{"id":349,"date":"2008-06-02T18:13:00","date_gmt":"2008-06-02T22:13:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=349"},"modified":"2009-01-14T21:37:53","modified_gmt":"2009-01-15T01:37:53","slug":"odd-lots-28","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=349","title":{"rendered":"Odd Lots"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li> Carol and I were at the Longmont Dog Show over the weekend,                 and Aero got another two blue ribbons, though that was in the                 Open Dog category and didn&apos;t yield him any points. I actually                 &#8220;handled&#8221; (took around the show ring) another dog owned                 by Aero&apos;s breeder Jimi Henton. Showing Jackie (Jimi&apos;s Hit the                 Jackpot) was fun, especially since Jackie is the biggest, heaviest,                 strongest bichon any of us has ever seen (23 pounds, all of it                 muscle!) and there&apos;s nothing the least bit fussy about him.<\/li>\n<li>The Make blog aggregated an item on <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.makezine.com\/archive\/2008\/06\/rail_runner_make_a_cart_t.html\">making                 your own railcarts and railbkes<\/a>. I&apos;ve often thought that this                 might be fun (it&apos;s certainly nothing new) but the snag is that                 when railroads abandon a run of track, they typically tear up                 the rails for scrap almost immediately. The mere presence of iron                 suggests that trains come through, if only occasionally, and that                 would make me nervous. I have been looking for but have not yet                 found an index of track sections where trains are known not to                 run.<\/li>\n<li>In the certifiable Brain Sludge category of Web content falls                 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lavasurfer.com\/cereal-indexbrands.html\">Topher&apos;s                 Breakfast Cereal Character Guide<\/a>, which lists (and in most                 cases shows images of) all the characters hawking cereal on boxes                 and commercials that you&apos;ve ever heard of, and I suspect more                 than a few that you haven&apos;t. The list also includes purely fictional                 cereals like Calvin&apos;s Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs, and Admiral                 Crunch and Archduke Chocula from <i>Futureama<\/i>. Early versions                 of the Rice Crispies Elves are interesting\u2014and I never knew                 that Tony the Tiger had a spouse. All here.<\/li>\n<li>Speaking of cereal, this article confirms my grocery-store math:                 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.northjersey.com\/business\/news\/Consumers_reject_house_brands_as_food_prices_soar.html\">House                 brands cost as much as 40% less than largely indistinguishable                 name brands<\/a>. If you&apos;re spending more for gas, at least spend                 less on Rice Chex. The only type of cereal where house brands                 taste distinctly different to me are oat toruses, or whateverthehell                 you call them in the generic\u2014Cheerios clones. The house brands                 are not necessary bad (in fact, the Trader Joe&apos;s house brand oat                 toruses are distinctly better) but it&apos;s odd that all the chex                 and the flakes can&apos;t be told apart but Cheerios brooks no imitation.                 By the way, most house brand cereals are made by Ralston Foods.                 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ralstonfoodservice.com\/ralstonbrands.html\">Here&apos;s                 their list<\/a>. Of interest to geometers are Crispy Hexagons.                 What, no Crispy Dodecahedrons?<\/li>\n<li>And to round out the discussion of nostaligic carbs, I regret                 to inform all who may care that Dressel&apos;s Cakes are really and                 truly gone forever. Their distinctive frozen whipped-cream chocolate                 cake was a Chicago standard for 75 years, coming from their plant                 at 66th and Ashland Avenues, but the firm was bought by a French                 company a few years ago and dismantled for reasons unclear. (I&apos;m                 glad I can still get <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Green_River_%28soft_drink%29\">Green                 River<\/a>!)<\/li>\n<li>Mike Reith sent a pointer to <a href=\"http:\/\/goosh.org\/\">goosh<\/a>,                 a purely textual interface to Google that works a lot like the                 Unix shell. Could this be useful to the vision-impaired?<\/li>\n<li>There are <a href=\"http:\/\/www.spaceweather.com\/\">no visible                 sunspots right now<\/a>, and according to several items I&apos;ve read,                 there have been none for some weeks, and very few for months,                 all the way back into the middle of last year. Ham radio guys                 (like me) track sunspot activity closely because it affects shortwave                 radio propagation. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.southgatearc.org\/propagation\/\">Here&apos;s                 a sample<\/a>. It&apos;s probably too early to worry, but <a href=\"http:\/\/solarscience.auditblogs.com\/2008\/06\/01\/where-is-global-warming-when-you-really-need-it\/\">long-term                 sunspot minima have been very bad juju<\/a> in the past.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Carol and I were at the Longmont Dog Show over the weekend, and Aero got another two blue ribbons, though that was in the Open Dog category and didn&apos;t yield him any points. I actually &#8220;handled&#8221; (took around the show ring) another dog owned by Aero&apos;s breeder Jimi Henton. Showing Jackie (Jimi&apos;s Hit the Jackpot) [&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":[],"class_list":["post-349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-oddlots"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349","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=349"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":364,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349\/revisions\/364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}