{"id":91,"date":"2008-12-10T18:27:00","date_gmt":"2008-12-10T22:27:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=91"},"modified":"2009-01-15T01:08:06","modified_gmt":"2009-01-15T05:08:06","slug":"odd-lots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=91","title":{"rendered":"Odd Lots"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li>Carol and I just finished the bulk of our Christmas cards. The                  cards we bought this year had little sparkles glued (badly) to                  them, and as we processed the 70-odd cards going out, the cards                  began shedding, and sparkles are now showing up&#8230;everywhere.                  I&#8217;m looking down at my shirt cuffs right now, and they&#8217;re blazing                  like a disco ball. Next year: <em>No sparkles!<\/em><\/li>\n<li>Illinois&#8217; illustrious governor will soon (we hope) be matriculating                  to the Governors&#8217; Wing at the Joliet Correctional Center, and                  I am displeased to announce that <em>he went to my high school<\/em>.                  In fact, he was a freshman when I was a senior, and his sneaky                  little face is in the Lane Tech 1970 yearbook. Pete Albrecht was                  also a freshman that year, and narrowly missed out on the cooties                  inherent in having a future felon governor in your homeroom. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.petealbrecht.com\/blog\/blog.htm\">Pete                  tells the story at greater length<\/a> (with scans from the yearbook)                  over at InfoBunker. (Scroll down to the December 9, 2008 entry.)<\/li>\n<li>David Beers passed along a link to what might be the absolute                  worst idea of 2008: Google Code&#8217;s research project aimed at <a href=\"http:\/\/google-code-updates.blogspot.com\/2008\/12\/native-client-technology-for-running.html\">allowing                  x86 native code to run in a browser<\/a>. Hoo-boy. My question:                  If the Cloud is so great, why risk being pwned at native-code                  speeds? (And isn&#8217;t this what Java is for?)<\/li>\n<li>Google Books has very recently posted back issues for a number                  of venerable magazines, including <em>Popular Mechanics<\/em>, <em>Popular                  Science<\/em>, <em>CIO<\/em>, <em>Ebony<\/em>, <em>Jet<\/em>, <em>New York<\/em>,                  <em>Vegetarian Times, American Cowboy<\/em>, and who knows what else.                  (I don&#8217;t see a master list of magazines.) <a href=\"http:\/\/books.google.com\/books?id=RdMDAAAAMBAJ\">The                  PM collection<\/a> runs from 1905 to 2000, and isn&#8217;t just a scattering                  of issues, but damned near all of them. So what was PM&#8217;s cover                  story the month you were born? (Mine? &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/books.google.com\/books?id=XNwDAAAAMBAJ&amp;printsec=frontcover&amp;source=gbs_summary_r&amp;cad=0_0\">Mermaid                  Theater<\/a>.&#8221; Wow.)<\/li>\n<li>Alas, you can look at the Google Books magazine back issues,                  but you can&#8217;t save them to disk or print them out. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.blogsdna.com\/1328\/download-save-google-book-as-pdf-with-google-book-downloader.htm\">Or                  can you?<\/a> (I haven&#8217;t tried this yet.)<\/li>\n<li>The wonderfully named <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lightninglab.org\/index.html\">Nevada                  Lightning Laboratory<\/a> has managed to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lightninglab.org\/papers\/WirelessPower\/index.html\">transmit                  800 watts of power across five meters&#8217; distance<\/a>, besting the                  previous record of 60 watts across two meters, set by MIT. The                  technique is not new, and was patented by our boy Nikola Tesla                  100 years ago. Very cool, but are my wire-frame glasses going                  to melt when I step into the field with my Tesla-powered laptop?<\/li>\n<li>This Friday&#8217;s full Moon happens only four hours from Lunar perigee,                  <a href=\"http:\/\/science.nasa.gov\/headlines\/y2008\/09dec_fullmoon.htm\">and                  is the biggest of the year<\/a>, 14% greater in angular diameter                  (not especially noticeable) and 30% brighter (<em>way<\/em> noticeable!)                  than the apogee Moon we saw earlier this year. That&#8217;s bright,                  it&#8217;s high, and if you&#8217;ve got snow all over the place, midnight                  will be knee-deep in moonshine. (Not that kind.)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.watoday.com.au\/national\/missing-inflatable-breasts-found-20081210-6vgf.html\">200,000                  inflatable breasts got lost<\/a> on their way from China (where                  there is evidently an inflatable breast factory) to Australia                  (where they were to be polybagged with a men&#8217;s magazine) and                  have only recently been found in Melbourne. Just thought you&#8217;d                  like to know.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Carol and I just finished the bulk of our Christmas cards. The cards we bought this year had little sparkles glued (badly) to them, and as we processed the 70-odd cards going out, the cards began shedding, and sparkles are now showing up&#8230;everywhere. I&#8217;m looking down at my shirt cuffs right now, and they&#8217;re blazing [&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":[41,43,14],"class_list":["post-91","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-oddlots","tag-astronomy","tag-humor","tag-software"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91","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=91"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":514,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91\/revisions\/514"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=91"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=91"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=91"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}