The Great Geek Manual

Resources

4 Comparison Search Tools You May Not Know About – Why should you be satisfied using only one search tool at a time? There are distinct advantages to using two or three services simultaneously.

10+ free, fast-booting Linux distros that aren’t Chrome OS – Chrome OS has been all over the headlines since early December. But it might not run on your hardware and you’re going to have to wait at least a year for the final version. Why bother waiting? Linux enthusiasts have been working on projects like this for years – fast booting, stripped-down distributions which offer the core functionality most users are looking for in a pinch: web browsing, music and video playback, photo management, and some basic games.

10 Quick Ways To Print Calendars Online – Caught at New Years without a new calender? Don’t feel like shelling out the cash for a calendar you’re only going to use now and again. Check out these sites for a quick solution.

12 Geeky New Years Resolutions – GeekDad has come up with 12 geeky New Years resolutions that he actually plans on keeping.

How to Build an Awesome Gaming PC for $647 – Need a new PC, but don’t have a ton of cash? Maximum PC shows you how to build a machine that can do anything—from browsing the web to playing games to encoding video on a budget.

Tuper Tario Tros. – This game is a mash-up between the original Super Mario Bros. and Tetris. Race through with Mario to leave time to shift into Tetris mode to clear obstructions.

Visuwords – This is an online graphical dictionary that serves as a free alternative to ThinkMaps’s Visual Thesaurus. It’s not graphically sophisticated, but hey, it’s free.
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Art

• Pinkoski looks at the artwork of John Berkey, whose work sci-fi fans are certain to recognize.

Comics

• Comic Alliance counts down the Top 10 Single Issues of 2009, and then expands the list with its Expanded Best of 2009.
• Comic Book Resources also names their Favorite Comics of 2009.

Film

• Interview: Heeb Magazine interviews Sam Ramis on Ghostbusters 3: “Plans to Shoot Next Summer and Release in 2011.”
• John Scalzi offers a well-considered list of The Best SciFi Movies of the ’00s.
• Popular Mechanics looks back at the Top Movies Visual Effects of 2009.
• Roger Ebert names his picks for The Best Films of the Decade.
• The Writer’s Guild names its picks for the 101 Greatest Screenplays ever.

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Imagining the future is a kind of nostalgia. (…) You spend your whole life stuck in the labyrinth, thinking about how you’ll escape it one day, and how awesome it will be, and imagining that future keeps you going, but you never do it. You just use the future to escape the present.

- Looking for Alaska by John Green, 2005.

Art

• Buy your own unique piece of limited edition Avatar art.
• Ryan Dunlavey has created a gallery of Dr. Seuss / Superhero mash-ups.

Film

• Interview: UGO interviews James Cameron on (what else) Avatar.
• The Chicago Tribune counts down The Top 10 Pirated Movies of 2009.
• Does sex sell movies? Uh, not really. A recent study concluded that nudity and explicit sex scenes don’t translate to success for major motion pictures.
• Find over 150,000 movies to watch online at Movie Monitor.
• MovieFone has taken a poll of the best and worst movies of the year, and Transformers made both sides of the list!
• PopCrunch has compiled a list of The 15 Greatest Dystopian Films Of All Time.
• VideoHound has posted what must be the most disappointing list of the Top Ten Best Films of 2009 I’ve seen yet this year.

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This goes double if you’re murdered.

1899
In a corporate reorganization, AT&T assumes the business and property of American Bell and becomes the parent company of the Bell System.

1924
Astronomer Edwin Hubble announces that Andromeda, which astronomers had previously believed to be a nebulae, is actually another galactic system outside the Milky Way.

1953
United States electronics manufacturer RCA introduces the first new-style NTSC monochrome-compatible television receivers. Price: US$1,175

1973
Skylab 4 and Soyuz 13 photograph the Comet Kohoutek at its perihelion, capturing the first images of a comet ever taken by from space. The media hyped Kohoutek as the “comet of the century” and scientists predicted that Kohoutek would be an Oort Cloud Object. As such, it was believed likely that this was the comet’s first visit to the inner solar system, which would result in a spectacular display of outgassing. However, Kohoutek’s display will be considered a let-down, leading some media sources to dub the event “Comet Watergate.” Infrared and visual telescopic studies will later lead scientists to conclude in retrospect that Kohoutek is actually a Kuiper belt object, which accounts for its apparent rocky makeup and lack of outgassing.
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Social networking sites added the human factor to the network we had recently created: bi-directionality became multi-directionality, multi-diffusion. Blogs created the bourgeoisie of the Internet, and social networking sites opened it up and democratized it for the rest of the society.

- Predictions for Social Media in 2010 by Ismael Peña-López, December 23, 2009.

Each new trailer makes Solomon Kane look even more exciting. This one is mini-featurette that previews the film’s spectacular fight scenes. From what I can see, this film is going to stick very closely to Robert Howard’s version, which is exactly the way it should be. I can’t wait.