The Great Geek Manual

Source: The Daily What

1791
African American astronomer and mathematician Benjamin Banneker sends a copy of his first almanac to Thomas Jefferson to disprove Jefferson’s belief that blacks were intellectually inferior to whites.

1839
Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre freely releases a manual for his daguerreotype photographic process, the first process to allow an image to be chemically fixed into a permanent picture. The publication produces an immediate and widespread demand among the French public for the equipment and chemicals needed for the process.

1887
Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev uses a balloon to ascend above cloud cover to an altitude of 11,500 feet (3.5KM) in order to observe an eclipse in Russia. The ascent, which he makes over Kline, is his first flight. He pays no attention to controlling the balloon until after he had completed his observations, at which time he then begins to work out how to land. Mendeleev will later be known for the ordering the periodic table of the elements.

1891
William Huggins first describes the astronomical application of spectrum.
Read the rest of this entry » » »

Men are only as good as their technical development allows them to be.

- Inside the Whale and Other Essays by George Orwell, 1940.

I love it, but I can’t help but wince at the sight of all those books outside.

New Releases

• The Dame by R. A. Salvatore
  Tor Books. (ISBN-13: 978-0765317902) Hardcover. Length: 400pp
• Dreamfever by Karen Marie Moning
  Delacorte Press. (ISBN-13: 978-0385341653) Hardcover. Length: 400pp
• Elfland by Freda Warrington
  Tor Books. (ISBN-13: 978-0765318695) Hardcover. Length: 464pp

Read the rest of this entry » » »

Resources

15 Great And Free Photoshop Alternatives – Photoshop is very expansive and not all designers afford to buy the original license of it. So, some designers try to look for free alternatives to Photoshop.

The 35 Best iPhone Apps Of 2009 (So Far) – There are a massive number of clones, one-off gimmicks, volumes of books and reference material, and a never-ending supply of uninteresting games. So here are what is worth of your time and money.

50+ WordPress Theme Cheat Sheets – It is not that hard to customize a WordPress theme but starting from scratch requires some experience or assistance. Here are all the code snippets you might possibly need.

100 Websites to Teach Yourself Photography – So you are thinking of taking up photography as a hobby. Where do you begin? The age of point and shoot is over. Everyone can create beautiful, easily processed photos with a digital camera. These 100 photography tutorials will bring you up to speed so your friends will be breaking down your door to photograph their wedding or big event.

Download a Copy of The Pirate Bay – In just a few days The Pirate Bay will be passed onto its new owners, marking the end of an era but not the end of BitTorrent. The nostalgic torrenters among us might want to download a copy of the site for archival purposes. Everyone can download it straight from The Pirate Bay, conveniently packed into a massive torrent amounting to 21.3 Gigabytes of data.

Heapr – Here’s a search engine that combines Google, WolframAlpha, Twitter, Flickr, and other sites in a clean and fast interface all at once!

Sightseeing with Google Satellite Maps – Welcome to the original Google Satellite Maps repository! Think of it as armchair sightseeing, now with 12989 destinations.
Read the rest of this entry » » »

Art

• A photo of a giant Gundam Suit model against the Tokyo skyline. (Awesome!)
• Cake Wrecks has posted a photo gallery of Doctor Who cakes.
• Made of Myth is a series of photographs depicting the manufacturing of video game sets…

Film

• Den of Geek posted clips of the Top 10 most ridiculous falls from a great height.
• Mania.com looks back at 7 SFX in Movies That Changed Everything.

Internet

• Here’s a fun game from McSweeney’s: Iran or Star Wars?

Read the rest of this entry » » »

1856
The US Copyright Act is extended to include dramatic works.

1868
French astronomer Pierre Jules César Janssen discovers helium in the solar spectrum during an eclipse. It marks the first discovery of an “extraterrestrial” element, since helium hadn’t yet been discovered on Earth.

1869
Canadian Patent Number 1 is issued to W. Hamilton. The very first Canadian patent, issued before the official numbering series, was granted in 1791 by the Governor General to Angus MacDonnel, a Scottish soldier garrisoned in Quebec City.

1904
The Belle Isle Aquarium opens in the Detroit, Michigan, in the United States. Visit the park’s official website.
Read the rest of this entry » » »