{"id":1051,"date":"2009-12-19T17:13:55","date_gmt":"2009-12-19T21:13:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=1051"},"modified":"2009-12-19T17:13:55","modified_gmt":"2009-12-19T21:13:55","slug":"odd-lots-94","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=1051","title":{"rendered":"Odd Lots"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<ul>\n<li>Hard drives are cheap, and I still have one free SATA port on my desktop system, so I ordered another drive as a Linux playground to solve the problem described in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=1048\">my entry for December 19, 2009<\/a>. This time I&#8217;m going with a Seagate, since for reasons still obscure, the Linux kernel seems to like Seagate drives better than Western Digital drives.<\/li>\n<li>And while we&#8217;re talking drives, Seagate has just announced <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.zdnet.com\/hardware\/?p=6439&amp;tag=nl.e589\">the 2.5&#8243; Momentus Thin<\/a>, which at 7mm is about as thick as a vanilla wafer (you can tell I&#8217;m off my diet for the holidays) and will definitely bring down the BMI of netbooks and other portable gadgetry.<\/li>\n<li>I think most people may have seen this by now (I forgot to Odd Lot it back when it appeared a couple of weeks ago) but wow: <a href=\"http:\/\/edition.cnn.com\/2009\/TECH\/science\/12\/18\/volcano.underwater.explosion.pacific\/\">video footage of an underwater volcanic eruption under three klicks of water<\/a>. Man, this is what robotics is <em>for<\/em>. (Thanks to Aki Peltonen and several others for the link.)<\/li>\n<li>I just received my brand-new <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Dell_Inspiron_Mini_Series\">Dell Inspiron Mini 10 netbook<\/a> here, and all I know so far is that it powers up and boots reasonably quickly into Windows XP Home. The unit as configured to order has both a built-in TV tuner and a GPS receiver. It&#8217;s going to be my travel computer and replace my knuckleheaded Lenovo 2005 Thinkpad X41 Convertible Tablet PC. I&#8217;m going to mess with it for a little while and will post something here as soon as I have a feel for it.<\/li>\n<li>We&#8217;ve been hearing about <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/99942_Apophis\">Apophis<\/a> for years: the 900-foot asteroid that will swing by in 2029 and say hello. And for an unnerving change of perspective, check out <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wired.com\/wiredscience\/2009\/12\/closest-asteroid-approach-to-earth\/#\">the close encounter from the asteroid&#8217;s point of view<\/a>, in a JPL animation that counts as the scariest thrill ride I&#8217;ve taken in awhile. (Have not seen <em>Avatar<\/em> yet.)<\/li>\n<li>Speaking of asteroid collisions, if you&#8217;re an SF writer spinning a plot involving big rocks and the sudden release of kinetic energy, look for <em>Hazards Due to Asteroids and Comets,<\/em> Tom Gehrels, ed. (University of Arizona Press, 1994.) It&#8217;s a 1300-page compendium of academic papers on big things hitting even bigger things, with lots of formulas, charts, and analysis. Dense and not an easy read (and also not cheap&#8211;it was a steal years ago for $40) but I&#8217;ve learned a great deal from it.<\/li>\n<li>It&#8217;s interesting to read the reasons why good and intelligent men do not believe in God, and <a href=\"http:\/\/ieet.org\/index.php\/IEET\/more\/benford20091122\/\">here&#8217;s Gregory Benford&#8217;s testimony<\/a>, which is a lot more cogent than most I&#8217;ve seen. (Thanks to Frank Glover for the link.)<\/li>\n<li>Finally, if there&#8217;s some source code in your past that you regret (I&#8217;m thinking of a few lines right now that I&#8217;d like to wipe from this space-time continuum if I could) maybe the answer is <a href=\"http:\/\/codeoffsets.com\/\">Bad Code Offsets<\/a>. Debug-and-Trade, anyone? (Thanks to Bruce Baker for the link.)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hard drives are cheap, and I still have one free SATA port on my desktop system, so I ordered another drive as a Linux playground to solve the problem described in my entry for December 19, 2009. This time I&#8217;m going with a Seagate, since for reasons still obscure, the Linux kernel seems to like [&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":[41,15,43,59,42],"class_list":["post-1051","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-oddlots","tag-astronomy","tag-hardware","tag-humor","tag-linux","tag-religion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1051","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1051"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1051\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}