{"id":1744,"date":"2011-04-30T18:24:54","date_gmt":"2011-05-01T00:24:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=1744"},"modified":"2011-05-01T07:24:19","modified_gmt":"2011-05-01T13:24:19","slug":"odd-lots-152","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=1744","title":{"rendered":"Odd Lots"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/lists.ubuntu.com\/archives\/ubuntu-announce\/2011-April\/000147.html\" target=\"_blank\">Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal is out<\/a>, and hardly anybody&#8217;s even mentioned it. Could it be that nobody&#8217;s really upgrading every six months anymore? (My workaday Linux system is still running 10.04.) I&#8217;m not bullish on <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Unity_(desktop_environment)\" target=\"_blank\">Unity<\/a>, and may reconsider Kubuntu when I set up a GX620-based Linux box in coming weeks.<\/li>\n<li>The formidable Al Williams has a three-part series on <em>DDJ<\/em> explaining how to use the visual tool App Inventor to create Android apps. I have not used App Inventor yet, but Al&#8217;s analysis of the challenges of using it (and of visual metaphors for programming generally) are worth reading. <a href=\"http:\/\/drdobbs.com\/blogs\/embedded-systems\/229401706\" target=\"_blank\">Part 1<\/a>. <a href=\"http:\/\/drdobbs.com\/blogs\/embedded-systems\/229402209\" target=\"_blank\">Part 2<\/a>. <a href=\"http:\/\/drdobbs.com\/blogs\/embedded-systems\/229402516\" target=\"_blank\">Part 3<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.wired.com\/geekdad\/2011\/04\/fuzzy-reboot-reviewing-a-science-fiction-classic-retold-geekdad-weekly-rewind\/\" target=\"_blank\">John Scalzi has written a brand new Fuzzies novel<\/a>. (Not furries, Fuzzies&#8211;tiny aliens created by H. Beam Piper.) Scalzi&#8217;s good&#8211;this one could be fun. I&#8217;ve read all the Fuzzies books (by Piper and others) and truly only like <em>Little Fuzzy<\/em> (the original) and <em>Fuzzy Bones<\/em> by William Tuning. <em>Fuzzy Sapiens<\/em> is so-so, and <em>Fuzzies and Other People<\/em> is so awful that Piper chose not to submit it for publication after he wrote it in 1962. It was found in a box after he committed suicide in 1964, and not published until the late 1980s.<\/li>\n<li>Interestingly, most of Piper&#8217;s copyrights were not renewed, and a great deal of his work (including <em>Little Fuzzy<\/em>) is now in the public domain. Go to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gutenberg.org\/browse\/authors\/p\" target=\"_blank\">the &#8220;P&#8221; author page on Project Gutenberg<\/a> and scroll down.<\/li>\n<li>I heard years ago that armadillos are the only other mammalian species that contracts leprosy, but now there&#8217;s evidence that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/health\/la-he-leprosy-armadillos-20110428,0,7639041.story\" target=\"_blank\">virtually all human cases of the disease (which is vanishingly rare these days) were contracted from them<\/a>. (Thanks to Pete Albrecht for the link.)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ilga.gov\/legislation\/BillStatus.asp?DocNum=1600&amp;GAID=11&amp;DocTypeID=HB&amp;LegID=58751&amp;SessionID=84&amp;SpecSess=0&amp;Session=&amp;GA=97\" target=\"_blank\">Illinois is banning trans fats in its schools<\/a> (with a notable exception for doughnuts, how healthy!) but does anyone dare remind them that there is absolutely no trans fat in unhydrogenated lard? In terms of monounsaturated fat (the good fat) <a href=\"http:\/\/www.foodandwine.com\/articles\/lard-the-new-health-food\" target=\"_blank\">lard comes out better than butter<\/a>, and both are far better than the vegetable oil spreads we call margarine. Funny how the more animal fat I eat, the more animal fat (my own!) that I lose. (Thanks to Pete Albrecht for the Illinois link.)<\/li>\n<li>And the much-reviled Dr. Eades makes the point that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.proteinpower.com\/drmike\/uncategorized\/add-lard-to-your-larder\/\" target=\"_blank\">Mediterranean people who supposedly take all their foods as olive oil are actually doing a lot of their cooking in animal fats, especially lard<\/a>. (They export the olive oil to people like us, who think it&#8217;s healthier.)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.makezine.com\/archive\/2011\/04\/hacked-together-mad-max-ebike-contraption.html\" target=\"_blank\">This<\/a> gets an award for something. I&#8217;m still not sure what.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal is out, and hardly anybody&#8217;s even mentioned it. Could it be that nobody&#8217;s really upgrading every six months anymore? (My workaday Linux system is still running 10.04.) I&#8217;m not bullish on Unity, and may reconsider Kubuntu when I set up a GX620-based Linux box in coming weeks. The formidable Al Williams [&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":[37,39,59,32,18,72],"class_list":["post-1744","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-oddlots","tag-food","tag-health","tag-linux","tag-programming","tag-sf","tag-weirdness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1744","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=1744"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1744\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1748,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1744\/revisions\/1748"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1744"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1744"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1744"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}