The Great Geek Manual

Art

• io9 has posted a small gallery of steampunk-esque paintings of Tesla’s Lightning-Eating Mansion in Upstate New York

Comics

• Grant Morrison Talks About Batman and Robin.
• Mania names the Most Sharp Dressed Superheroes, starting with Flash and the Green Lantern.

Film

• Den of Geek looks back at The Evolution of the Harry Potter films.
• John Scalzi Rates SciFi Movies by Their EXPLOSIONS!

Internet

• This just makes me smile: Shia LaBeouf has a huge crush on Megan Fox and is upset she only wants to be friends. Somehow the universe just seems fairer.

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1698
Thomas Savery patents the first steam engine.

1858
The Donati Comet was first seen and named after its discoverer.

1875
While Alexander Bell and his assistant Thomas Watson are working on Edison’s “harmonic telegraph,” they stumble upon the inspiration that will eventually lead to the creation of the first telephone. In the transmitter room, Watson produces a twang while trying to free a reed that had been wound too tightly to the pole of its electromagnet. Bell, working in the receiving room, hears the twang and realizes that his dream of speech transmission must be possible, because the complex overtones and timbre of the twang he had just heard bore a striking similarity to the sound of the human voice.

1889
A hydroelectric power plant generates alternating current electricity available to consumers for the first time. A thirteen mile power line links the Willamette Falls Electric Co. power plant to Portland, Oregon. Two 300hp Stilwell & Bierce waterwheels together drove a single phase, 720 kilowatt generator. It isn’t the first hydroelectric power plant. Another one had been demonstrated in Appleton, Wisconsin, on September 30, 1882 with a small dynamo. It is the use of alternating current that makes this station significant because it makes it possible to transmit power over great distances.
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A Mission Statement is a dense slab of words that a large organization produces when it needs to establish that its workers are not just sitting around downloading Internet porn.

- Dave Barry Hits Below the Beltway by Dave Barry, 2001.

Resources

5 Things to Know About The Pirate Bay Sale – The sale of The Pirate Bay to a Swedish software company, which plans to revamp the site and launch a new business model to compensate rights holders, has most everyone in the P2P community scratching their heads today.

16 Bitchin’ commands and shortcuts for Twitter – Everyone’s favorite social engine has a surprising range of search line commands.

How to Crack a Wi-Fi Network’s WEP Password with BackTrack – You already know that if you want to lock down your Wi-Fi network, you should opt for WPA encryption because WEP is easy to crack. But did you know how easy? Take a look.

How to Create the Ultimate Gaming Laptop Setup – As with any passion, you’re not satisfied with a mediocre setup. Some people pimp out their cars, other obsess over knickknacks, why shouldn’t you treat your passion with the same respect? Here are several tips on creating the ultimate gaming setup.

Readability – This amazing little script makes read articles on the web more enjoyable by removing all the clutter from webpages. It is a must if you read newspapers online with any frequency. It’s project page is over at Google Code.
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Film

• According to Vanity Fair, Heath Ledger hoped his performance as the Joker would be so far-out he’d be fired.
• GiantFreakinRobot pleads Transformers 2: It’s Not The Fanboys Fault, in response to Ebert’s recent review.
• Heckler Spray counts down the Top 20 Movie Monsters.

Internet

• Switched wonders if E-mail Made the Thank You Note Obsolete?

Literature

• Free Fiction: Jeff VanderMeer is offering Finch as a podcast.
• Free Fiction: Listen to “On the Banks of the River of Heaven” by Richard Parks.
• Free Fiction: Read Homeostasis by Carlos Hernadez at Futurismic.

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…and in the information age, that may be all a person could ask for.

Source: Ashleyniblock

1874
After much preparation at home and abroad, the Philadelphia Zoo, the first zoological gardens in the United States opens to the public with several hundred native and exotic specimens on the grounds of Solitude, the last estate in the area owned by the Penn family, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was originally chartered by the Pennsylvania state legislature on March 21, 1859 as the Zoological Society of Philadelphia whose core purpose is to oversee “the purchase and collection of living wild and other animals” and “for the instruction and recreation of the people.” Rumors of a civil war make it a difficult time for private undertakings, and delayed the opening. In 1875, this zoo will become the first US zoo to exhibit a male Indian rhinoceros.

1881
The first international telephone call is made between Calais, Maine in the United States and St. Stephen, New Brunswick in Canada.

1886
The first Linotype machine to be put into commercial use in the US is installed at the Tribune newspaper in New York City. It will be immediately successful. By the end of 1886, a dozen of the machine will be put to use by the Tribune. Within a decade, thousands of Linotype machines will be in use around the world. With a Linotype machine one keyboard operator can cast a line of type at a time, doing the work of the three men required to hand-set the type of other printing presses. It is because the machine sets type one line at a time that Whitelaw Reid, the editor of the New York Tribune, gave the Linotype its name. The machine was invented, patented, and improve by Ottmar Mergenthaler.
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