The Great Geek Manual

Art

• Cosgeek has posted a photo gallery of Steampunk Sweeties from about the web
• Super Hario Potter: “I finally got around to watching every Harry Potter film. Never saw them before, never read the books. Then it hit me. They have all the same powers as Mario.”

Comics

• News: Spiderman Comic Found in Attic Worth Over $10,000
• 5 Reasons Booster Gold is Awesome

Cross-Media

• Especially for St Andrew’s Day, in no particular order: 20 Sci-Fi Scots

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1609
In Padua, Italy, Galileo Galilei begins observing the Moon through his telescope (“perspicullum”), and, noting the irregularities of its crescent face, draws watercolor sketches of his discoveries.

1886
George Westinghouse opens the first commercially successful alternating current power plant in the U.S. in Buffalo, New York to compete against Edison’s direct current ventures. Alternating current power can be transmitted much further than direct current power by using transformers at the source for a higher voltage, which decreases the loss of energy.

1899
Aluminium is first used commercially in the U.S. as an electrical transmission conductor for the Hartford Electric Light Company of Hartford, Connecticut.
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It’s all a question of imagination. Our responsibility begins with the power to imagine.

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Audio Fiction and Podcasts

• Listen to “Black Swan, White Swan” by Eugie Foster at Podcastle.
• Listen to “Claude & The Henry Moores” by Casey Wolf at Beam Me Up.
• Listen to “Doubleheader X” by John P. Murphy at Drabblecast.
• Listen to “The Dunwich Horror” by H.P. Lovecraft at 19 Nocturne Boulevard.
• Listen to “Loup Noir” by Julie Hoverson at 19 Nocturne Boulevard.
• Listen to “The Poor Girl Taken By Surprise” by Gemma Files at Pseudopod.
• Listen to “Red Dawn: A Chow Mein Western” by Lavie Tidhar at Fantasy Magazine.
• Listen to “Running Out of Time” by Rob Walker at The Drama Pod.
• Listen to “Thanksgiving Day” by Jay Werkheiser at Escape Pod.
• Listen to “This Strange Way of Dying” by Silvia Moreno-Garcia at PodCastle.
• Listen to “The Tunnel under the Earth” by Frederick Pohl at The Drama Pod.

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1877
Thomas Edison demonstrates his hand-cranked phonograph that records sound onto tinfoil cylinders for the first time.

1910
The first patent for a system of traffic lights is issued to Ernest E. Sirrine of Chicago. (US No. 976,939)

1951
The first U.S. underground atom bomb test, designated “Uncle,” is detonated. The low-yield 1.2 kiloton bomb is detonated seventeen feet beneath the surface of Frenchman Flat, in Nevada as part of Operation Buster-Jangle. It leaves an eighteen hundred foot diameter crater one hundred feet deep.
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In the future, when the history of our time will be written from a long-term perspective, it may be that the most important things historians will see are not technological advancements or the Internet, but the fact that for the first time a substantial and rapidly growing number of people had choices.

- Peter Drucker
Cited in “The competitive edge of the social business” by Esko Kilpi, November 22, 2011.

Art

• “I Want my Hat Back” A homemade Doctor Who children’s book. Spoilers: Rory, of course dies in the end.
• Ever wonder where those little skulls on Mystique’s belt come from?

Comics

• Interview: comicbookGRRRL‘s Laura Sneddon has posted her full and uncut interview with Alan Moore. An abridged version, “Superheroes are our visions of ourselves,” originally appeared in The Independent. Moore talks superheroes, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Lost Girls and attracting a female readership.
• News: Nick Cage’s Stolen Copy Of ‘Action Comics’ #1 Now In Auction

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Jason Davis put together this summary of the checkered history of Mars exploration with the cruise configurations of the landed missions are included in the circle surrounding Mars. The launch dates and summary of the fate of the spacecraft are listed for each mission.