{"id":2623,"date":"2012-09-17T07:49:44","date_gmt":"2012-09-17T13:49:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=2623"},"modified":"2012-09-17T07:50:03","modified_gmt":"2012-09-17T13:50:03","slug":"odd-lots-200","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=2623","title":{"rendered":"Odd Lots"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li>I&#8217;ve installed <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lazarus.freepascal.org\/\" target=\"_blank\">Lazarus 1.0<\/a> without mayhem, and have created a few simple programs with it. So far, no glitches. My recommendation is still cautious. Nonetheless, I&#8217;d be interested in hearing other people&#8217;s experiences with the new release.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/carminegallo\/2012\/09\/07\/jeff-bezos-and-the-end-of-powerpoint-as-we-know-it\/\" target=\"_blank\">Carmine Gallo wonders why more people aren&#8217;t doing image-rich PowerPoint presentations<\/a>. Um&#8230;it&#8217;s because drawing pictures is <em>way<\/em> hard compared to writing text. Why is there no mention of this either in the article or in the comments?<\/li>\n<li>Here&#8217;s a great timesaver: Instead of making political posts on Facebook, point to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.happyplace.com\/2672\/a-template-for-every-awful-facebook-discussion-youve-ever-witnessed\" target=\"_blank\">this<\/a>. Done! Effortless! (Link courtesy S. Hudson Blount.)<\/li>\n<li>And if that doesn&#8217;t work for you, <a href=\"http:\/\/reason.com\/archives\/2012\/08\/20\/the-wrong-side-absolutely-must-not-win\" target=\"_blank\">this<\/a> may. (Link courtesy Jim Mischel.)<\/li>\n<li>I guess the evidence is piling up: It&#8217;s time to stand in front of the bathroom mirror and ask yourself: <em>Does this political opinion make my head look small?<\/em><\/li>\n<li>I&#8217;m glad that <a href=\"http:\/\/lareviewofbooks.org\/article.php?type=&amp;id=918&amp;fulltext=1&amp;media=\" target=\"_blank\">somebody else besides me<\/a> noticed that <em>The Atlantic<\/em> came back from the dead mostly by publishing articles calculated to raise people&#8217;s blood pressure. I was a very satisfied subscriber back in the 90s and early oughts, but I suspect now that I never will be again.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.wired.com\/wiredscience\/2012\/09\/doom-volcano-research-media\/\" target=\"_blank\">Don&#8217;t believe what the MSM says about volcanoes<\/a>. <a href=\"http:\/\/arstechnica.com\/staff\/2012\/09\/most-of-what-you-read-was-wrong-how-press-releases-rewrote-scientific-history\/\" target=\"_blank\">Or about DNA<\/a>. Or maybe anything else.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.criggo.com\/2012\/08\/thats-a-nice-stocking-stuffer\/\" target=\"_blank\">Maybe we can give them (the MSM) something for Christmas this year<\/a>. And then tell them to put a sock in it.<\/li>\n<li>The article I mentioned in my <a href=\"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=2617\" target=\"_blank\">September 8, 2012 Odd Lots<\/a> about transistor radio manufacturers tacking unused transistors onto their circuit boards to up the transistor count was in fact &#8220;The Transistor Radio Scandal&#8221; by H. M. Gregory, in <em>Electronics Illustrated<\/em> for July, 1967; p. 56. Some manufacturers used transistors for diodes, which was maybe half a notch better. The article includes some mighty weird schematics, too. Worth digging for, if you have piles of old mags somewhere.<\/li>\n<li>If our understanding of solar physics is accurate, <a href=\"http:\/\/science.nasa.gov\/science-news\/science-at-nasa\/2009\/03sep_sunspots\/\" target=\"_blank\">sunspots might become impossible (at least for awhile) by 2015 or 2020<\/a>. (Full paper <a href=\"http:\/\/www.probeinternational.org\/Livingston-penn-2010.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.) The magnetic fields that create sunspots have been getting weaker by about 50 gauss per year for some time. Field strength is now at about 2000; once that value hits 1500 gauss, some research suggests that sunspots may not form at all. This is not new news, but it&#8217;s interesting in that it&#8217;s a bit of poorly understood science that most of us will live to see confirmed or falsified. At any rate, I&#8217;m guessing we will not be working Madagascar on half a watt into a bent paperclip again for awhile, as the late George Ewing WA8WTE used to say.<\/li>\n<li>I&#8217;ve identified a new trigger for Creeping Dread: Hearing the fans incrementally rev up on what was assumed to be an idle computer.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve installed Lazarus 1.0 without mayhem, and have created a few simple programs with it. So far, no glitches. My recommendation is still cautious. Nonetheless, I&#8217;d be interested in hearing other people&#8217;s experiences with the new release. Carmine Gallo wonders why more people aren&#8217;t doing image-rich PowerPoint presentations. Um&#8230;it&#8217;s because drawing pictures is way hard [&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":[41,21,45,90,32],"class_list":["post-2623","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-oddlots","tag-astronomy","tag-electronics","tag-ham-radio","tag-pascal","tag-programming"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2623","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=2623"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2623\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2625,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2623\/revisions\/2625"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}