{"id":1498,"date":"2010-10-01T13:50:38","date_gmt":"2010-10-01T19:50:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=1498"},"modified":"2010-10-01T13:50:38","modified_gmt":"2010-10-01T19:50:38","slug":"odd-lots-129","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=1498","title":{"rendered":"Odd Lots"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<ul>\n<li>The base for the Geiger-Muller tubes used in all of the early Cold War era Victoreen counters (including both tubes now on my bench) is called a standard Peewee 3-pin, JEDEC A3-1. Many thanks to Jonathan O&#8217;Neal for sending along <a href=\"http:\/\/www.orau.org\/ptp\/Library\/lionel-101-tube.pdf\">this link to a detailed spec sheet (PDF) for one of the tubes<\/a>. Now I can wire up the counter I&#8217;m building for initial tests.<\/li>\n<li>A couple of people have suggested using a <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Leyden_jar\">Leyden jar<\/a> instead of ordinary capacitors to collect charge for my (supposedly) steampunk Geiger counter. I imagine that a Leyden jar would be more period, and it&#8217;s certainly a good excuse to build something that I saw in every single one of the kid books on electricity I read back in the early 60s. Not real portable, though.<\/li>\n<li>There is indeed an organization that helps to keep Latin functional, 2000-odd years from its original coalescence as a major world language. No psychic powers points for guessing that the organization is&#8230;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.vatican.va\/roman_curia\/institutions_connected\/latinitas\/documents\/index_lt.htm\">the Roman Catholic Church.<\/a> (Thanks to Michael Covington for the link, which, I must say ahead of things, is in&#8230;Latin.)<\/li>\n<li>And Finland just racked up a <em>huge<\/em> mess of cool points with me for being <a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/2\/hi\/6079852.stm\">the only country in the world that broadcasts the news in Latin<\/a>. (Thanks to Aki Peltonen for the link.)<\/li>\n<li>Jim Furstenberg put me on to photos of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.oobject.com\/category\/victorian-submarines\/\">a round dozen Victorian submarines<\/a>. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.oobject.com\/\">The site<\/a> looks to be a marvelously engaging time-waster, er, experience broadener. (Have done much of both in recent hours.)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/googlesocialweb.blogspot.com\/2010\/09\/google-url-shortener-gets-website.html\">Google just announced its own URL shortener<\/a>, which will do some reasonable screening against malware. I have avoided using URL shorteners for that reason until now.<\/li>\n<li>Furthermore, the new Google URL shortener <a href=\"http:\/\/www.engadget.com\/2010\/10\/01\/goo-gl-url-shortener-can-also-spit-out-qr-codes-if-you-ask-it-n\/\">will generate a QR code for you<\/a> if you tack a .qr onto the end of the shortened URL.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/gizmodo.com\/5652129\/why-is-amazon-making-an-android-app-store\">Amazon is creating an Android app store<\/a>. Peculiar? Not if the next (or next after that) Kindle generation is more than just an ebook reader.<\/li>\n<li>I&#8217;m proud to say that <a href=\"http:\/\/daisy-knotwise.livejournal.com\/\">my good sister Gretchen<\/a> long ago declared that she is raising free-range kids. I wasn&#8217;t quite sure what she meant (Carol and I have none of our own) <a href=\"http:\/\/freerangekids.wordpress.com\/\">until I read this<\/a>. Bravo! Now, can we make zero-tolerance policies in schools a felony? (Thanks to Pete Albrecht for the link.)<\/li>\n<li>The other day I mentioned to Carol that, with &#8220;Drumlin Circus&#8221; taking on a certain steampunk flavor (it&#8217;s certainly nothing like &#8220;Drumlin Boiler&#8221;) I would probably have to buy a top hat. Her reply: &#8220;Um&#8230;you already have a top hat.&#8221; I looked on the high shelf in the closet, and shore &#8217;nuff! I bought it for the 1999 Coriolis Millennium Christmas Party at the Biltmore Hotel in Scottsdale. I wore it exactly once, and then forgot about it. So what&#8217;s next? Spats? Or <a href=\"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=1449\">my seriously ahead-of-the-curve Chester A. Arthur facial hair<\/a>?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The base for the Geiger-Muller tubes used in all of the early Cold War era Victoreen counters (including both tubes now on my bench) is called a standard Peewee 3-pin, JEDEC A3-1. Many thanks to Jonathan O&#8217;Neal for sending along this link to a detailed spec sheet (PDF) for one of the tubes. Now I [&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":[52,21,73,14],"class_list":["post-1498","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-oddlots","tag-culture","tag-electronics","tag-language","tag-software"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1498","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=1498"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1498\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}