{"id":677,"date":"2009-04-21T11:14:50","date_gmt":"2009-04-21T15:14:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=677"},"modified":"2009-04-21T11:26:36","modified_gmt":"2009-04-21T15:26:36","slug":"odd-lots-62","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=677","title":{"rendered":"Odd Lots"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<ul>\n<li>138,000 words in, out of about 175,000. Maybe a hair under 3,000 words left on this chapter, and then only two more to go. Whew.<\/li>\n<li>I&#8217;m collecting pointers to print magazine articles about building your own Geiger counters. I have a few articles from <em>Popular Electronics<\/em> and <a href=\"http:\/\/books.google.com\/books?id=CdkDAAAAMBAJ&amp;pg=PA160&amp;dq=popular+mechanics+geiger+february+1949#PPA160,M1\">one from <em>Popular Mechanics<\/em> on Google<\/a>, and may do a survey article on the topic for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.junkbox.com\/\">Jeff&#8217;s Junkbox<\/a>. The trick with most of the tube-era circuits is those 300V dry batteries. Somewhere in the stacks I&#8217;ve stickied a neat hack consisting of a 2N554 pumping square waves into a tube-era output transformer to put out at least 300V at a few mils. That would do it&#8230;<\/li>\n<li>There&#8217;s going to be <a href=\"http:\/\/science.nasa.gov\/headlines\/y2009\/17apr_lyrids.htm\">a very nice conjunction of the crescent Moon and crescent Venus<\/a> just before dawn tomorrow morning. More <a href=\"http:\/\/www.skyandtelescope.com\/community\/skyblog\/observingblog\/42919767.html\">here<\/a>. West of Ohio and a line tilting southwest, Venus will actually be occulted by the Moon. Our weather promises to be good here and given that I&#8217;ll be up at 6 anyway, what&#8217;s another forty minutes?<\/li>\n<li>Michael Arrington&#8217;s Crunchpad (which I mentioned in my <a href=\"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=549\">January 19, 2009<\/a> entry) <a href=\"http:\/\/www.engadget.com\/2009\/04\/09\/leaked-pics-of-the-crunchpad-make-it-look-dangerously-close-to-a\/\">seems to have some recent quantum leaps toward reality<\/a>. I&#8217;m watching it as an ebook reader, and while I doubt we&#8217;ll lay hands on it for only $200, I&#8217;d be happy to pay $400 if the implementation is good. E-Ink is just painful in bad light, like you get in most hotel rooms and the corner bed of your RV.<\/li>\n<li>Suddenly I&#8217;m seeing more articles on polywell fusion; <a href=\"http:\/\/nextbigfuture.com\/2009\/04\/inertial-electrostatic-bussard-fusion.html\">here&#8217;s the latest<\/a>, courtesy Frank Glover. Most of the deep theory goes over my head, but people I respect seem to think it will work and can be scaled to useful outputs.<\/li>\n<li>Cold fusion is hot again too, judging by several major items in the MSM, including <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/stories\/2009\/04\/17\/60minutes\/main4952167.shtml\">60 Minutes<\/a>. <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.wired.com\/defense\/2009\/03\/navy-scientists.html\">The Navy&#8217;s in on it too<\/a>. My take: The test of a true scientist vs. a phony scientist is the difference between &#8220;We don&#8217;t know what&#8217;s going on here&#8221; and &#8220;There is nothing going on here.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>I guess this may be Fringe Science Day. The Big Face on Mars is <em>so<\/em> 1980s&#8230;have you seen the <a href=\"http:\/\/apod.nasa.gov\/apod\/ap090420.html\">Big Pac Man Game<\/a> on Mars? (Thanks to Pete Albrecht for the pointer.)<\/li>\n<li>Finally, from Bruce Baker comes a link to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.google.com\/hostednews\/afp\/article\/ALeqM5jfvsy2G44S1zgbkMgubhgKUEEPuQ\">a life-size status of Jesus in Lego<\/a>. Nicely done, whether you&#8217;re a theist or not&#8211;but again, if you don&#8217;t glue the pieces together, how do you stop the parish&#8217;s munchkins from stealing Jesus&#8217; toes?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>138,000 words in, out of about 175,000. Maybe a hair under 3,000 words left on this chapter, and then only two more to go. Whew. I&#8217;m collecting pointers to print magazine articles about building your own Geiger counters. I have a few articles from Popular Electronics and one from Popular Mechanics on Google, and may [&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-677","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-oddlots"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/677","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=677"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/677\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":679,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/677\/revisions\/679"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}