The Great Geek Manual

Resources

5 Cool Websites to Play Chess Online !

15+ amazing anti IE resources – I hate Internet Explorer, and I’m pretty 99% of you do too. I have no idea why people are even still using it, but here’s what you can do to help stop it.

100 Excellent RSS Feeds for Lifelong Learners

101 Five-Minute Fixes to Incrementally Improve Your Web Site – When a massive overhaul is just too much work to undertake at one time. Instead, tackle these quick fixes over time, and you’ll be able to improve your Web site with minimal pain.

Everything You Need To Know About USB 3.0 – When Seagate first demonstrated SuperSpeed USB 3.0 in January at CES, we were promised that USB 3.0-compatible devices would be appearing by the end of 2009.

Google Wave First Look – If you’re not one of the 100,000 lucky users who gets an invitation to Google Wave today, don’t fret. You can check out Google Wave right here.

Nudge – A web-based rhythm generator that lets users record their own techno beat.

Spezify – A very visual meta search engine with a Flash interface. Excellent for searching the net for opinions on a current topic. Includes results in the form of images, videos, social networks, and webpages.

YouTorrent – Here’s a great torrent aggregation service that allows you to search for torrent files in real time.
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Art

• Check out the Dust Cloud robot from YoungSpacers.

Internet

• Let’s face it. You really want a Zombie Apocalypse. Cracked explains why.

Literature

• Interview: John Scalzi is taking questions about his new gig as the creative consultant for Stargate Universe.
• Interview: Omnivoracious interviews Gail Carriger, author of Soulless.
• News: According to a recent book, JK Rowling denied medal by Bush because Harry Potter ‘encouraged witchcraft’. Geez, it’s not as if she started a war.
• BookStove recommends 10 Dirty Books You Should Read, including Fahrenheit 451 and Shakespeare, in honor of Banned Book Week.
• The Google Books deal is forcing people to rethink copyright. “As one Google engineer apparently put it: ‘We’re not scanning all those books to be read by people. We’re scanning them to be read by [our] AI.’”

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1882
The world’s first commercial hydroelectric power plant (later known as Appleton Edison Light Company) begins operation on the Fox River in Appleton, Wisconsin. Powered by a water wheel, a single dynamo provides 12.5 kilowatts, just enough for 180 lights of ten candlepower each which will light Rogers’ home, the plant itself, and a nearby building. Appleton paper manufacturer H.F. Rogers had been inspired by Thomas Edison’s plans for a steam-powered electricity production station in New York. He had financial support from a personal friend of Edison’s and two other men.

1889
The Bundy Manufacturing Co., a maker of time recording equipment, is incorporated. It’s the first of many components that eventually become the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company, Inc. (C-T-R), which will later become International Business Machines Corporation (IBM).

1890
Thomas Edison is granted a patent for telegraphy, a phonograph, a phonograph-recorder, a “Method of Making Phonograph Blanks,” a “Propelling Device for Electrical Cars,” and a phonogram blank. (US No. 437422 -9)
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We especially need imagination in science. It is not all mathematics, nor all logic, but it is somewhat beauty and poetry.

- Maria Mitchell, 1866. Originally quoted in Maria Mitchell, Life, Letters, and Journals by Phebe Mitchell Kendall.

Film

• Den of Geek looks back at 10 Inspired Voice Actor Castings from our favorite animated features.
• The Editing Room presents G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra: The Abridged Script.

Internet

• io9 gives film MacGuffins the praise they deserve at long last!
• JK Rowling jumps on the Twitter bandwagon after discovering that people were impersonating her on the site.
• SciFi.com has a somewhat lame attempt at a Periodic Table of Science Fiction.
• SciFi Wire asks Is mysticism overtaking science in sci-fi?

Literature

• Interview: Locus Online interviews John Clute, author of Fantastika.
• Interview: The Self-Publishing Review interviews Tessa Dick, wife of the late Philip K. Dick and author of The Owl in Daylight.
• If righteous indignation is your thing, here’s a great map of Book Bans and Challenges at public libraries across the country. According to the American Library Association (ALA), there were at least 513 in 2008.

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1887
Émile Berliner receives a patent for the gramophone, which is the first music playing device to use a flat disk record. (US No. 372,786) In 1898, he will founds the Berliner Grammophon Gesellschaft record company.

1891
Thomas Edison is issued a patent for a “Process of and Apparatus for Generating Electricity” and for a “Phonogram-Blank Carrier.” (US No. 460,122 and 460,123)

1914
Thomas Alva Edison is issued a patent for a “Phonograph-Record.” (US No. 1,111,999)

1915
A demonstration of a transcontinental radio telephone is given in New York City. Speech is transmitted over 2,500 miles via Arlington, Virginia to Mare Island in San Francisco, California. In a second demonstration the same night, speech is also transmitted to Honolulu, Hawaii.

1916
John D. Rockefeller becomes the world’s first billionaire.
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We have to abandon the idea that schooling is something restricted to youth. How can it be, in a world where half the things a man knows at 20 are no longer true at 40—and half the things he knows at 40 hadn’t been discovered when he was 20.

- Arthur C. Clarke

Art

• Last week, the Telegraph profiled a man who created a model Dalek entirely out of matchsticks.

Film

• Listverse has compiled a video gallery of the Top 10 Movie Sound Effects We All Recognize.
• Rotten Tomatoes counts down the 100 Worst Movies of the Last Decade.

Internet

• Cracked.com looks back at 5 Awesome Cases of The Internet Owning The Mainstream Media.
• Enjoy the amazing artwork of Douglas Clegg’s latest book, Isis, at the Isis “Spot the Difference” Game.
• Unreality has posted a gallery of The 10 Most Badass Fan-Made Lightsaber Fights.

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