{"id":1097,"date":"2010-01-24T10:07:53","date_gmt":"2010-01-24T14:07:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=1097"},"modified":"2010-01-24T17:15:47","modified_gmt":"2010-01-24T21:15:47","slug":"odd-lots-97","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=1097","title":{"rendered":"Odd Lots"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<ul>\n<li>Here&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/osfreaks.wordpress.com\/2008\/06\/23\/linux-installation-partitioning\/\">a nice detailed article<\/a> about how Linux treats hard disks and how Linux partitioning works.<\/li>\n<li>We now have <a href=\"http:\/\/www.spaceweather.com\/images2010\/23jan10\/midi512_blank.gif?PHPSESSID=ekvfvqvqkd6krg20hpbd5rka33\"><em>two<\/em> major sunspots on the visible face of the Sun<\/a>. I don&#8217;t remember the last time I saw that. (Most of the specks we&#8217;ve been giving sunspot numbers to in the last couple of years don&#8217;t count, in my book.)<\/li>\n<li>The <em>New York Times<\/em> has finally shone their light on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2010\/01\/23\/books\/23kindle.html\">an ebook marketing technique<\/a> that Baen Books pioneered years ago. (Thanks to Pete Albrecht for the link.)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.faststone.org\/FSViewerDetail.htm\">Version 4.0 of the FastStone Image Viewer<\/a> is out, and well-worth having. It&#8217;s the best image browser I&#8217;ve ever used, and if you have to sort an SD card full of digital photos and cull marginal shots quickly, there&#8217;s nothing like it. Make sure you get the portable version; it lacks nothing and doesn&#8217;t make any changes to your system. Freeware. Highly recommended.<\/li>\n<li>Rich Rostrom sent a pointer to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ft.com\/cms\/s\/2\/628a8500-ff1c-11de-a677-00144feab49a.html\">a fascinating article on Moscow&#8217;s stray dogs<\/a>. They&#8217;re going feral, but it&#8217;s a peculiar sort of urban feral that considers humans and all their gadgetry to be just another part of the landscape. They&#8217;ve learned how to ride the subway, for pete&#8217;s sake!<\/li>\n<li>I&#8217;d read in a number of places that faces judged as beautiful are generally &#8220;average&#8221; faces, without a lot of distinguishing characteristics. Because I could never quite get a grip on what an &#8220;average&#8221; face would be, I always took the notion with a grain of salt. But <a href=\"http:\/\/www.faceresearch.org\/demos\/average\">this site<\/a>, assuming it really is creating a &#8220;facial average&#8221; from a gallery of headshots, suggests that there&#8217;s something to it. Start with two faces, then add faces one by one, and see if the average face doesn&#8217;t become more beautiful (and distinctly ambisexual) as you go. It did for me.<\/li>\n<li>Here&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/francesca.net\/silverberg.html\">a short interview with Bob Silverberg<\/a>, describing his writing life during the Golden Age of Pulps. <em>A million words a year&#8230;<\/em><\/li>\n<li>Cracking ice in the surface of a frozen lake <a href=\"http:\/\/silentlistening.wordpress.com\/2008\/05\/09\/dispersion-of-sound-waves-in-ice-sheets\/\">sounds like a blaster battle<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>From the That-Certainly-Has-To-Count-For-Something Department: Behold <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.makezine.com\/archive\/2010\/01\/worlds_biggest_disco_ball.html\">the world&#8217;s largest disco ball<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here&#8217;s a nice detailed article about how Linux treats hard disks and how Linux partitioning works. We now have two major sunspots on the visible face of the Sun. I don&#8217;t remember the last time I saw that. (Most of the specks we&#8217;ve been giving sunspot numbers to in the last couple of years don&#8217;t [&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":[41,38,17,43,59,18,14,20],"class_list":["post-1097","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-oddlots","tag-astronomy","tag-dogs","tag-ebooks","tag-humor","tag-linux","tag-sf","tag-software","tag-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1097","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=1097"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1097\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1098,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1097\/revisions\/1098"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}