{"id":1680,"date":"2011-02-17T08:21:40","date_gmt":"2011-02-17T15:21:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=1680"},"modified":"2011-02-17T08:22:00","modified_gmt":"2011-02-17T15:22:00","slug":"odd-lots-145","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=1680","title":{"rendered":"Odd Lots"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<ul>\n<li>Okay, I promised more about circuses and steampunk today, but odd lots are piling up.<\/li>\n<li>From the Words I Didn&#8217;t Know Until Yesterday Department: <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.dealextreme.com\/p\/stainless-steel-metal-spudger-for-opening-watches-and-electronics-19279\" target=\"_blank\">spudger<\/a><\/em>, a small tool like a miniature putty knife that helps you pry the backs off of watches and electronics, like the monitor I repaired last month. (Thanks to Tom Roderick for alerting me to its existence.)<\/li>\n<li>Also from the Words I Didn&#8217;t Know Until Yesterday (ok, last month) Department: <em><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/algophilist\" target=\"_blank\">algophilist<\/a><\/em> , a person who takes sexual pleasure in pain. Broader and more ancient term than &#8220;masochist&#8221; or &#8220;sadist.&#8221; (One such appears in <em>Drumlin Circus<\/em>.) And to think I first thought it was a guy who liked algorithms&#8230;<\/li>\n<li>Given that Amazon buries the cost of Kindle&#8217;s 3G connection in publisher content fees, the lack of graphics (big) within text (small) makes sense. I always thought it was about the crappy low-res e-ink display. It&#8217;s not. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pcpro.co.uk\/blogs\/2011\/02\/15\/the-true-cost-of-publishing-on-the-amazon-kindle\/\" target=\"_blank\">Here&#8217;s how it works<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>Alas, <a href=\"http:\/\/news.xinhuanet.com\/english2010\/health\/2011-02\/17\/c_13736582.htm\" target=\"_blank\">this<\/a> may be too late for me. (Thanks to Pete Albrecht for the link.)<\/li>\n<li>From Bill Higgins comes a link to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.publishersweekly.com\/binary-data\/ARTICLE_ATTACHMENT\/file\/000\/000\/242-1.pdf\">a list (alas, not searchable) of the 200 Borders bookstores that will be disappeared shortly<\/a>. (PDF) Bogglingly, neither of the Colorado Springs stores are on the list, even the small, always empty, and mostly pointless one at Southgate. I will miss the one in Crystal Lake, though.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2011\/02\/16\/nyregion\/16about.html?_r=1&amp;ref=todayspaper\" target=\"_blank\">Guys who come up with schemes like this<\/a> talk about avoiding government censorship and such, but what will actually drive adoption (if it ever happens) is anonymous file sharing. And nertz, I outlined a novel a couple of years ago describing a technology very much like it. The late George Ewing called this The Weaselrats Effect.<\/li>\n<li>Years ago I remember reading somewhere that steam calliopes are hard to keep tuned because the metal whistles expand as steam passes through them, throwing their notes off enough to easily hear. Can&#8217;t find a reference now. Running a calliope on compressed air from a tank might be problematic as well, because air stored under pressure gets cold when it&#8217;s released. Surprisingly (perhaps unsurprisingly) good technical information on calliopes is hard to come by.<\/li>\n<li>Whoa! If you&#8217;re interested in solar astronomy, do <em>not<\/em> miss <a href=\"http:\/\/wattsupwiththat.com\/2011\/02\/16\/watch-sunspot-group-1158-form-from-nothing\/\" target=\"_blank\">this video of new monster sunspot 1158 forming out of nothing<\/a>. It will give you a very crisp feeling for the tubulent nature of the photosphere. Those aren&#8217;t spots: They&#8217;re solar hurricanes!<\/li>\n<li>If you&#8217;re reasonably high-latitude (45+ degrees) look north after dark for the next few days. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wired.com\/wiredscience\/2011\/02\/big-solar-flare\/\" target=\"_blank\">That giant sunspot 1158 is spitting a great deal of energetic chaos in our direction<\/a>, and the sky could light up as a result.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/arstechnica.com\/gadgets\/news\/2011\/02\/samsung-reveals-101-inch-galaxy-tab-sequel-with-honeycomb.ars\" target=\"_blank\">Samsung has announced a new, larger 10.1&#8243; Galaxy Tab<\/a>, running Android Honeycomb. Details are sparse, but I&#8217;m wondering if we&#8217;re not ultimately going to see the slate market divide into 7&#8243; and 10&#8243; form factors.<\/li>\n<li>Beating cancer may mean we&#8217;ll have to be three and a half feet tall, <a href=\"http:\/\/gizmodo.com\/#!5762524\/ecuadorian-genetic-mutants-are-immune-to-cancer\" target=\"_blank\">like these mutant Ecuadorians<\/a>. I&#8217;d be good with that&#8211;as long as everyone else was three and a half feet tall as well.<\/li>\n<li>Gawker Media has a new Web UI that I find so annoying that I&#8217;ve mostly stopped reading their sites, which include <a href=\"http:\/\/io9.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Io9<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/gizmodo.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Gizmodo<\/a>. I could do without sites like Jalopnik and Jezebel, but damn, I&#8217;m gonna miss those other two.<\/li>\n<li>I have yet to find a good popular history of refrigeration. Somehow I doubt people are going to feel sorry for me about that.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Okay, I promised more about circuses and steampunk today, but odd lots are piling up. From the Words I Didn&#8217;t Know Until Yesterday Department: spudger, a small tool like a miniature putty knife that helps you pry the backs off of watches and electronics, like the monitor I repaired last month. (Thanks to Tom Roderick [&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":[41,33,17,15,39,5,96],"class_list":["post-1680","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-oddlots","tag-astronomy","tag-books","tag-ebooks","tag-hardware","tag-health","tag-web","tag-words"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1680","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=1680"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1680\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1681,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1680\/revisions\/1681"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}