h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

This week I got an Android phone, and have been merrily playing with it for a few days. This morning I was searching through the Android market for a QR barcode reader, when I stumbled upon Google Goggles, I remembered why I originally wanted an Android.

Google Goggles is a program that allows you to search using a picture that you have taken with your phone, which when I first heard of it did strike me as the great missing piece of internet search, and it has enabled me to finally answer a question that has been following me around for most of my adult life.

I was given this poster 15 years ago, because someone I knew at Uni thought I looked like the person in the in the picture, but for all this time I haven't known who the artist is, or the subject. The person that gave it to me could never remember, and the poster contains no name.

So, this afternoon, after a brief search for it in the loft, I took a picture of the poster with my phone and googled it.

I now have my answer. It's a self portrait by Egon Schiele, who was a protégé of Klimt. He was born in 1890 and died in 1918 of Spanish flu.

The portrait from the poster is top right on the wiki page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egon_Schiele

I must say, that finally having an answer to this is a great relief. Technology has provided a solution that I wouldn't been able to find out on my own.

That's really cool.

way cool. (and having an Android phone I must now try it out)