I don't know how it escaped my notice that J.K. Rowling hand wrote seven copies of The Tales of Beedle The Bard, one of which was auctioned at Sothebys (complete with "brown Moroccan leather and embellished with five hand-chased hallmarked sterling silver ornaments and mounted moonstones"). Since I have a Sotheby's login (don't ask) I went in and snagged a screenshot of a zoomed in title page. In case you can't read it, it says "The Tales of Beedle the Bard translated from the original runes by J.K. Rowling" How cool is that?!?! I love self referential literature, especially fictional books that come from another work of fiction (ie, The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories, a companion to Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, with an excellent self-referential and meta-fictional introduction.
Anyhow, in case you wanted to bid on the book at Sotheby's (assuming you have $3.8 million lying around) too late! It sold to amazon.

Labels: geekdom

All I have to say is that these people are geniuses! Little WiMax transmitters attached to hydrogen balloons? The transmitters even have mini parachutes so they gently float back to earth once they pop.

Recently, Tea Vui Huang released a screenshot and a download for a skin of Google's Android. Now, if you have a Nokia or Sony-Ericsson phone, you can download this skin and pretend to all of your friends that you have the Gphone. Makes great cocktail conversation among geeks.

NOTE: That physical phone that you see will not be what the Gphone will look like. Most likely, the Gphone is going to be an operating system, not a single phone for purchase like the iPhone.

This reminds me, I am still waiting for a smartphone with a virtual, laser projection keyboard built in! What ever happened to these? Named a best invention by Time magazine in 2002, they have virtually disappeared from the hype cycle.

Labels: geekdom