{"id":999,"date":"2009-11-16T11:56:40","date_gmt":"2009-11-16T15:56:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=999"},"modified":"2009-11-16T11:56:40","modified_gmt":"2009-11-16T15:56:40","slug":"odd-lots-90","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=999","title":{"rendered":"Odd Lots"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<ul>\n<li>There&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/ubuntuguide.org\/wiki\/Ubuntu:Karmic\">a useful overview of the latest Ubuntu release (9.10) here<\/a>. Note the cautions about the 9.10 partitioner, especially if you have more than one SATA drive in a system destined for a clean install on a shared drive. I ran into some still-unresolved difficulties with the partitioner recently, but they seem to be machine-specific and may be due to BIOS limitations. More on that as I learn it.<\/li>\n<li>A similar site for Kubuntu 9.10 is <a href=\"http:\/\/kubuntuguide.org\/Karmic\">here<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>I&#8217;m not much into costuming (or Halloween, for that matter; my sister got that gene instead) but within the genre of one-person-pretending-to-be-two, this may well be <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.makezine.com\/archive\/2009\/11\/awesome_kidnapped_mermaid_costume.html\">best-of-breed<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>On the other hand, <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.makezine.com\/archive\/2009\/11\/amazing_star_wars_tauntaun_costume.html\">this one comes close<\/a>, for sheer attention to detail if nothing else.<\/li>\n<li>And while we&#8217;re talking tauntauns, didja see <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thinkgeek.com\/geektoys\/plush\/bb2e\/\">the tauntaun sleeping bag<\/a>? Authentic right down to the tauntaun guts pattern on the lining. (Thanks to Pete Albrecht for the link.)<\/li>\n<li>2009 is now #8 on the most-sunspotless-years-since-1849 hit parade. Ten more spotless days and we move into position #7. I&#8217;m laying odds that 2009 will eventually get into 6th place but no higher.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.timesonline.co.uk\/tol\/news\/science\/biology_evolution\/article6879293.ece\">God may not like the Higgs Boson<\/a>, but hey, I&#8217;m not all that fond of opera. (Thanks to Pete Albrecht for the link.)<\/li>\n<li>Here&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.historians.org\/projects\/GIRoundtable\/Television\/Television_TOC.htm\">an interesting pamphlet from 1945 on what the future of television might be<\/a>. If they only knew&#8230;<\/li>\n<li>Frank Glover sent a link to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.esa.int\/esapub\/br\/br176\/br176.pdf\">an article sponsored by the ESA<\/a> suggesting some SF ideas that have been realized to some extent or still may have some promise in our own (and not some alternative) future. A little breezy, but has a lot of full-color SF art and classic magazine covers. (5 MB PDF.)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ilovebacon.com\/v5\/111609\/e.shtml\">This may seem like a weird stunt<\/a>, but it was (and may still be) a common thing on dairy farms. When I was 10 or 11, I watched Auntie Della milk a cow by hand one morning for the day&#8217;s needs, and the barn cats (who kept the barn free of mice) would line up for their milk squirts. Auntie Della&#8217;s aim was <em>very<\/em> good, and by all indications the cats were completely good with that.<\/li>\n<li><em>Make Magazine<\/em> published a brilliant little project: <a href=\"http:\/\/cdn.makezine.com\/make\/13\/lost_screw_finder.pdf\">A vacuum cleaner hose trap for small parts like screws and washers<\/a>. (110K PDF.) Doesn&#8217;t rely on magnetism, but is more like a lobster trap, in that parts enter easily but can&#8217;t leave, and rattle around tellingly when the hose pulls them in.<\/li>\n<li>From the Jolly Pirate comes word of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.corsair.com\/products\/voyagergt_128\/default.aspx?utm_source=Corsair&amp;utm_medium=PressRelease&amp;utm_content=VoyagerGT128Link&amp;utm_campaign=VoyagerGT128Launch\">Corsair Flash Voyager GT<\/a>: A 128 GB thumb drive optimized for speed, and (according to him) capable of holding over 20,000 MP3s. $400 now&#8230;but check again in six months, heh.<\/li>\n<li>Turn the Dodge Viper logo upside-down, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.boingboing.net\/2009\/11\/04\/dodge-viper-logo-is.html\">what you&#8217;ve got is Daffy Duck<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There&#8217;s a useful overview of the latest Ubuntu release (9.10) here. Note the cautions about the 9.10 partitioner, especially if you have more than one SATA drive in a system destined for a clean install on a shared drive. I ran into some still-unresolved difficulties with the partitioner recently, but they seem to be machine-specific [&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":[41,15,43,59,151,86,14],"class_list":["post-999","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-oddlots","tag-astronomy","tag-hardware","tag-humor","tag-linux","tag-memoir","tag-physics","tag-software"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/999","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=999"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/999\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}