{"id":2767,"date":"2013-02-23T19:31:41","date_gmt":"2013-02-24T02:31:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=2767"},"modified":"2013-02-23T19:31:45","modified_gmt":"2013-02-24T02:31:45","slug":"odd-lots-216","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=2767","title":{"rendered":"Odd Lots"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li>I recently reinstalled Windows on a 120GB Samsung 840 SSD, and have been wondering how long it will last. <a href=\"http:\/\/tech.slashdot.org\/story\/13\/02\/19\/1326239\/taking-a-hard-look-at-ssd-write-endurance\" target=\"_blank\">Here&#8217;s a nice intro; read the comments too<\/a>. I&#8217;m guessing that it will last longer than the system itself&#8211;especially <a href=\"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=2395\" target=\"_blank\">given my recent history<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>The just-released Firefox 19 has a built-in PDF renderer. So far it&#8217;s worked fairly well for me. One caveat: I haven&#8217;t figured out (yet) how to disable scripting within PDFs, which is worthless and an invitation to pwnership. It may not even be possible, since the renderer is itself a JavaScript app. Still researching it.<\/li>\n<li>Here&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pcpro.co.uk\/features\/380167\/does-your-camera-need-a-fast-sd-card\" target=\"_blank\">a good overview article on SD card speeds<\/a>, and where the extra money for a faster card could be worthwhile.<\/li>\n<li>I ordered a digital flash unit board from a surplus house, to see if it could generate 800-1000VDC (at virtually no current) for my Geiger counter circuits. I was surprised to see that the unit works perfectly while generating only 325VDC. I don&#8217;t have the schematic and so jiggering the circuit is probably not an option. I&#8217;m guessing that some sort of <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Cockcroft\u2013Walton_generator\" target=\"_blank\">ladder multiplier<\/a> is now the way to go.<\/li>\n<li>Although the majority of Sherlock Holmes stories are pre-1923 and thus in the public domain here in the US, the author&#8217;s estate is still demanding licensing fees from authors using the characters in new works. Now <a href=\"http:\/\/www.publishersweekly.com\/pw\/by-topic\/digital\/copyright\/article\/56020-lawsuit-seeks-to-put-sherlock-holmes-in-the-public-domain.html\" target=\"_blank\">someone is suing the estate to get a court to declare that the characters (and not just the text) are in the public domain<\/a>. Go for it!<\/li>\n<li>Does anybody remember <a href=\"http:\/\/gizmodo.com\/5986388\/the-only-woman-who-ever-got-hit-by-a-meteorite-survived\" target=\"_blank\">Ann Hodges and the Bruise That Came From Outer Space?<\/a> What I&#8217;ve never quite understood is why there&#8217;s any question about whether or not you own a meteorite that falls on your property. (Even if it doesn&#8217;t fall on <em>you<\/em>.)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/whathecode.wordpress.com\/2011\/02\/10\/camelcase-vs-underscores-scientific-showdown\/\" target=\"_blank\">People are still fighting about camelcase (i.e., CamelCase) versus underscores (i.e., under_scores)<\/a>. Well, duhh. Fighting&#8217;s fun, eh? The gates of hell open upon my head every time I suggest that Pascal&#8217;s reserved words should be in uppercase. The bigger question is this: Why does such piddly crap make grown men so violently angry? (Thanks to Nick Hodges for the link.)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/business\/money\/la-fi-mo-napa-valley-winery-ages-wine-ocean-20130220,0,1078228.story\" target=\"_blank\">A Napa winery is trying aging its wines by submerging them in the Atlantic Ocean<\/a>. Hey, whatever floats (or sinks) your bottles. But&#8230;if you&#8217;re in Napa, wouldn&#8217;t it be cheaper to dunk them in the Pacific?<\/li>\n<li>From the I-Never-Thought-I&#8217;d-See-This-In-My-Lifetime Department: Yesterday the <em>Denver Post<\/em> published <a href=\"http:\/\/www.denverpost.com\/grow\/ci_22646080\/marijuana-truth-about-growing-your-own-pot\" target=\"_blank\">an article on how to grow your own marijuana<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I recently reinstalled Windows on a 120GB Samsung 840 SSD, and have been wondering how long it will last. Here&#8217;s a nice intro; read the comments too. I&#8217;m guessing that it will last longer than the system itself&#8211;especially given my recent history. The just-released Firefox 19 has a built-in PDF renderer. So far it&#8217;s worked [&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":[104,15,90,14,13],"class_list":["post-2767","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-oddlots","tag-fiction","tag-hardware","tag-pascal","tag-software","tag-wine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2767","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=2767"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2767\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2767"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2767"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2767"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}