{"id":2084,"date":"2011-08-19T19:31:04","date_gmt":"2011-08-20T01:31:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=2084"},"modified":"2011-08-21T18:35:45","modified_gmt":"2011-08-22T00:35:45","slug":"odd-lots-164","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=2084","title":{"rendered":"Odd Lots"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.tubesandmore.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Antique Electronic Supply<\/a> in Tempe, Arizona, has created a new DBA for their tube audio amplifier business: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amplifiedparts.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Amplified Parts<\/a>. The tube stuff still predominates but it&#8217;s hardly &#8220;antique&#8221; and has definitely gone upscale. They rate their power tubes like fine wine: &#8220;This Russian tube [6L6GC] has tight lows, straightforward body, and smooth highs. In overdrive, it offers a tight and frosted crunchy bite.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>My Taos Toolbox 2011 colleague <a href=\"http:\/\/www.alansmale.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Alan Smale<\/a> just won the <a href=\"http:\/\/uchronia.net\/sidewise\/\" target=\"_blank\">Sidewise Award for Alternate History<\/a> at the 2011 Worldcon in Reno. We workshopped an expansion of the winning story, &#8220;A Clash of Eagles&#8221; and it was terrific. I&#8217;m guessing this will make it perhaps a little easier to sell the novel-length work. Bravo, Alan!<\/li>\n<li>Even though <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/8301-501465_162-20094580-501465.html\" target=\"_blank\">HP announced yesterday that they were killing their cloud-centered TouchPad tablet<\/a>, Carol and I saw an expensive commercial for the device on The Weather Channel this morning. Cloud? Did you guys say &#8220;cloud&#8221;? (No wonder they got the ad&#8230;)<\/li>\n<li>If you haven&#8217;t seen it yet, definitely take a look at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.stellarium.org\/\" target=\"_blank\">Stellarium<\/a>, a free planetarium program available for Windows, Mac, and Linux. It&#8217;s one of the best I&#8217;ve ever tried, more polished (if not as deep) as the venerable <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ap-i.net\/skychart\/start\" target=\"_blank\">Cartes du Ciel<\/a>, which is remarkable in part by being a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lazarus.freepascal.org\/\" target=\"_blank\">Lazarus<\/a> app.<\/li>\n<li>David Stafford sends word that <a href=\"http:\/\/steampunkcostume.com\/2011\/08\/19\/gorgeous-steampunk-loft-for-sale-in-manhattan\/\" target=\"_blank\">an elaborate steampunk loft apartment<\/a> has gone up for sale in Manhattan. The price? A &#8220;mere&#8221; $1,750,000.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.engadget.com\/2011\/08\/19\/sony-digital-recording-binoculars-look-like-military-spec-night\/\" target=\"_blank\">This is killer cool as binoculars go<\/a>, but would they capture anything at night? (Somehow I doubt it.)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/beamjockey.livejournal.com\/178056.html\" target=\"_blank\">Bill Higgins writes to tell us<\/a> that Catholic University has placed <a href=\"http:\/\/archives.lib.cua.edu\/res\/docs\/education\/pfp\/pettigrewforpresident-low-adj.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">a scan of the 1964 <em>Treasure Chest<\/em> comics series &#8220;Pettigrew for President&#8221;<\/a> online, for free download. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=452\" target=\"_blank\">I blogged about this years ago<\/a>, but the comic was not available for download then.<\/li>\n<li>Nick Kim does <a href=\"http:\/\/www.firstscience.com\/home\/cartoons\/strange-matter-environmental-scientists-in-the-wild-west_123.html\" target=\"_blank\">Cowboys and Heavy Metals<\/a>. (Thanks to Pete Albrecht for the link.)<\/li>\n<li>Fellow carnivore Jim Tubman and I share an appreciation for <a href=\"http:\/\/pleatedjeans.files.wordpress.com\/2010\/07\/periodic-table-of-meat.png\" target=\"_blank\">The Periodic Table of Meat<\/a>. Most of it, anyway. (No thanks on Meat 75. Oh, and 95.)<\/li>\n<li>Back from meat to metals again: Given that it&#8217;s the cornerstone material required to build the Hilbert Drive as used in many of my SF yarns, I was a little surprised that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ebay.com\/itm\/YTTERBIUM-METAL-Chemical-Element-Sample-5-grams-\/370273068473\" target=\"_blank\">ytterbium is so cheap<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>Did you ever wonder about the physics of coffee rings? <a href=\"http:\/\/arstechnica.com\/science\/news\/2011\/08\/ever-wonder-why-a-drop.ars\" target=\"_blank\">Wonder no more<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>From the Please-Give-Those-Guys-Something-To-Do Department: New taxpayer-funded NASA research tells us that unless we take prompt and serious action against global warming, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/science\/2011\/aug\/18\/aliens-destroy-humanity-protect-civilisations\" target=\"_blank\">aliens may invade and wipe us out<\/a>. UPDATE: <em>This turns out not to be entirely true:<\/em> The chap who co-wrote the paper works for NASA but he did it on his own time and there was no public funding involved. The Guardian has corrected the piece.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Antique Electronic Supply in Tempe, Arizona, has created a new DBA for their tube audio amplifier business: Amplified Parts. The tube stuff still predominates but it&#8217;s hardly &#8220;antique&#8221; and has definitely gone upscale. They rate their power tubes like fine wine: &#8220;This Russian tube [6L6GC] has tight lows, straightforward body, and smooth highs. In overdrive, [&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":[21,15,43,14,101,117],"class_list":["post-2084","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-oddlots","tag-electronics","tag-hardware","tag-humor","tag-software","tag-steampunk","tag-tubes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2084","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=2084"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2084\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2086,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2084\/revisions\/2086"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}