{"id":3435,"date":"2015-05-31T10:39:54","date_gmt":"2015-05-31T16:39:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=3435"},"modified":"2015-05-31T10:39:54","modified_gmt":"2015-05-31T16:39:54","slug":"odd-lots-280","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=3435","title":{"rendered":"Odd Lots"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li>Let me recommend <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thepassivevoice.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">a thoughtful blog on the issues of writing and publishing<\/a>, which is remarkable for having one of the most civil and intelligent comment sections I&#8217;ve ever run across. (In recent years I&#8217;m reading blog comments less and less, because they&#8217;re mostly content-free tribal hatred.)<\/li>\n<li>Maybe the Ralpha Dogs had a hand in this: <a href= \"http:\/\/spectrum.ieee.org\/tech-talk\/consumer-electronics\/portable-devices\/a-tunable-liquid-metal-antenna-increases-the-frequency-range-of-communication-devices-\" target=\"_blank\">Making tunable microwave antennas from columns of liquid metal<\/a>. (Somebody sent me this link, but I don&#8217;t remember who. Feel free to take credit in the comments.)<\/li>\n<li>Tom Roderick sent me this link to a video showing <a href= \"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/wSuH9u0kvhU?rel=0\" target= \"_blank\">the guldurndest steampunk corkscrew ever<\/a>. I like wine, but maybe not quite <em>that<\/em> much.<\/li>\n<li>And while we&#8217;re watching movies, here&#8217;s the craziest damned thing I&#8217;ve seen in awhile: <a href= \"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=zsXWspo5hrc\" target=\"_blank\">A jet-powered go-kart<\/a>. His name is Colin Furze. <a href= \"http:\/\/www.colinfurze.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">He&#8217;s done other crazy things too<\/a>, and I envy not only his craziness but his youth, energy, and good looks. Here&#8217;s hoping he doesn&#8217;t wrap himself around a tree at 200 MPH before he lives long enough to go bald. (Thanks to Pete Albrecht for the link.)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/accordingtohoyt.com\/2015\/05\/29\/pure-gold\/\" target=\"_blank\">Sarah Hoyt&#8217;s reflection on the Golden Age of SFF<\/a>, and how we writers can bring about the second coming of the Golden Age, if we only choose to. It relates to her concept of Human Wave SF &amp; fantasy, <a href= \"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=3361\" target=\"_blank\">which I did a series on some time back<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>Hurricane season opens tomorrow, and <a href= \"http:\/\/wattsupwiththat.com\/2015\/05\/27\/noaa-forecast-a-below-normal-atlantic-hurricane-season-is-likely-this-year\/\" target=\"_blank\">NOAA itself is forcasting below-normal hurricane activity this year<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>We&#8217;re finally admitting that open offices (that is, sitting at a table in a field of fifty or a hundred tables without any cube walls between them) <a href= \"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/posteverything\/wp\/2014\/12\/30\/google-got-it-wrong-the-open-office-trend-is-destroying-the-workplace\/\" target=\"_blank\">are a stupid, self-defeating idea<\/a>. Productivity requires concentration, and concentration requires privacy and quiet.<\/li>\n<li>Jim Strickland pointed me to <a href= \"http:\/\/www.fontsquirrel.com\/home\" target= \"_blank\">FontSquirrel<\/a>, a source of free and almost-free fonts. (Nearly all are free for personal use; some require payment for commercial use.)<\/li>\n<li>I think most of us figured this out years ago: <a href= \"http:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2015\/04\/29\/the-paradox-of-dogma-how-the-left-is-crippling-itself\/\" target=\"_blank\">Ideological echo-chambers are self-defeating<\/a>. I would also add that they are creepy. Pod-people creepy&#8230;because what they do is create pod people.<\/li>\n<li><a href= \"http:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/health\/archive\/2013\/05\/study-why-pot-smokers-are-skinnier\/275846\/\" target=\"_blank\">Stone yourself skinny?<\/a> No wonder <a href= \"http:\/\/www.therichest.com\/rich-list\/nation\/americas-8-thinnest-states\/?view=all\" target=\"_blank\">Colorado people are the thinnest in the country!<\/a><\/li>\n<li><em><a href= \"http:\/\/www.nutsvolts.com\/magazine\/article\/february2012_Noon\" target=\"_blank\">Nuts &amp; Volts Magazine<\/a><\/em> (to which I bought a lifetime subscription in 1980!) is posting some of their more interesting back articles. This one, which explains <a href= \"http:\/\/www.nutsvolts.com\/magazine\/article\/february2012_Noon\" target=\"_blank\">how the Edison storage cell works and how to build one at home<\/a>, is one of my favorites.<\/li>\n<li><a href= \"http:\/\/madgeniusclub.com\/2015\/05\/28\/so-what-is-hugo-worthy-anyway\/\" target=\"_blank\">The coordinator of Sad Puppies 4 lays out her theory of what makes a story Hugo-worthy<\/a>. To Kate&#8217;s list I would add that contenders have something in the way of world-building, which is big part of what I read SF for.<\/li>\n<li>Ever wanted a Bigfoot blanket? <a href= \"http:\/\/middleofbeyond.com\/collections\/blankets\" target=\"_blank\">I know where you can get one<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Let me recommend a thoughtful blog on the issues of writing and publishing, which is remarkable for having one of the most civil and intelligent comment sections I&#8217;ve ever run across. (In recent years I&#8217;m reading blog comments less and less, because they&#8217;re mostly content-free tribal hatred.) Maybe the Ralpha Dogs had a hand in [&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":[46,16,144,54,18,101,20],"class_list":["post-3435","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-oddlots","tag-psychology","tag-publishing","tag-sadpuppies","tag-science","tag-sf","tag-steampunk","tag-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3435","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=3435"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3435\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3436,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3435\/revisions\/3436"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3435"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}