{"id":2754,"date":"2013-01-31T12:57:38","date_gmt":"2013-01-31T19:57:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=2754"},"modified":"2013-01-31T12:57:40","modified_gmt":"2013-01-31T19:57:40","slug":"odd-lots-214","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=2754","title":{"rendered":"Odd Lots"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.theverge.com\/2013\/1\/29\/3929110\/surface-pro-disk-space-windows-8\" target=\"_blank\">The 64GB Microsoft Surface Pro tablet has only 23GB of open storage<\/a>. Yukkh.<\/li>\n<li>Given that I do most of my reading curled up in a monster cushy chair, I&#8217;ve begun to wonder if a tablet with a 12&#8243; display (or perhaps even larger) with a charger dock on the adjacent end table would be useful. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mobilemag.com\/2012\/04\/12\/toshibas-13-inch-excite-tablet-is-not-that-exciting\/\" target=\"_blank\">Such things exist<\/a>, but not in great numbers and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/B005HV3IMY\/\" target=\"_blank\">not cheap<\/a>. Technical PDFs are often uncomfortable reading even on my 10&#8243; Transformer Prime.<\/li>\n<li>Here&#8217;s yet another reason I&#8217;m not bullish on the Cloud: <a href=\"http:\/\/arstechnica.com\/gadgets\/2013\/01\/another-cloud-account-or-why-i-didnt-buy-an-eye-fi-card\/\" target=\"_blank\">If all you have is the Cloud, everything has to include a rain dance<\/a>. I ruled out Eye-Fi when it first came out for this reason, but the absurdity of requiring global connection to make a local connection needs to be aired every so often.<\/li>\n<li>Short summary of <em>Bowl of Heaven<\/em> by Gregory Benford and Larry Niven: <em>Ringworld with an engine, and nowhere to go<\/em>. It&#8217;s the first Larry Niven book I can recall that I genuinely hated. Save your money.<\/li>\n<li>Here&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.darkroastedblend.com\/2012\/09\/awesome-vintage-calculators.html\" target=\"_blank\">a result of vintage calculators<\/a> (well, if not &#8220;result,&#8221; what&#8217;s the proper collective?) and a pointer to <a href=\"http:\/\/history-computer.com\/MechanicalCalculators\/18thCentury\/Muller.html\" target=\"_blank\">what would be a stunning steampunk model<\/a>, if it hadn&#8217;t been designed in 1788.<\/li>\n<li>Early heads-up for what may be a really brilliant thing: <a href=\"http:\/\/thrilling-tales.webomator.com\/derange-o-lab\/pulp-o-mizer\/pulp-o-mizer.html\" target=\"_blank\">Pulp-O-Mizer<\/a>, which is a sort of image generator that spits out convincing Deco\/Diesel magazine or book covers. Thanks to Jim Rittenhouse for putting me on to it. I&#8217;ll have more to say when I take it for a spin myself.<\/li>\n<li>I don&#8217;t know from personal experience if this is true; I don&#8217;t drink enough, nor late enough, to be a good test case. However, I&#8217;ve been told by several in my inner circle that <a href=\"http:\/\/io9.com\/5980281\/why-you-always-wake-up-early-after-a-night-of-drinking\" target=\"_blank\">too much booze too late at night makes for very bad sleep<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.google.com\/search?q=steampunk+r2d2&amp;hl=en&amp;tbo=u&amp;tbm=isch&amp;source=univ&amp;sa=X&amp;ei=84QJUdH3EuHsyQGd74HYDw&amp;sqi=2&amp;ved=0CC0QsAQ&amp;biw=1600&amp;bih=1003\" target=\"_blank\">There are a lot more Steampunk R2D2s out there than I would have guessed<\/a>. I like the one with the monocle.<\/li>\n<li>It&#8217;s as easy as fishin&#8217;? <a href=\"http:\/\/www.grindtv.com\/outdoor\/blog\/50860\/a+hooked+marlin+sinks+a+fishing+boat+well+something+like+that\/\" target=\"_blank\">I&#8217;ll stick with bluegills<\/a>. (Thanks to Pete Albrecht for the link.)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/io9.com\/5980165\/further-proof-that-reality-has-become-a-william-gibson-novel\" target=\"_blank\">The big movie studios are evidently creating fake YouTube accounts with fake users uploading supposedly pirated movie trailers promoting new films<\/a>. For the sake of plausible deniability, they&#8217;re sending YouTube takedown notices on the trailers. And you wonder why I see maybe three movies a year.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.criggo.com\/2013\/01\/hmmmmm-3\/\" target=\"_blank\">This may not be a viable business model<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.thefrisky.com\/2013-01-29\/the-real-reason-men-stopped-wearing-high-heels\/\" target=\"_blank\">In times long past, men used to wear high heels<\/a>. (More recently, I remember seeing guys in platforms when I was in college.) Why? To stay on their horses. Or maybe to avoid being mistaken for Neanderthals. We may never know.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The 64GB Microsoft Surface Pro tablet has only 23GB of open storage. Yukkh. Given that I do most of my reading curled up in a monster cushy chair, I&#8217;ve begun to wonder if a tablet with a 12&#8243; display (or perhaps even larger) with a charger dock on the adjacent end table would be useful. [&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":[52,15,39,43,18,14,101],"class_list":["post-2754","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-oddlots","tag-culture","tag-hardware","tag-health","tag-humor","tag-sf","tag-software","tag-steampunk"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2754","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=2754"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2754\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}