{"id":1407,"date":"2010-08-17T19:08:25","date_gmt":"2010-08-17T23:08:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=1407"},"modified":"2010-08-17T19:08:32","modified_gmt":"2010-08-17T23:08:32","slug":"odd-lots-122","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=1407","title":{"rendered":"Odd Lots"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<ul>\n<li>The hat size\/shape measuring gadget that I mentioned in my <a href=\"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=1401\">entry for August 11, 2010<\/a> is called a <em>c<\/em><span class=\"style58\"><em>onformateur<\/em>, and here&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.google.com\/images?hl=en&amp;q=hat Conformateur&amp;um=1&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;source=og&amp;sa=N&amp;tab=wi&amp;biw=1600&amp;bih=990\">a whole bunch of pictures<\/a>. It&#8217;s evidently a lot commoner than I thought, still in use, and works <em>spectacularly<\/em> well.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span class=\"style58\">And another kind of Fedora anxiety: I accidentally installed OpenSuse 11.3 over my Fedora 13 instance yesterday. Might be a good trade; nothing irreplaceable was lost with Fedora, and I need practice in KDE 4 more than I need practice in GNOME.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.engadget.com\/2010\/08\/17\/7-inch-ipad-rumors-heat-up-in-taiwanese-rumor-mills\/\">A new, pre-shrunk iPad may be in the chute:<\/a> 7&#8243; diagoinal display but the same pixel resolution. Will fit in a smaller pocket, and may well render ebooks just as crisply. We won&#8217;t know until it happens. If it happens. But if it <em>doesn&#8217;t<\/em> happen, Apple will be way dumber than they look.<\/li>\n<li>Worry less about hurricanes, at least this year: <a href=\"http:\/\/wattsupwiththat.com\/2010\/08\/08\/global-tropical-cyclone-activity-still-at-30-year-low\/\">Accumulated cyclonic energy (ACE) is at a 30-year low<\/a> and still falling. ACE is a good proxy for hurricane number and strength (look at 2005 on the graph) so while it&#8217;s low, breathe deep and take that tropical vacation you&#8217;ve been putting off.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/pharyngula\/about.php\">This guy<\/a> gets on my nerves sometimes, but he nailed it: We may someday create software that does much or most of what the human brain does, but <a href=\"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/pharyngula\/2010\/08\/ray_kurzweil_does_not_understa.php\">we will not do it by reverse-engineering the human brain<\/a>, at least <a href=\"http:\/\/gizmodo.com\/5614170\/reverse+engineering-of-human-brain-likely-by-2020\">the way that Ray Kurzweil thinks we will<\/a>. (For a more detailed popular treatment of why the genome is not a deterministic description of anything, see Matt Ridley&#8217;s <em>The Agile Gene<\/em>.)<\/li>\n<li>There&#8217;s something very likeable about <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wired.co.uk\/news\/archive\/2010-08\/16\/human-pylons\">this Icelandic proposal to build high-tension towers in the form of skeletal human beings<\/a>. Most of the ones I see here in the US <a href=\"http:\/\/mydaymyinterestsphotoblog.blogspot.com\/2008\/04\/high-tension-towers-and-wires.html\">look like angry bull heads<\/a>&#8211;and all absolutely alike&#8211;so this would be a huge improvement of something huge that has long needed improvement.<\/li>\n<li>I see <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Fermata\">this little guy<\/a> in sheet music fairly regularly, but never knew what it was until I hunted down <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Modern_musical_symbols\">this summary of just about all modern musical notation symbols<\/a>. The symbol in question is called a <em>fermata<\/em>, but would you know a segno if you saw one? (Or, better yet, a hemidemisemiquaver?)<\/li>\n<li>What do vegan zombies crave as they stalk about like undead celery? <a href=\"http:\/\/craphound.com\/images\/170537.gif\">Grrrainnns!<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The hat size\/shape measuring gadget that I mentioned in my entry for August 11, 2010 is called a conformateur, and here&#8217;s a whole bunch of pictures. It&#8217;s evidently a lot commoner than I thought, still in use, and works spectacularly well. And another kind of Fedora anxiety: I accidentally installed OpenSuse 11.3 over my Fedora [&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":[15,43,59,49,54],"class_list":["post-1407","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-oddlots","tag-hardware","tag-humor","tag-linux","tag-music","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1407","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=1407"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1407\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1408,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1407\/revisions\/1408"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}