{"id":858,"date":"2009-08-19T12:01:05","date_gmt":"2009-08-19T16:01:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=858"},"modified":"2009-08-19T13:47:52","modified_gmt":"2009-08-19T17:47:52","slug":"odd-lots-77","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=858","title":{"rendered":"Odd Lots"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<ul>\n<li>This morning, <a href=\"http:\/\/tech.slashdot.org\/story\/09\/08\/19\/0039254\/Opting-Out-of-the-Google-Books-Settlement-Pro-amp-Con\">Slashdot aggregated two articles<\/a> representing both sides of the Google Books settlement: <a href=\"http:\/\/authorsguild.org\/advocacy\/articles\/should-i-opt-out.html\">The Authors Guild<\/a> arguing for it, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fictioncircus.com\/news.php?id=436&amp;mode=one\">the William Morris Agency<\/a> arguing against it. My thoughts: Since nobody knows where this will lead, but it will happen whether I opt out or not, I&#8217;m in. It&#8217;s not like I&#8217;m making money on books like <em>Turbo Pascal Solutions<\/em> anyway. If they can wring a few nickels out of my old material, I for one will be glad to have it. (This is worth a whole entry, but I just don&#8217;t have time today.)<\/li>\n<li>Old Catholic geek bishop Sam&#8217;l Bassett sent me word of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.microrax.com\/cart.html\">Micro-Rax<\/a>, a 10mm version of the well-known 25mm or 40mm <a href=\"http:\/\/www.8020.net\/T-Slot-3.asp\">80\/20 system<\/a> for industrial prototyping. I&#8217;ve held off fooling with T-slot projects because the stock was out of scale for what I was trying to do, but this could be just the thing. The company (owned and run by a pair of identical twins) is just getting underway with Micro-RAX, and it&#8217;s worth watching. I&#8217;m may buy a set just for the helluvit.<\/li>\n<li>Leave it to Lileks to find <a href=\"http:\/\/lileks.com\/match\/gallery\/32.html\">a matchbook from The Griddle<\/a>, billed as The Scientific Restaurant, which boasts an automatic griddle cake machine that looks like it should be a fusion reactor of some sort. Close Cover Before Ignition&#8230;<\/li>\n<li>And speaking of nuclear, I spaced on this back in late June because my site got hacked, but Pete Albrecht pointed out <a href=\"http:\/\/www.orau.org\/PTP\/collection\/sliderules\/sliderules.htm\">a whole site devoted to nuclear yield and exposure slide rules<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>Wait! There&#8217;s more! If you want one of your very own, <a href=\"http:\/\/shop.ebay.com\/merchant\/abeja?_nkw=nuclear&amp;_sacat=0&amp;_trksid=m270&amp;_odkw=&amp;_osacat=0\">you can buy one from Don Lancaster<\/a>. (Yes, <em>that<\/em> Don Lancaster!)<\/li>\n<li>From the Words I Didn&#8217;t Know Until Yesterday Department: <em>Shoegazing<\/em> is a musical subsubsubgenre that existed for a few years in the early 1990s, and sounds like, well, nondescript rock music. (Thanks to Pete Albrecht for pointing it out.) The name comes from a tendency of some shoegazer bands to stare at the stage while they played. Apparently the movement died when it became &#8220;&#8230;over-privileged, self-indulgent and middle-class.&#8221; Damn. The <em>nerve<\/em>.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/08\/11\/business\/11auto.html?_r=1&amp;hp\">GM is now selling cars on eBay<\/a>. It sounds ridiculous at first blush, but what piques my interest is the de-emphasis on face-to-face dickering, which I absolutely cannot stand. When Carol and I bought our 4Runner in April 2001, the sales experience was so hideously unpleasant that every time we think about buying a new car these days, we shiver and stick with what we have.<\/li>\n<li>Spaceweather has <a href=\"http:\/\/www.spaceweather.com\/swpod2009\/17aug09\/David-Leong1.gif?PHPSESSID=g09dsvkfaksd6t2jjppm7ua4m7\">a wonderful animated gif of Jupiter&#8217;s moon Io crossing its disk at opposition<\/a>, meaning that Io&#8217;s shadow is immediately below it on Jupiter&#8217;s disk and gives a 3-D effect to the photo that you generally don&#8217;t see.<\/li>\n<li>And if that weren&#8217;t enough, the same site has <a href=\"http:\/\/www.spaceweather.com\/swpod2009\/18aug09\/go_anim.gif?PHPSESSID=qi6lg50c9cd78gpp435trp5g31\">an animated gif of Io&#8217;s shadow passing over Ganymede!<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Here&#8217;s a Web site I could have used back when the <em>Lord of the Rings<\/em> film trilogy was in the theaters: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.runpee.com\/#app=845b&amp;e1bd-RunPeeID=0.0.0&amp;308d-selectedIndex=0\">RunPee.com<\/a>, which makes suggestions as to when you might miss less of the film by taking a bathroom break. Very important for certain old guys with certain oversized glands.<\/li>\n<li>How did Benjamin Frankin manage his time on a typical day? <a href=\"http:\/\/log.scifihifi.com\/post\/161617118\/benjamin-franklins-daily-schedule-via-nick#disqus_thread\">Here&#8217;s a page out of his daily scheduler<\/a>, though Outlook was still a couple of centuries in the future. Ben&#8217;s day is amazingly like my day, save that I generally stay in bed a little longer. But I too hit the sack at 10 PM or before&#8211;been doing that for five decades and then some. Thanks to David Stafford for the link.<\/li>\n<li>And in in reading about Ben&#8217;s day I found <a href=\"http:\/\/www.paulgraham.com\/makersschedule.html\">this article by Paul Graham<\/a>, about the differences between managers&#8217; schedules and what Paul calls &#8220;makers&#8217; schedules.&#8221; Definitely worth reading. The two cultures need to understand one another, and generally don&#8217;t, with much anguish and lost productivity resulting.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This morning, Slashdot aggregated two articles representing both sides of the Google Books settlement: The Authors Guild arguing for it, and the William Morris Agency arguing against it. My thoughts: Since nobody knows where this will lead, but it will happen whether I opt out or not, I&#8217;m in. It&#8217;s not like I&#8217;m making money [&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":[43],"class_list":["post-858","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-oddlots","tag-humor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/858","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=858"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/858\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":859,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/858\/revisions\/859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}