{"id":2647,"date":"2012-10-26T10:52:09","date_gmt":"2012-10-26T16:52:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=2647"},"modified":"2012-10-27T13:05:45","modified_gmt":"2012-10-27T19:05:45","slug":"odd-lots-203","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=2647","title":{"rendered":"Odd Lots"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li>Jim Strickland sent word that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lindsaybks.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Lindsay&#8217;s Technical Books<\/a> is <a href=\"http:\/\/shopteacherbob.blogspot.com\/2012\/10\/old-guy-thoughts.html\" target=\"_blank\">shutting down next year<\/a>, not for financial reasons but simply because Lindsay is retiring. Their last print catalog has been sent. Order the stuff you&#8217;ve been procrastinating about for years&#8211;I will be. (Recommendation: <em>Radio for the Millions<\/em>.) Tip for those who haven&#8217;t heard of him before: <em>Lots<\/em> of steampunk-pertinent do-it-yourself there.<\/li>\n<li>Amazon can wipe any Kindle it wants to, anytime, without telling you. We&#8217;ve known this since the 1989 dustup over the rights to Orwell&#8217;s <em>1984<\/em>. It&#8217;s still a risk, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/timworstall\/2012\/10\/23\/but-why-would-amazon-wipe-your-kindle-to-protect-amazon\/?partner=yahootix\" target=\"_blank\">you can trigger it by trying to sneak around region restrictions<\/a>. Now, Ars Technica explains <a href=\"http:\/\/arstechnica.com\/gadgets\/2012\/10\/drm-be-damned-how-to-protect-your-amazon-e-books-from-being-deleted\/\" target=\"_blank\">how to keep what you&#8217;ve bought by removing the DRM<\/a>. I object to region restrictions in digital content because it makes piracy a safer way to acquire content. <em>Don&#8217;t train your customers to be pirates<\/em>. When are we going to learn?<\/li>\n<li>I knew this, but not in detail: Kodak had <a href=\"http:\/\/bits.blogs.nytimes.com\/2010\/08\/26\/bits-pics-kodaks-1975-model-digital-camera\/\" target=\"_blank\">a working digital camera prototype<\/a> in 1975, and it used a casette tape to store photos&#8211;which took 23 seconds per photo. Here&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/pluggedin.kodak.com\/pluggedin\/post\/?id=687843\">more on the device from the man who invented it<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>If that sort of thing intrigues you, here&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.retronaut.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">the motherlode<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>In case you&#8217;ve never actually seen it (I hadn&#8217;t) here&#8217;s where you can stream the video of <a href=\"http:\/\/sloan.stanford.edu\/mousesite\/1968Demo.html\" target=\"_blank\">Doug Engelbart&#8217;s prophetic (to put it mildly) Mother of All Demos<\/a>, during which he showed how a mouse could be used to help with various computer tasks like word processing.<\/li>\n<li>I bought <a href=\"http:\/\/renoir.en.kku.ac.th\/courses\/188473\/mouse\/mouseall.jpg\" target=\"_blank\">the original Microsoft Mouse<\/a> in 1983 and still have it. It still works. It had better, as I paid $200 for it.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/gizmodo.com\/5954430\/the-placebo-effect-may-be-genetic\" target=\"_blank\">The placebo effect may be genetic<\/a>&#8211;which is a far less significant question than how the hell it works to begin with.<\/li>\n<li>The first mirror for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gmto.org\/\" target=\"_blank\">this telescope<\/a> has now been completed. The finished telescope will have <em>seven<\/em> of them. I struggled to grind, polish, and figure a ten-inch mirror when I was 15. This helps me put the whole thing in perspective. Wow.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.slate.com\/articles\/health_and_science\/explainer\/2012\/10\/neanderthal_vs_homo_sapiens_who_would_win_in_a_fight.html\" target=\"_blank\">Slate seems to think that humans would win fights with Neanderthals<\/a>. Having seen a number of skeletal and muscle reconstructions of those gnarly guys, I tend to doubt it. Why, then, did they go extinct if we didn&#8217;t kill them? My guess: They killed each other. Why do I think that? I read human history and anthropology.<\/li>\n<li>You can now buy <a href=\"http:\/\/www.examiner.com\/article\/old-things-are-new-dearborn-brings-back-the-40-ford-coupe\" target=\"_blank\">a brand-new, reinforced and factory rustproofed body for a 1940 Ford Coupe&#8230;from Ford<\/a>. If they made an AWD minivan I&#8217;d already have one. Here&#8217;s hoping.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jim Strickland sent word that Lindsay&#8217;s Technical Books is shutting down next year, not for financial reasons but simply because Lindsay is retiring. Their last print catalog has been sent. Order the stuff you&#8217;ve been procrastinating about for years&#8211;I will be. (Recommendation: Radio for the Millions.) Tip for those who haven&#8217;t heard of him before: [&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":[41,15,39,44,51,16,110,68],"class_list":["post-2647","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-oddlots","tag-astronomy","tag-hardware","tag-health","tag-history","tag-photography","tag-publishing","tag-tablets","tag-telescopes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2647","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=2647"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2647\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2651,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2647\/revisions\/2651"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}