You know you can fill your brain with interesting information you’ll never need by following one Wikipedia link to the next (there’s even a game based around that very thing ), but the Internet can make you smarter in other, more permanent ways. Using the magic of video.

[Warning: you can lose hours of your life on the following pages because there’s always ‘one…more…video…’]

YouTube has the educational and entertaining SciShow , which is done by Hank Green (one of the vlog brothers ).

They do regular shows on experiments, science news, pioneers in scientific fields and loads of other geeky things. One of their newest features is the SciShow Talk Show. The initial episode:

Which leads directly to The Brain Scoop , a channel by Emily Graslie that focuses on the ‘interesting’ things behind the scenes at a Zoological museum. They have a shirt that says ‘ Everything is Dead ‘. That should tell you a lot.

Here’s a video for you to watch. Then watch more of hers.

I mentioned the vlogbrothers above, and they have a channel, Crash Course , which is what it sounds like. Quick courses on History (US & World) & English Literature, as well as Ecology, Chemistry and Biology.

This is the intro to English Literature.

Then there’s Vsauce , which has science, as well, but is also heavy on general trivia. Vsauce like to explain/answer interesting questions. Like the science of the friend-zone:

If you like your trivia heavier on the funny and delivered with an English accent, head over to the Quite Interesting channel , with all of the QI episodes. You’ll laugh your arse off and learn a few things, as well.

Back in the States, Ze Frank is always funny, but his True Facts about animals are hilarious.

If you’re more into techy-geeky than science-geeky, there’s Code Academy , a free, online coding tutor that allows you to go at your own pace. My husband is using it to learn Python, but they have tracks to learn HTML, Javascript, CSS, Ruby, APIs, and jQuery.

Speaking of learning to code, K has also done a Coursera course on Python; one of the assignments of which was making a rock, paper, scissors, lizard, Spock game and the final was to build your own asteroid-shooter game so he enjoyed himself immensely. He’s also taken a course through Udacity and recommends that, as well. There are loads of free courses online, but I’m only including those I’ve personally heard good things about. If you’ve tried a site you liked, hit up the comments and let me know.

There’s a Coursera course coming up in March on Self Knowledge I’m considering doing, though my life is going to be in some turmoil due to employment fun, so we’ll see how that goes. If you’re taking it, please let me know. Perhaps we can be study-buddies.

If you need an information-fix and don’t have time to watch videos for some reason, there’s the Twitter.

I’ve recently got onto the Twitter and one of my favourite accounts is Curiosity , the most recent inhabitant of Mars. It posts in the first person, which is bloody fantastic.

Lookie what I did! It’s a hole in 1 rock on Mars. This “mini drill” was a test, more to come! http://bit.ly/11sLZ1s http://twitpic.com/c1oava

How do I take selfies on Mars? By taking multiple pics w/ a camera at the end of my arm. Here’s how it’s done: http://go.nasa.gov/UHonU2

BECAUSE IT TAKES SELFIES ON MARS YOU GUISE

Another interesting feed is Tyler Simko ( @thequantumaniac ), which is the Twitter feed of Quantumaniac , a blog full of physics and science goodness.

The fabulous Professor Brian Cox ( @ProfBrianCox ) has a twitter feed that’s just as enjoyable as you’d think.

For the funny trivia-lovers, there’s @mental_floss and @qikipedia , which is run by The QI Elves and makes me snort with laughter at least once a day.

There are a bajillionty [totally scientific number] of other educational twitter feeds, please let me know which ones you like. Before I end this post, I have to mention @BBCNews , because just today it brought this to my iPod:

Thanks to their feed, I got to watch that before I was even out of bed this morning. Learning things rocks

Poe didn’t leave us with an inordinate amount of work so rabid fans must look elsewhere for their Eddie Poe fix. Happily, talented writers often include him in their stories. Here are the first two I could find. More reviews will be forthcoming.

Batman: Nevermore by Len Wein and Guy Davis: This five issue series takes place outside of the Batman canon and features Poe as a young reporter in Baltimore during a string of horrifying crimes. At the first two of the crime scenes, the police see a figure that looks like a giant raven near the scene and therefore dub them ‘The Raven Murders.’ The victims both belonged to the Gotham Club, an exclusive club for gentlemen (of the smoking room variety, not pole-dancer variety). Poe goes to the club to interview them about an upcoming costume ball (Masque of the Red Death alert) and meets M. Valdemar, Roderick Usher and Arthur Gordon Pym. Also in attendance is a young man named Bruce Wayne. The series incorporates many of Poe’s plots and themes, both from his fiction and poetry. It’s entertaining even for those of us who’ve never read a Batman comic and should please Poe fans, as well. (There’s only one thing that may irk some, which is that our man is portrayed as a weakling, whereas, in reality, he was quite physically fit.) Still, I give it 8/10.

In the Shadow of Edgar Allan Poe by Jonathan Scott Fuqua, Steven Parke and Stephen John Phillips
I prefer to review things I enjoyed rather than slagging off something I didn’t, however, since this falls into the category of ‘Poe in fiction’, here goes.:
The only good thing about this…thing is the cover, which is above. The premise is that Poe’s talent came from demonic sources/his dead father and if he leaves Baltimore it fails. It turns out that the demons are all in his head and he could have been creative anywhere. Fuckin’ hell. But that’s only the crap icing on the crap cake, because the plot and graphics are execrable, as well. Rather than a straight up graphic novel, the ‘characters’ of Poe, Mrs Clemm and Virginia, are played by actual people. Poor sods.
The ‘plot’ includes the infuriating idea that Poe was in a love triangle with his aunt and niece. What a load of tosh. Look, I know, when someone says something’s dreadful, it’s human nature to be tempted to see if it’s really as bad as all that, but please, heed my warning: don’t. Just… don’t. 0/10.

Seriously… just don’t.

Wikipedia has a list of other work that feature Poe as a character, some of which are on my shelves and will be reviewed upon being read.

I was looking for information on one of my ancestors and learned about this dashing fellow:

That’s William Craven, 1st Earl of Craven , the second in a long line of William Cravens. (Between the mid 1500s and 1965 there have been twelve titled William Cravens and who know how many non-titled ones.)

He did several things of the impressive variety, but I particularly enjoyed this bit:

As a Privy Councillor he seems to have been diligent enough: Pepys in his Diary regularly mentions his attendance at the Committee for Tangier and his chairing the Committee on Fisheries. In the latter role Pepys was rather shocked by his bawdy language which Pepys thought improper in a councillor (though perhaps natural in an old soldier)…. Pepys’ attitude to Craven varies in the Diary- on the one hand he calls him a coxcomb and criticises his chairing of the Fisheries Committee; at other times he is glad that Craven is his “very good friend”.

He also stayed in London during the Black Plague, when other nobles were getting the hell out of there. He was all: ‘Plague schmague. Look at my luxurious hair and black armour, not to mention my hyper-cultured-villain facial hair; do you really think your air-borne demons can get past those? Pah! I laugh at your impertinence.’ Instead, he was all: ‘Just calm the fuck down- I’m in charge now. And here, have some places to bury your dead. Now, I have a horse to ride about looking fucking majestic .’

I can’t seem to find the info on when our family crest was created, but our motto is Virtus in actione consistit (virtue consists in action), which sounds like soldier talk to me. ‘Enough with the diplomatic yapping; I have a horse and a battleaxe outside going to waste.’ I’m not really into violence, but I often wish people would shut the hell up and do something, which is clearly a centuries-old Craven family policy.

Is it weird to find a long-dead ancestor attractive? Is it only weird if that long-dead ancestor doesn’t look like the prototype for every single bad guy ever?

No wonder I’m in Slytherin.

Another portrait:

You better WORK

And a full version of the detail above.

When I first learned of Poe Forevermore magazine I immediately thought, ‘I MUST HAVE THAT,’ accompanied by grabby hands.

Before getting on to the comments, I’d like to talk about the physical magazine. It’s beautiful. The covers are glossy with a nice weight and the pages are high-quality. (It also smells nice. Whilst reading I kept huffing the gutter…Which sounds so wrong, but my paper-smelling friends will know what I mean.)

On to the contents. The majority are stories that Poe himself would have likely chosen for a magazine of his own. (The full title is Poe Forevermore: Tales of Mystery & Imagination for good reason.) And they certainly live up to his legacy.

Of the short stories-Sherlock Holmes figures in two of them. Meeting Augustin Dupin in one (‘The Comfort of the Seine’ by Stephen Volk) and interacting with Oscar Wilde in the other (‘The Case of the Green Carnation’ by David Gerrold,which was the stand-out piece for me).

‘Conflagration Site’ by Stefan Grabinski, (translated by Miroslaw Lipinski for the first time) is an excellent haunted-house-with-a-twist story. It’s always nice to be introduced to a new author.

‘The Man From the Fires’ by Larry Blamire has a very Ray-Bradbury feel that was creepy and atmospheric.

There were two complete works of Poe’s: ‘Alone, ‘ (which is my favourite poem so thumbs up on that one) and ‘Berenice’, which had been annotated with factoids. The most interesting of which was the correct pronunciation of the titular character’s name-it’s four syllables and rhymes with ‘very spicy’.

Two of the non-fiction pieces were written by actresses who’ve played Berenice on stage. Those were eye-opening (and made me never want to be on stage in a coffin for an extended period of time.) Tony Tsendeas also wrote about playing Egaeus in the same play. Props to Mr Tsendeas for doing a 45 minute long monologue in that role. I’ve played characters with loads of lines, but nothing approaching that. Respect, my friend.

Rounding out the issue is an interview with the writer of the new Hitchcock film, Stephen Rebello. Rebello talks about his incredible journey through befriending Hitchcock, to writing his biography, to working on the screenplay, to being on set during filming. The sheer unlikelihood of a person being able to be involved in all of those things to the degree that he was is impressive.

Inside the back cover there’s a bit of Hitchcock talking about finding out about Poe and how it influenced his own work. It was a lovely way to wrap up the first issue.

TL;DR: The magazine is fantastic and I’m looking forward to more. As soon as I have gainful employment I’m getting a subscription, as subscribers get extra goodies that single-issue-at-a-time people do not. And if $10 seems too pricey for a periodical, you should know it’s the sort you’ll keep and re-read. It’s definitely worth it.

The bad thing about being far behind every other human in terms of media is that it can be difficult to avoid spoilers. The good thing is having your expectations lowered to the point of very, very rarely being disappointed and fairly frequently being pleasantly surprised.

Such is the case for The Raven, which was panned by Poe fans and critics.

Someone is killing people in the manner of some of the murders in Poe’s stories. It becomes obvious the person is trying to communicate directly with our man and he is the only one who can solve the case. This is bookended by Poe being found in a park, delirious and apparently inebriated, as an explanation of the man’s final, mysterious days.

Many scenes were nearly too dark to see what was happening, and, while I appreciate that they were trying to recreate the terror of walking into a gruesome crime scene with only gas lamps, I think the audience would have forgiven a couple extra lights.

Beyond that, it was typical suspense fare. The costumes were lovely and the sets worked well-the atmosphere would appeal to fans of Sleepy Hollow. 7/10 for period touches.

All of this information comes from Rajini Rao , a very smart lady on Google+.

• The Science of Tea: For 4,700 years, this infusion from the tender leaves of Camellia sinensis has been delivering a cupful of healthy antioxidants and good cheer. Did you know that tea is the most widely consumed beverage, after water? To celebrate the birthday of +Siromi Samarasinghe , who has a PhD in tea chemistry, here is some chemis-tea.

• Caffeine : Did you know that weight for weight, dry tea has more caffeine than coffee? But because more coffee is used per cup than tea, brewed tea has significantly less caffeine (~90 mg/250 ml).

• L-Theanine: A rare amino acid (γ-glutamylethylamide), found almost exclusively in tea, it has a calming effect on the brain. Theanine suppresses the stimulation by caffeine of brain excitability, reduces blood pressure and protects against neuronal cell death. It is a structural analog of glutamine, which is a byproduct of glutamate, the main excitatory neurotransmitter in the brain. Theanine inhibits the transport of glutamine and dampens neurotransmission.

• Catechins: Up to 30% of dry weight in tea, catechins are a type of antioxidant also found in chocolate and wine (Mmm..). Catechins are classified as flavonoids and have been shown to reduce the risk of stroke and cancer.

There are many other antioxidants and polyphenols found in tea. Tea is best drunk in company, but if you are alone, you can still have a tea party:

I had a little tea party
This afternoon at three.
‘Twas very small-
Three guest in all-
Just I, myself and me.

Myself ate all the sandwiches,
While I drank up the tea;
‘Twas also I who ate the pie
And passed the cake to me.
-Jessica Nelson North

[Me again: The best part of this post, all of which is pretty fantastic, is that I learned there’s a PhD in tea chemistry! That’s brilliant.]

When I was twelve, we had to memorise a poem for English class and the teacher said if someone chose ‘The Raven’ they’d automatically get 100 percent. I was on it. It was a few months after I’d realised wearing all black meant never having to think about clothes reciting the entire poem-the class growing more incredulous with every stanza-solidified my status as creepy weirdo (now it’d be ‘goth’, I’m sure).

Aside from the grade (I got a 99 because I didn’t knock on the side of the podium when the titular bird did), I loved the atmosphere of the poem and carried around the book it was in [see the cover to the right] everywhere for at least a year like some sort of literary safety blanket. I may have been some sort of macabre freak who read too much, but Poe was on my side! My favourites were the gloomier stories (Usher, Red Death, and Silence: A Fable were my favourites). If it didn’t look like someone was going to go mad, die of some unnamed disease or just die horribly some other way I quickly lost interest.

I did reports on short stories in class the following two years (‘The Black Cat’ and ‘The Masque of the Red Death’) and freaked my classmates right out. It was brilliant. The second year we had to do something creative based on the story, so I made up an advert where you could buy tickets to the masque. I was a fun teenager.

Flash forward many years, and other macabre authors, and I came across Matthew Pearl’s The Poe Shadow , which hypothesizes about the events of Poe’s final days. [Incidentally, I picked it up because I’d loved Pearl’s The Dante Club . You should read it. It’s very good.] While writing this post, I came upon a page on Pearl’s website with bonus content for his novels. Now I want to re-read the book, and I may do once I’ve finished the two Poe bios I’m reading.

Reading Pearl’s book reminded me of the man who’d started me on my journey into the dark corners of literature and I picked up (read: got from Amazon for free) all five volumes of Poe’s fiction. I’ve now read all of them and my favourite quotes are here . I’m still adding some, but that’s a good portion.

Though I still prefer his horror stories, I can now appreciate his descriptions of nature in ‘The Landscape Garden’ and Arnheim, as well as find the humour in ‘Never Bet the Devil Your Head’ and ‘The Angel of the Odd’ amongst others.

Some of his short pieces were baffling, however, and I found this Wikipedia page with information on most of his short fiction to be very useful.

Once through the man’s work, I wanted more and began looking for novels and stories that featured Poe as a character. I’ll begin reviewing those next week.

You have all his books, you’ve memorised his poems, you’ve doodled his picture on your notebook, but, surely, in this consumer society, there must be more you can do to show your appreciation for Mr. Poe. It turns out, the Internet has loads of things for just such an occasion. Here are some of my favourites:

[Disclaimer: these were all created by people with far more artistic gifts than I have.]

Apparel

This is probably my favourite Poe-themed t-shirt. It’s available on Zazzle , and is, therefore, quite customisable in terms of type of clothing you’d like the design on. For example, that link will take you to a page titled ‘Raven Men’s Dark Shirt’, but then you may choose from 60 different styles of clothing. Because of this, the price varies greatly, but the one above, which is the Women’s Hanes ComfortSoft T-shirt is $32USD.

November Fire has wonderful apparel for the macabre, and they don’t let down the Poe fans. They start at $17 and is brilliant.

Office Supplies & Stationery

These gorgeous envelopes are available from the LaPapierre shop on etsy for $6.40 per set of sixteen.

The above image is a beautiful illustration that can be put on two different sizes of greeting cards or a postcard, starting at 2.08 USD.

Accessories

This handmade purse can be found on one of my favourite macabre shopping sites, The Gorey Details. It’s crafted out of an actual, leatherbound book. It’s $65, and you can choose which type of handle you’d like: antique or longer shoulder-length black. More Poe themed items at the shop here .

This hair clip is elegant and gorgeous. If it were mine, I’d find go out of my way to find nice places to wear it. It’s a vailable from Etsy for $35. From the description: This handmade hair clip has selected quotes from Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” woven into the flower and leaves. The colors are charcoal grey and black. The text is on silver paper. The finished size is around 4″.

Alchemy Gothic raven choker available from The Black Cat Closet for $60.95.

Housewares

This adorable little guy is approx. 8″ x 12″, handmade in soft fleece or felt, and available on Etsy for $35 USD and if I had disposable income, I’d adopt one today and name him MyRaven. Because he’d be mine. And a raven.

Really, just go to Etsy and search for Poe . There are ridiculous numbers of incredible creations celebrating our man.

And other fun bits and bobs

The Poe bobble head ($19.95) is available through the Poe Museum shop , which has many other fantastic gifts.

This one is difficult to find, but I love it so much I had to include it in this list.

And finally, no shrine to our man would be complete without a raven:

Not the most sinister-looking one available, but it’s done by Audubon and makes the ‘caw’ sound. (Alas, it doesn’t say ‘Nevermore,’ but you can have everything.) The little guy above is $8 from Amazon .

Personally, I prefer this guy:

He’s made by Wild Republic, but is no longer in production. Colour me disappointed.

Arthur Rackham

This page has Arthur Rackham’s illustrations to Poe’s Tales of Mystery and Imagination. I’d only known Rackham as a delicate water-colour fairy-painter, so seeing his other types of illustrations was an eye-opener.

Harry Clarke

Clarke’s illustrations of several Poe stories is here. While Clarke’s illustrations don’t always match the pictures in my head (see ‘Cask of Amontillado’ and ‘Pit and the Pendulum’), some perfectly complement the story (‘Tell Tale Heart’ and ‘Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar) while others are far more terrifying than what I’d imagined (‘Maelstrom’ and ‘Premature Burial’). Then there’s the WTF element of ‘Masque of the Red Death’. Did someone toilet paper the villain? Is that why he killed everyone? I don’t even…

Manet

Project Gutenberg has ‘The Raven’ with Manet’s illustrations . There are only a few, but it’s an important work.

My favourite is this:

Gustave Doré

PG comes through again, this time with Dore’s illustrations of ‘The Raven’

Edmund Dulac

Encore Editions has quite a few (perhaps all?) of Dulac’s illustrations of some of Poe’s poetry. It was extremely difficult to choose what to post here, as every one deserves to be appreciated. But here are a few: