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Archive for November, 2009

Geek Media Round-Up: November 12, 2009

Nov 12 2009 No Comment 55 views

Art

Female android

Pink Tentacles has a gallery of Sci-fi illustrations by Shusei Nagaoka.

Comics

Alan Moore, the comic book writer responsible for Watchmen and V For Vendetta, says he’s writing lyrics for Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett’s next opera.
Imagine going to Hollywood on vacation, only to watch Spider-Man being carted off by cops.

Film

Cracks sifts through the suggest box for Rejected Ideas for Disaster Movies.
Daily Fill remembers 15 Childhood Movies that Failed the Test of Time.
Fumiko’s Confession is a short film animated completely by one person. (More)
John Scalzi explains Four Reasons Why Avatar Is Too Big to Fail.
There’s a new poster out for the upcoming Kick-Ass movie, and it’s waaay better than the last round of posters.
This year, there are 20 Cartoons competing for Oscar nominations.
VideoHound picks The Ten Worst Unexpected Sequels of All Time.

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This Day in Geek History: November 12

Nov 12 2009 No Comment 23 views

1799
American astronomer Andrew Ellicott Douglass makes the first written record of a meteor shower in the US, the Leonids meteor shower, from a ship off the Florida Keys. He writes, “In every instant the meteors were as numerous as the stars,” and that the “whole heaven appeared as if illuminated with sky rockets, flying in an infinity of directions, and I was in constant expectation of some of them falling on the vessel. They continued until put out by the light of the sun after day break.”

1901
The first Nobel Prize for Physics is awarded to Wilhelm Röentgen for the discovery of X-rays.

1915
Theodore William Richards of Harvard University becomes the first American to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

1933
Hugh Gray captures what he claims to be the first known photo of the Loch Ness Monster.

1937
Alan Turing publishes a paper entitled “On Computable Numbers with an Application to the Entscheidungs-problem.” In it, Turing provides an abstraction that will form the basic theory of computability for several decades. Later renamed the Turing Machine, this abstract engine described in this paper will provide the fundamental concepts of computers that other inventors will later conceive independently.
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Geek Quote of the Day

Nov 12 2009 No Comment 6 views

Biology is not destiny. It was never more than tendency. It was just nature’s first quick and dirty way to compute with meat. Chips are destiny.

- Heaven in a Chip by Bart Kosko, Ph.D., 2000.

Geek Media Round-Up: November 11, 2009

Nov 11 2009 No Comment 34 views

Art

Interbent has posted a gallery of Humorous Star Wars Street Art.
Star Wars.com profiles artist Christian Waggoner, who paints Star Wars characters with scenes from the original trilogy reflected in their eyes. [via]

Film

Interview: Guillermo Del Toro discusses Making The Hobbit at Total Film.
Interview: Sam Rockwell explains what inspired his Iron Man 2 character.

Internet

Term Life Insurance has come up with this inforgraphic comparing the Top Earning Dead Celebrities of the Decade.
Total Film looks at the Best & Worst Movie Star Websites from around the web.


Literature

Interview: John Scalzi interviews Scott Westerfeld, author of Leviathan.
Interview: Lili St. Crow, author of Betrayals talks Young Adult fiction.
Interview: Newsarama profiles Lev Grossman, author of The Magicians.
Interview: Sang Pak discusses his coming-of-age novel Wait Until Twilight.
News: Walmart continues to release books prior to their publication dates.
Lev Grossman names his picks for the six greatest fantasy books of all time.
The Wertzone looks back at the history of Dungeons & Dragons DragonLance series.

Television

News: Joss Whedon's 'Dollhouse' canceled.  Episode 13 will be the last.
The AV Club counts down both The Best made-for-TV movies of the Decade and The Best TV Series of the Decade, including some surprising selections.

Writing

John Scalzi talks about Writers and Financial Woes.
Rants and Ramblings explains How Book Royalties Work.
The WallStreet Journal takes a sneak peek at a book all about How Authors Write.

 
											


				
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					Films you Didn’t Like until the last Ten Minutes
				
				
				
			
				 
					Nov 11 2009
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					473 views				
			
				
									These aren’t just films with great endings.  They’re films that would have been complete failures without an eleventh hour twist.  Click the images to watch the endings at YouTube.
10. Citizen Kane (1941)
“I don’t think any word can explain a man’s life. No, I guess Rosebud is just a… piece in a jigsaw puzzle… a missing piece.”
It may be the stuff of a film professor’s wet dreams, but ask any film student and they’ll tell you, Citizen Kane is a two hour set-up for a three-minute scene.  In fact, the whole movie can basically be abbreviated to its closing shot and line.
9. The Usual Suspects (1995)
“The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.”
The conclusion to Kevin Spacey’s best performance makes this one of the best crime movies ever.  The final scene turns everything that came before it on its head.  More than that, the movie’s final revelation makes the rest of the movie’s fragmented plot make sense.

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					Geek Quote of the Day
				
				
				
			
				 
					Nov 11 2009
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					4 views				
			
				
									A stupid man’s report of what a clever man says is never accurate because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something he can understand.

- A History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand Russell, 1945.

											


				
	
					
				
				
				
			
			

		
			
	
				
					This Day in Geek History: November 11
				
				
				
			
				 
					Nov 11 2009
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					39 views				
			
				
									1572

Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe begins recording his observations of a supernova in the constellation Cassiopeia.  For two weeks, it will be brighter than any other star in the sky, even remaining visible during the day.  It will remain visible to the naked eye for another six months, until March 1574.  Brahe will later publish his observation in the book De Nova Stella, which is the origin of the the word “nova.”
1675

Gottfried Leibniz demonstrates integral calculus for the first time by finding the area under the graph of the y = f(x) function.
1851

The first US patent for a telescope is issued to Alvan Clark of Cambridge, Massachusetts.  (US No. 8,509)   
1887

A photograph is used in a newspaper advertisement for the first time in history.  The ad is for Harrison Patent Knitting Machine Co. of Manchester, England and it is in published in this day’s edition of The Parrot, which is published in Manchester.

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					Short Film: Built a Time Machine to Kill Hitler
				
				
				
			
				 
					Nov 10 2009
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					63 views				
			
				
									

This homage to Primer is a parody of every cliche ever used in a time travel movie.
They describe it thus: “You know that roommate who gets an iPhone, and brags about this “great peice of technology” but he only ever uses it for stupid crap like cats playing piano?  It’s that with a time machine.”
											


				
	
					
				
				
				
			
			

		    

		
			


			
				 
				
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Archive for November, 2009

Geek Media Round-Up: November 12, 2009

Art

Comics

Film

This Day in Geek History: November 12

Geek Quote of the Day

Geek Media Round-Up: November 11, 2009

Art

Film

Internet

Literature

Television

Writing

Films you Didn’t Like until the last Ten Minutes

Geek Quote of the Day

This Day in Geek History: November 11

Short Film: Built a Time Machine to Kill Hitler

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