{"id":2300,"date":"2012-02-08T13:12:15","date_gmt":"2012-02-08T20:12:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=2300"},"modified":"2012-02-08T13:15:30","modified_gmt":"2012-02-08T20:15:30","slug":"odd-lots-182","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=2300","title":{"rendered":"Odd Lots"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li>For the several people who asked: The odor-free carpet pad that we used in carpeting the lower level here is called <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lpurethane.com\/view-product.asp?prod=138\" target=\"_blank\">Napa Carpet Cushion, from Leggett &amp; Platt<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>Apart from N&amp;P&#8217;s <em>Fallen Angels,<\/em> Bob Tucker&#8217;s <em>Ice and Iron<\/em>, and possibly Mackelworth&#8217;s <em>Tiltangle<\/em>, what other SF novels involve an ice age on Earth in the near(ish) future? I have a concept that capitalizes on all my recent paleoclimate research, and I&#8217;d like to see if it&#8217;s already been done.<\/li>\n<li>Whoops, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.freerepublic.com\/focus\/f-chat\/2646087\/posts\" target=\"_blank\">found a list<\/a> just before posting this. I clearly have some reading to do, assuming I can find any of these items. What are your personal favorites?<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.spaceweather.com\/images2012\/08feb12\/hmi4096_blank.jpg?PHPSESSID=em8g88jhlcj0kfuscqpqmgp767\" target=\"_blank\">Today&#8217;s sunspot number is very close to zero<\/a>. I haven&#8217;t seen sunspot activity this low in some time, and here we are supposedly barreling into the Cycle 24 maximum. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.solen.info\/solar\/\" target=\"_blank\">The sunspot number is going in the wrong direction<\/a>. 6M DX is evidently not in my immediate future.<\/li>\n<li>Joe Flamini and Jack Smith are both pretty sure that the mysterious Comco gizmo I presented in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=2293\" target=\"_blank\">my February 6, 2012<\/a> entry is an early remote control unit for commercial and public service radio systems, allowing control of a transmitter or repeater through leased phone lines. More on this in a future entry.<\/li>\n<li>Having read briefly about hydraulic analog computing in a magazine decades ago, I built hydraulic calculators and computers into the technological background for my novel <em>The Cunning Blood<\/em>. Turns out <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.makezine.com\/2012\/01\/24\/early-russian-hydraulic-computer\/\" target=\"_blank\">the Russians did it on a pretty large scale<\/a> back in the years running up to WWII. (Thanks to Jim Strickland for the link.)<\/li>\n<li>From the You-Probably-Couldn&#8217;t-Do-That-Today Department: The flipside of the Chad Mitchell Trio&#8217;s 1963 hit kid\/Christmas 45 &#8220;The Marvelous Toy&#8221; was &#8220;The Bonny Streets of Fyve-I-O, about <a href=\"http:\/\/holyjoe.org\/poetry\/anonR.htm\" target=\"_blank\">a colonel who shoots one of his own captains for insubordination<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>Tucows (does anybody even remember Tucows?) is launching <a href=\"http:\/\/www.engadget.com\/2012\/02\/02\/tucows-launches-ting-a-contract-free-mobile-service-on-sprints\/\" target=\"_blank\">a contract-free mobile service using Sprint&#8217;s network<\/a>. The rates are interesting, and favor people who want smartphones but just don&#8217;t use them much, and data little or not at all.<\/li>\n<li>The Maker Shed has <a href=\"http:\/\/www.makershed.com\/Geiger_Counter_Kit_p\/mkmo1.htm\" target=\"_blank\">a $99 Geiger counter kit<\/a> that allows logging of pulses through a serial port, and detects both beta and gamma radiation.<\/li>\n<li>A little gruesome maybe, but it&#8217;s real: When we lived in California in the late &#8217;80s, there were reports of sneakers washing up on Santa Cruz area beaches&#8230;with human feet still inside them. At the time we assumed drug violence, but there&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/beachcombersalert.blogspot.com\/2009\/03\/floating-feet.html\" target=\"_blank\">a less scurrilous if no less ghastly explanation<\/a> for a phenomenon that&#8217;s still happening. (Thanks to Pete Albrecht for the link.)<\/li>\n<li>Mmmph. Military combat aircraft should be able to fly in <em>more<\/em> air than we&#8217;re used to, no? <a href=\"http:\/\/www.boston.com\/news\/world\/europe\/articles\/2012\/01\/31\/swedish_combat_jets_grounded_by_high_pressure\/\" target=\"_blank\">Sweden had this problem recently<\/a>. (I&#8217;m guessing that Saab has it too, now.) Thanks to Aki Peltonen for the link.<\/li>\n<li>The name of my company, Copperwood Media, LLC, was inspired by a set of traces on an old PCB that just happened to look (a little) like a tree. I had an artist draw me a better copper tree for the logo, way back in 2000. Now Rich Rostrom sends a link to <a href=\"http:\/\/weburbanist.com\/2011\/12\/07\/marvelous-mystery-of-britains-money-trees\/\" target=\"_blank\">the odd tradition in some parts of the UK of hammering coins into cracks in trees<\/a> until the notion of &#8220;copperwood&#8221; takes on a whole new meaning.<\/li>\n<li>Some very nice <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sharpe-designs.com\/alchemy-steampunk.htm\" target=\"_blank\">steampunk watches and jewelry<\/a>. &#8220;Chronambulator&#8221; is a great word, whether or not you&#8217;ve got a steampunk gizmo to hang it on. Note also the level-reading absinthe hip-flask. (Thanks to Bill Cherepy for the link.)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For the several people who asked: The odor-free carpet pad that we used in carpeting the lower level here is called Napa Carpet Cushion, from Leggett &amp; Platt. Apart from N&amp;P&#8217;s Fallen Angels, Bob Tucker&#8217;s Ice and Iron, and possibly Mackelworth&#8217;s Tiltangle, what other SF novels involve an ice age on Earth in the near(ish) [&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":[61,41,21,116,49,18,101,20],"class_list":["post-2300","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-oddlots","tag-aerospace","tag-astronomy","tag-electronics","tag-house","tag-music","tag-sf","tag-steampunk","tag-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2300","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=2300"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2300\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2303,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2300\/revisions\/2303"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}