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Google Doodle Celebrates Birthday of Douglas Adams
mikejuk writes "Today's Google Doodle celebrates the fact that today would have been Douglas Adam's 61st birthday. For any fans of Adam's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy this isn't to be missed. The interactive doodle takes us aboard the Heart of Gold spaceship where the towel — the essential travel item for any intergalactic voyager sits on the console besides the, also very necessary cup of tea, which is also a reference to a Dirk Gently novel, The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul. There are lots more tributes hidden including Marvin — the real one not the one in the film, a Babel Fish and more. Have fun exploring but make sure you click on the search symbol to find out more about Douglas Adams and his work."
He has 49 been since 2001, and will be long after the dolphins leave and the earth is demolished. Once does not age past death, only decompose.
Your political party doesn't care about your rights and only represents corporate interests.
I'm glad no one has ever made a HGTTG film. They would have screwed it up.
"There are lots more tributes hidden including Marvin - the real one not the one in the film"
Huh? What makes the TV Marvin "the real one"?
I always thought the TV Marvin was completely wrong, compared to how he's described in the books.
I'm getting the standard Google logo.
Does it not work when you use SSL?
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Douglas_Adams/
that I threw myself at the ground and missed. On the bright side, I now know how to fly.
Ingenious, humorous and really well done! Thanks for the "big warm smile" e
Imagine if he was 42... that would have surely been wild.
"Never give up, for that is just the time and place when the tide will change." -Harriet Beecher Stowe ^_^
Are we going to have a slashdot story for every Google Doogle now?
Yes, and you will comment every time about how they are a complete waste of your very valuable time!
No, only the ones that promise excitement and adventure and really wild things.
Be who you are...and be it in style!
I enjoyed this doodle, Buzz Killington.
I'm sorry, but once someone dies, they can no longer have birthdays after their death. It should be "61st anniversary of his birth"
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/birthday A birthday is literally the anniversary of one's birth. A death day would presumably be the anniversary of one's death. My only qualm with this doodle is that it doesn't really appear to say "Google". I haven't been paying attention to all the doodles, but I like the ones that say Google while still relating to what the subject matter is.
... a strong Brownian Motion producer, which is essential for the Infinite Improbability Drive which powers Zaphod's stolen spaceship, the Heart of Gold.
So Adams must have mentioned tea in more than one body of work, which isn't too surprising for an Englishman.
BTW, editors, it's Douglas Adams' birthday, not Douglas Adam's birthday. Although, according to infinite improbability, there is probably a Douglas Adam whose birthday it is today as well. Oh dear...
So the little bit of extra entertainment you got as a gift from the extremely useful service that you get to use for free didn't live up to your expectations?
Wah. See if you can get your money back.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Allow me to retort... (try thinking of that line spoken a couple of different ways, one in a British uppity accent, another in the Sam Jackson / Pulp Fiction character's line) Douglas Adams is deserving of any praise any company or individual chooses to give him. For one, those types of choices are not a world-democracy ballot option or anything, i.e., it's not up to anybody but the praise-deliverer. For another, he was a technological visionary who provided the world with a great gift of lovable entertainment. He also invented the concept that Wikipedia is based upon, essentially. Anyone ever visit H2G2.com back in the old-Internet days? I was a contributing member there before any lay person had heard of Wiki-anything. Maybe he wasn't an Asimov or Heinlein - level space visionary, but he certainly earned his keep well enough in my book. Wait, I haven't written any books. Have you? Has anyone? Kudos to Google for their cool distraction and Happy Birth Anniversary DNA
You're not paying close enough attention then.
Hint: Look at the colors of the standard Google logo and the colors in the doodle.
The roll of tape plus the blue cylinder make 'G', the red radio and yellow teacup make 'oo,' the blue Guide plus the leather bag make a rough 'g', the green towel is 'l' and the red window is 'e.'
It's always in there, just have to look.
Here's what I imagine happens.
1. Look at $date.
2. Anything noteworthy happen? If no, skip to #5.
3. Do we think it's interesting? If no, skip to #5.
4. Make Google Doodle of it. Yay, interesting knowledge for people to stumble upon.
5. Increment $date by 1 day and go back to #1.
There's nothing special about multiples of 10. In fact, prime numbers are certainly much more special by many standards. 61 is a prime number.
If Google hired so many pedants they would probably have never gotten off the ground. They'd still be arguing over the fact that "luck" doesn't really have anything to do with the operation of the "I'm feeling lucky" button.
Wow, I post a comment and two hours later it's become the subject of a front page story. Seems a bit like something out of one of DA's books. Or one of PDK's, take your pick.
"Google Doodles like this do rub me up the wrong way. For a start, the person concerned is often an obscure one (or at least obscure outside the US - the US-centric doodles end up on Google UK, where they probably don't belong)."
I'm confused: you object because you learn something? Maybe I misunderstood.
Personally, I prefer the ones I don't know... (sorry if this seems snotty - I'm perfectly sincere.)
'This writing business. Pencils and what-not. Over-rated if you ask me. Silly stuff. Nothing in it' - Eeyore
The summary links to google.com, and there's no doodle - at least, not for me, even after a ctrl-F5. On google.co.uk, though, it's there in all its glory.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Mentioning Neil Gaiman, you've made me wonder what Douglas Adams could have come up with if he was still writing for Doctor Who today...
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Have a nice diurnal anomaly!
Oh yes, Douglas Adams is totally obscure in Great Britain.
rewriting history since 2109
There was a version of Dirk Gently made for BBC quite recently - followed up by a series 'inspired by' the books. As stand alone items they were (in my view) pretty good and worth watching, but not at all faithful to the original text. The radio drama series (on BBC Radio 4) was much closer to the originals.
As for Stainless Steel Rat -- totally agree and way overdue !! (Bill the Galactic Hero would be good as well)
Here's a link to a rather good tribute podcast made for what would have been his 59th Birthday, including Simon Jones (Arthur Dent), Mark Carwardine, Stephen Mangan, Dirk Maggs, and me as the voice of Douglas himself.
http://poddelusion.co.uk/blog/2011/03/08/a-tribute-to-douglas-adams/
Sean Ellis
Follow OfQuack's antics on Twitter.
Where?
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
I tried a bunch of localised Googles (google.ru, .is, .nl, .fr, .de, .ie, ...) and now I know how to say DON'T PANIC in 26 languages. Now that's pretty thorough.
See?
rewriting history since 2109
And, finally, I must take massive umbrage with the Google tooltip that says "Douglas Adams' 61st birthday". I'm sorry, but once someone dies, they can no longer have birthdays after their death. It should be "61st anniversary of his birth", but I guess that's too long and not so catchy. I now call them "deathdays" when Google does this :-)
Say what? Everyone has exactly one birthday unless you were born a night.
Missed deadlines.
He so loved the wonderful whooshing sound they made as they flew by.
Hey, Mom! Is it beer, yet?
The BBC video series was also terrible.
...but the utterly inspired "computer" animated sequences accompanying the narration made up for it.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
There was a version of Dirk Gently made for BBC quite recently - followed up by a series 'inspired by' the books. As stand alone items they were (in my view) pretty good and worth watching, but not at all faithful to the original text.
Agree - I much preferred the bits of the series where they weren't using bits and pieces from the books. The great fun of the books is the way all the ridiculous plot elements and red herrings all get pulled together logically (for an imaginary value of 'logic') in the end.
However, I don't think they had anything like the budget needed to create electric monks, ghosts, giant invisible spaceships, primordial Earths or pop in on Coleridge so they were probably right to keep it simple and not make a Zaphod's head of it. And I expect that Valhalla was all booked up by the Harry Potter crew when they were shooting it :-)
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
Whoosh on me - thanks for the fishing! Unfortunately, while tabbing back and forth between your description and Google, the doodle went black, and I panicked. :)
Now that I'm using Google Plus, I don't get the Google Doodles anymore; I'm always shunted to a vanilla search page, with a small sign that cajoles me into using Google's Chrome browser instead of whatever else I'm using at the time. Attempts to view the front page or the Canadian *.ca search page senses that I'm a Google Plus user, and shunts me back to the "you would be happier if you used Chrome" doodle-less page.