published in the Saturday Review, November 17, 1894.

1893
First public demonstration of the Edison-Dickson Kinetoscope is given by Thomas Edison to an audience of about four hundred people at the Department of Physics of the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences in New York. The first demonstration features moving images of a blacksmith and his two assistants passing a bottle between themselves as the forge a piece of iron. Each filmstrip has seven hundred images and each image is shown for 1/92 of a second. The event will be reported in the May 20, 1893 edition of Scientific American.

1896
R.W. Paul’s Theatrograph film program is shown at the Empire Theatre of Varieties in Johannesburg. Paul’s first film show is riddled with technical problems that will be resolved by the time that his Theatrograph projector makes its public debut at the Egyptian Hall in Piccadilly. Read more about Paul and his contributions to film at ScreenOnline.
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That’s either a true friend or else a frightened little brother.

Source: ImageShack

From Around the Web

45 Free Useful Thumb Drive Applications – Thumb drives were once used to store files and make data portable, but due to the rapid increase in storage capacity over the pass few years these gadgets now have a bigger role. Some even run the entire operating system on a thumb drive.

Aerial Virtual Tour of New York City – Is a virtual bird eye’s view that improves on Google Earth by adding the ability to tilt and pan the view from a number of fixed points around the world’s biggest city in the U.S.

Assembly Primer for Hackers – Assembly language is probably the most important thing one needs to master if he desires to enter the world of code exploitation, virus writing, and reverse engineering. This multi-part video series will help you get started.

Cory Doctorow discusses Digital Distribution – Doctorow makes a series of excellent points on the fundamental futility of Digital Rights Management technologies during a lecture delivered at the O’Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing Conference.

Court Sets Rules For RIAA Hard Drive Inspection – In a Boston RIAA case, SONY BMG Music Entertainment v. Tenenbaum, the Court has issued a detailed protective order establishing strict protocols for the RIAA’s requested inspection of the defendant’s hard drive, in order to protect the defendant’s privacy.

How to Make Gmail Your Ultimate Productivity Center – These days there are a proliferation of digital tools we use for productivity, for time management, for communication, for social networking, for keeping track of our lives, online and off. It can be a nightmare to keep track of it all, and frankly, it’s a bit unproductive to keep switching between a dozen different tools. Enter Gmail, my favorite solution for just about anything. Read the rest of this entry » » »

Film

• Big Stupid Idiot tries to impress with a list of 20 Things You Didn’t Know About The New Star Trek, but of course, the only things in the list I didn’t know would have been readily apparent once I actually saw the film.
• Director Joseph McGinty tells the LA Times that “We’re bringing credibility back’ to ‘Terminator’ franchise.”
• Director Robert Rodriguez confirms that there is going to be a Sin City 2, just as soon as he completes a few other commitments.
• The Editing Room takes pot-shots at X-Men Origins: Wolverine with a parody of a script for the film.
• io9 discusses The Sexualization of Spock, but the spoilers in the article enrage the blog’s readers and the comments end up being better reading than the article itself.
• Leonard Nimoy shares his personal feelings about the “gigantic, cinematic, big story” of the Star Trek reboot at FX International Con in Orlando, Florida. “I Cried A Lot!” he admits.

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From Around the Web

11 Tiny and Useful Free Menubar Applications for Mac – Not every application needs to always shows itself to be functional. Some just do their job quietly in the background while some hide themselves until they are needed. These are the perfect explanation on what menubar application do.

101 Techniques for a Powerful CMS using WordPress – The first part of a four-part series, “The Comprehensive Guide for a Powerful CMS using WordPress“. This article focuses on many WordPress Theme hacks, ideas, tips and useful tutorials you need to have ready in hand when developing WordPress websites.

Google on How to Change the Internet: You Should Own Your Broadband Pipes – Google policy analyst Derek Slater explains how to reshape broadband in the US. Step one: Own the actual pipes that run to your house.

The Netbook Conundrum – Are netbooks good or bad for the PC industry? The three m’s—the message, Microsoft, and money—will be the ultimate deciding factors.

Pixel City – A video of a completely procedurally drawn city and fly through. If you’re interested in how it was done, you can get all the details at the designer’s website.

See Location of all your Facebook Friends on a Google Map – If you are travelling to another city (or country) and need to know about Facebook friends who may be located in that region, here’s help.

The Star Trek Failure Generator – This random phrase generator poke fun at the Star Trek technobable that the franchise is so famous for.
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