{"id":2900,"date":"2013-06-17T12:00:21","date_gmt":"2013-06-17T18:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=2900"},"modified":"2013-06-17T13:35:18","modified_gmt":"2013-06-17T19:35:18","slug":"odd-lots-231","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=2900","title":{"rendered":"Odd Lots"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li>Wow. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.digthisvegas.com\/book-a-dig-and-destroy-package\" target=\"_blank\">Dig with a backhoe, and then spray a target with a machine gun<\/a>. Only $384. Writers should get out and do all kinds of things that aren&#8217;t part of everyday life for writers. I&#8217;m not a big fan of Las Vegas, but I could see myself doing this.<\/li>\n<li>Ok, <a href=\"http:\/\/gizmodo.com\/theyve-invented-a-twist-off-wine-cork-and-life-will-ne-513796061\" target=\"_blank\">this is clever<\/a>. Forgive me if I don&#8217;t believe it will work.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.wired.com\/reviews\/2013\/06\/1dollarscan\/\" target=\"_blank\">Here&#8217;s a service that the world needs<\/a>, but I don&#8217;t give it even a year, especially now that <em>Wired<\/em> has launched it into high visibility. Big Print doesn&#8217;t want us too comfortable with the notion of scanning books we own to ebooks.<\/li>\n<li>Here may be one reason why: <a href=\"http:\/\/torrentfreak.com\/major-book-publishers-demand-identities-of-usenet-uploaders-130612\/\" target=\"_blank\">A consortium of tech book publishers is going after two anonymous Usenet posters<\/a> who have posted literally <em>hundreds of thousands<\/em> of books (including several of mine) on alt.binaries.e-book.technical, not once but many times over the past several years. I&#8217;ve monitored that group since 2008 or so. It&#8217;s astonishing.<\/li>\n<li>Yes, I&#8217;m a crank. I hope to be a crank who lasts awhile. <a href=\"http:\/\/well.blogs.nytimes.com\/2013\/06\/17\/cheating-ourselves-of-sleep\/\" target=\"_blank\">Shorting sleep will kill you.<\/a> There are some excuses (small children at home being the biggie) but I also wonder if college life makes us night people. Most of the morning people I know (Carol and myself included) lived at home during college. (Thanks to Alan Zeichick for the link.)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/arstechnica.com\/tech-policy\/2013\/06\/its-back-district-court-judge-revives-sco-v-ibm\/\" target=\"_blank\">And though I&#8217;m not a necromancer, I know that you&#8217;re bound to answer when I propose: Everything&#8217;s SCO&#8217;s!<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Baby armadillos are cute, but I&#8217;m not sure I&#8217;d hold one, because <a href=\"http:\/\/arstechnica.com\/science\/2013\/06\/leprosys-disappearing-act-came-from-public-health-improvements\/\" target=\"_blank\">they can carry leprosy<\/a>. (Ok, ok&#8230;just wash your hands afterwards!)<\/li>\n<li>After all, armadillos are all that&#8217;s left of my favorite Pleistocene megacritter, the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Glyptodon\" target=\"_blank\">glyptodont<\/a>. (Pssst: Mister pinch-hitter, <a href=\"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/laelaps\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/435\/files\/2012\/04\/i-27acb84a396be24b210f81d4c9a0df39-baseball-player-and-glyptodont-thumb-500x226-20777.jpg\" target=\"_blank\">that&#8217;s not a good stance to take!<\/a>)<\/li>\n<li>Paywalled, but read it if you&#8217;re a subscriber: <a href=\"http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/article\/SB10001424127887323566804578549351972660468.html\" target=\"_blank\">Ford is putting buttons back on their dashboard<\/a>. I&#8217;m having some reliability problems with my new knob-less car stereo, and if I return it I may insist on something with a volume control knob at very least. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.crutchfield.com\/S-CTWnkPvqFXj\/p_105KWR900B\/JVC-KW-R900BT.html\" target=\"_blank\">They exist<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/reviews.productwiki.com\/jvc-kd-a925bt\/\" target=\"_blank\">And they exist in half-height too<\/a>. Now I&#8217;m wondering if I can get a 2M\/440 mobile rig that will fit in the other half of the bay&#8230;<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/wd4eui.com\/Toy_Steam_Engine.html\" target=\"_blank\">I had one of these once<\/a>. I was called a &#8220;young punk&#8221; on occasion, by those who had reason to think it was true. So I was a steampunk long before it was cool.<\/li>\n<li>I was a little early for the Lego phenom, and was quite happy to be a Meccano kid. Here&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.girdersandgears.com\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\">a great overview site for all the metal constructions sets I&#8217;ve ever heard of<\/a>. (Except for <a href=\"http:\/\/discussions.mnhs.org\/collections\/2012\/01\/childrens-construction-set\/\" target=\"_blank\">Buildo<\/a>, which was obscure even in 1960.)<\/li>\n<li>That said, don&#8217;t tell Certain Small Girls, but <a href=\"http:\/\/lego.gizmodo.com\/lego-will-make-a-mars-curiosity-rover-set-513633690\" target=\"_blank\">one of these<\/a> may be under A Certain Christmas Tree this year.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/news.yahoo.com\/vet-recommends-medical-marijuana-pets-pain-192422828.html\" target=\"_blank\">Colorado and Washington State will make this at least possible<\/a>. But&#8230;but&#8230;what if your dog is under 21?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Wow. Dig with a backhoe, and then spray a target with a machine gun. Only $384. Writers should get out and do all kinds of things that aren&#8217;t part of everyday life for writers. I&#8217;m not a big fan of Las Vegas, but I could see myself doing this. Ok, this is clever. Forgive me [&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":[21,39,59,108,101,13],"class_list":["post-2900","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-oddlots","tag-electronics","tag-health","tag-linux","tag-piracy","tag-steampunk","tag-wine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2900","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=2900"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2900\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2903,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2900\/revisions\/2903"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2900"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2900"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2900"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}