{"id":2134,"date":"2011-09-19T09:17:19","date_gmt":"2011-09-19T15:17:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=2134"},"modified":"2011-09-19T09:34:13","modified_gmt":"2011-09-19T15:34:13","slug":"odd-lots-169","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=2134","title":{"rendered":"Odd Lots"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li>Maybe it&#8217;s some of the recent solar storms (the sunspots were not spectacularly high) but I heard both Guyana and the Cayman Islands on 17m the other day&#8211;the first time I&#8217;ve seen any significant life on that band in several years.<\/li>\n<li>I have yet to find an Android ebook reader app that will open and render an MS .lit file, of which I have several. No surprise: Having blown an early and promising start in ebook reader software, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mwdd.com\/apps\/microsoft-withdraws-support-for-e-book-reader\/\" target=\"_blank\">MS has recently announced that it is withdrawing the app<\/a>. Reader is actually a nice piece of work, and the first ebook reader program I used regularly. DRMed .lit books are now just noise, and the rest of them will have to be translated by something like Calibre. DRM, especially when it&#8217;s abandoned, trains people to locate cracks and become pirates. Way to go, guys.<\/li>\n<li>SanDisk just announced <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sandisk.com\/products\/usb-flash-drives\/sandisk-cruzer-fit-usb-flash-drive\" target=\"_blank\">a thumb drive about the size of its own USB connector cap<\/a>. 4, 8, or 16GB. I&#8217;ve now broken two thumb drives by leaving them plugged into the rear edge of a laptop and then tipping the laptop back. If that&#8217;s a common problem, this is definitely the solution.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/spaceweather.com\/submissions\/large_image_popup.php?image_name=Laurent-Laveder-110913_5897_1315961299.jpg\" target=\"_blank\">What do you do with the Moon<\/a> once <a href=\"http:\/\/www.romantic-lyrics.com\/lr16.shtml\" target=\"_blank\">you rope it down<\/a>? (Watering it would be interesting, though Mars needs it more.)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.jeanniejeannie.com\/2011\/08\/29\/the-art-of-clean-up-sorting-and-stacking-everyday-objects\/\" target=\"_blank\">This guy thinks like I do<\/a>. Just ask Carol. (Thanks to Michael Covington for the link.)<\/li>\n<li>I recently found a PDF describing <a href=\"http:\/\/copperwood.com\/pub\/Xerox 3200 Ranger - Sales Booklet.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">the first computer I ever programmed for money<\/a>. It was a&#8230;<em>1 MHz<\/em>&#8230;8080. It cost a boggling number of 1979 dollars, so Xerox ended up using most of the initial production run in-house. The 3200 cast a long shadow: I got so used to sitting in front of it that when I built a computer table later that year for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.computercloset.org\/InterSystemsDPS-1.htm\" target=\"_blank\">my S100 CP\/M system<\/a>, I made it just high enough that the keyboard was precisely as far off the floor as the 3200&#8217;s, a height that I use <a href=\"http:\/\/www.duntemann.com\/november2006.htm#11-21-2006\" target=\"_blank\">in computer tables<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=2021\" target=\"_blank\">to this day<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>How long did it take you to figure out what <a href=\"http:\/\/vlm32.com\/savedHTML_2\/thecitythattimeforgot.html\" target=\"_blank\">this<\/a> really was? (Thanks to Pete Albrecht for the link.)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/tech.slashdot.org\/story\/11\/09\/14\/1438223\/Russian-President-Interested-In-Funding-ReactOS\" target=\"_blank\">Russian President Medvedev has taken a liking to ReactOS<\/a>, a long-running and mostly ignored attempt to create <a href=\"http:\/\/www.reactos.org\/en\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\">a driver-compatible, win32-friendly (via WINE) open source Windows clone<\/a>. He&#8217;s suggesting that the Russian government fund it. Now if Medvedev can convince Putin, we could have quite a project on our hands.<\/li>\n<li>I&#8217;d never thought much about how you recycle a dead refrigerator. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gereports.com\/ge-appliances-helps-unveil-fridge-recycling-behemoth-in-philly-expands-options-for-customers-and-supports-new-jobs\/\" target=\"_blank\">Now I know<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>Begorrah! <a href=\"http:\/\/io9.com\/5841150\/the-people-of-8th-century-ireland-were-afraid-of-zombies-too\" target=\"_blank\">Zombies are not a new problem<\/a>. (Thanks to Frank Glover for the link.)<\/li>\n<li>And if that machine gun in your hollow leg won&#8217;t slow them down, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.firebox.com\/product\/4307\/Giant-Gummi-Brain\" target=\"_blank\">send them into sugar crash<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Maybe it&#8217;s some of the recent solar storms (the sunspots were not spectacularly high) but I heard both Guyana and the Cayman Islands on 17m the other day&#8211;the first time I&#8217;ve seen any significant life on that band in several years. I have yet to find an Android ebook reader app that will open and [&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":[17,45,15,43,14,88],"class_list":["post-2134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-oddlots","tag-ebooks","tag-ham-radio","tag-hardware","tag-humor","tag-software","tag-windows"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2134","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=2134"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2134\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2135,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2134\/revisions\/2135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}