{"id":1172,"date":"2010-03-31T21:48:59","date_gmt":"2010-04-01T01:48:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=1172"},"modified":"2010-03-31T21:53:45","modified_gmt":"2010-04-01T01:53:45","slug":"odd-lots-107","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=1172","title":{"rendered":"Odd Lots"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<ul>\n<li>I&#8217;ve been thin on Contra entries this month for a number of reasons, mostly because I&#8217;ve been putting the bulk of my creative energy into finishing &#8220;Drumlin Wheel.&#8221; Nailed the first draft (after <em>nine years!<\/em>) about an hour ago. Originally scoped out at about 11,000 words (like &#8220;Drumlin Boiler&#8221;) it ended up at 14,500. As always, when something major emerges from my subconscious I tend to hate it for a couple of weeks, after which I can fix what&#8217;s wrong and like it again. More on this at some point.<\/li>\n<li>While in Hawaii recently, we heard whale songs through a hydrophone that the tour boat crew had tossed into the water, and I immediately wanted one of my own. (We hope not to wait another five years to go back to Hawaii.) <a href=\"http:\/\/www.freesound.org\/forum\/viewtopic.php?p=13253\">Here&#8217;s an article on how to make your own hydrophone<\/a>, which is nothing more than a waterproof mic on a (long) cable.<\/li>\n<li>I finished reading <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Fat-Cholesterol-are-Good-You\/dp\/919755538X\"><em>Fat and Cholesterol Are Good For You<\/em> by Dr. Uffe Ravnskov<\/a> shortly after we got back from Hawaii, and was about to write a review when I realized that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/2010\/03\/22\/dr-uffe-ravnskov-fat-and-cholesterol-are-good-for-you\/\">Tom Naughton had already done it<\/a>&#8211;and written just about what I would have.<\/li>\n<li>Somebody put a window in the side of one cylinder of a 4-stroke engine, and took <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.makezine.com\/archive\/2010\/03\/view_from_inside_a_4-stroke_engine.html\">a slow-mo video of the action inside the cylinder during actual operation<\/a>. An amazing thing, even though some frames are missing from the exhaust stroke.<\/li>\n<li>Oh, I&#8217;ve seen sillier things than <a href=\"http:\/\/larryfire.wordpress.com\/2010\/03\/26\/illuminated-lightsaber-bookends\/\">this<\/a>&#8230;but not recently.<\/li>\n<li>And finally, CNN reminded me that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2010\/TECH\/03\/30\/xerox.copier.turns.50\/index.html?hpt=Sbin\">the original Xerox copier, model 914, was fifty years old yesterday<\/a>. The article is marginal and doesn&#8217;t even include a color photo of the gadget, of which I repaired many many <em>many<\/em> between 1974 and 1977. There&#8217;s a better photo of the Brown Beast <a href=\"http:\/\/www.digibarn.com\/collections\/locations\/xerox-museum-el-segundo\/\">here<\/a>, along with numerous other Xerox goodies.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been thin on Contra entries this month for a number of reasons, mostly because I&#8217;ve been putting the bulk of my creative energy into finishing &#8220;Drumlin Wheel.&#8221; Nailed the first draft (after nine years!) about an hour ago. Originally scoped out at about 11,000 words (like &#8220;Drumlin Boiler&#8221;) it ended up at 14,500. As [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[21,15,39,43],"class_list":["post-1172","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-oddlots","tag-electronics","tag-hardware","tag-health","tag-humor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1172","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1172"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1172\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1180,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1172\/revisions\/1180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}