{"id":395,"date":"2008-05-30T10:53:00","date_gmt":"2008-05-30T14:53:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=395"},"modified":"2009-01-14T21:54:12","modified_gmt":"2009-01-15T01:54:12","slug":"odd-lots-36","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=395","title":{"rendered":"Odd Lots"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li><i>Wired<\/i> aggregated <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.wired.com\/cars\/2008\/05\/half-bus-half-t.html\">this                 item<\/a> about a convertible bus\/railcar that somehow suggests                 a modern take on the legendary <a href=\"http:\/\/drgw.free.fr\/RGS\/Goose\/Goose_en.htm\">Rio                 Grande Southern Galloping Goose lashups<\/a>. I like the concept                 a great deal, especially for rapid transit in places where there                 are rails but not enough population density to create a dedicated                 passenger rail system. The technology is hardly original with                 Japan; I see Union Pacific maintenance pickup trucks riding the                 rails all up and down the old Northwestern corridor outside of                 Chicago every time I&apos;m in town. The trucks straddle the tracks                 at a grade crossing, drop their flanged steel wheels, and then                 apply traction from the truck&apos;s rear rubber tires. I don&apos;t see                 why a passenger bus of some sort couldn&apos;t do the same thing.<\/li>\n<li>I don&apos;t recall when someone asked me this (or, in truth, who                 it was) but the decorative font used on the cover of the Degunking                 books for the main titles is the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.identifont.com\/show?AZ\">Chicken                 King font<\/a> from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fontdiner.com\/\">Font Diner<\/a>.                 The similar decorative font used in the main chapter titles is                 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.identifont.com\/find?font=fontdinerdotcom+loungy&amp;q=Go\">Fontdinerdotcom                 Loungy<\/a>. Font Diner is a type foundry that specializes in retro                 fonts, and they have a bunch of them, generally sold in 10-font                 packs for $28.<\/li>\n<li>My uncle ran a dairy farm in Wisconsin until 1975 or so, and                 in addition to milk, his herd produced a mid-boggling (to me,                 at least) quantity of cow manure. Finally we have <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.makezine.com\/archive\/2008\/05\/the_power_of_poo.html\">a                 small-scale mechanism for harvesting the methane produced by decaying                 manure<\/a>. The consolidation of small dairy farms like my uncle&apos;s                 into monster corporate milk producers makes something like this                 not only economical but pretty compelling.<\/li>\n<li>What the open source world needs is a sort of integrated bootloader                 system as good as or better than Apple&apos;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.apple.com\/macosx\/features\/bootcamp.html\">BootCamp<\/a>.                 I&apos;ve been hearing about <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gnu.org\/software\/grub\/grub-2.en.html\">GRUB2<\/a>                 for a long time, but it doesn&apos;t seem any farther along than it                 was a year ago. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.coreboot.org\/FILO\">Coreboot\/FILO<\/a>                 is another interesting idea, but as I read it would require close                 cooperation of PC hardware manufacturers\u2014which would be a                 good thing, fersure, if it would happen. (That may be the big                 trick.) I&apos;m considering the commercial <a href=\"http:\/\/www.terabyteunlimited.com\/bootit-next-generation.htm\">Bootit                 NG<\/a> for my next machine, but in the open source world I don&apos;t                 see a lot happening. If I&apos;m missing something, do let me know.               <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Wired aggregated this item about a convertible bus\/railcar that somehow suggests a modern take on the legendary Rio Grande Southern Galloping Goose lashups. I like the concept a great deal, especially for rapid transit in places where there are rails but not enough population density to create a dedicated passenger rail system. The technology is [&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":[],"class_list":["post-395","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-oddlots"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395","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=395"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":417,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395\/revisions\/417"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}