A sad day. ‘The Riddler’ passed away. Frank Gorshin was 72. Known best for his role as the Riddler on the Batman tv series, I was always fond of his turn on Star Trek, as the zebra-striped Javert hunting his anti-chromatic Valjean. One of the better Star Trek episodes.

For the geeky, here’s a really interesting article about the History of the GUI from ars technica. I find this kind of stuff compelling, especially the bits about the Xerox Alto and SmallTalk. I mean, look at this screen shot:

That was from software written in 1974. It looks shockingly like BeOS to me. That’s pretty damn cool.

If this interests, check out Doug Englebart’s groundbreaking paper on computer interfaces utilizing GUI components from 1962. Wow.

Photo for the day:

Two Filipino women wearing skimpy clothes to attract customers rub soap on a motorcycle to earn cash outside a restaurant in suburban Makati, south of Manila, Saturday May 14, 2005. Many Filipinos resort to odd jobs to make a living as prices of basic commodities continue to rise. (AP Photo/Aaron Favila)

I saw it last night at the midnight show. It was a two hour-plus collection of eye-popping special effects, nonstop lightsaber duels. It sure looked cool, but I don’t think I’ll bother to watch it again.