{"id":531,"date":"2008-01-29T19:47:00","date_gmt":"2008-01-29T23:47:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=531"},"modified":"2009-01-15T12:36:10","modified_gmt":"2009-01-15T16:36:10","slug":"odd-lots-50","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=531","title":{"rendered":"Odd Lots"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li>From Rich Rostrom comes a pointer to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/22198926@N06\/\">an                 amazing gallery of 50s-70s transistor radios<\/a> and transistor                 radio ephemera. Almost every radio I had in that period or remember                 is here (including a nice one belonging to my grandmother) plus                 some true oddities, like phony transistor radio cases concealing                 liquor bottles, and a transparent pen with a single transistor                 floating loose in a little compartment full of oil, like a spider                 in formaldehyde. The photography is gorgeous, but the images are                 large and may take some time to come down. Nonetheless, don&apos;t                 miss it.<\/li>\n<li>Jim Strickland pointed out that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.buylighting.com\/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=M35844&amp;click=16031\">CFLs                 are now available in high wattages in the Mogul base<\/a>, but                 alas, the bulb shown will not fit in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.duntemann.com\/august2006.htm#08-29-2006\">Aunt                 Kathleen&apos;s floor lamp<\/a>, as it&apos;s too long and would hit the                 shade frame.<\/li>\n<li>From Pete Albrecht I got a link to a model rocket for <a href=\"http:\/\/users.sdccu.net\/chthulhu2\/models\/rocksci.html\">people                 who aren&apos;t rocket scientists<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>I haven&apos;t been to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.snopes.com\/\">Snopes<\/a>                 in a while, but <a href=\"http:\/\/sunbeltblog.blogspot.com\/2008\/01\/not-urban-legend-snopes-pushes-zango.html\">a                 recent post<\/a> aggregated on Slashdot suggested that it has been                 pushing <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.wired.com\/27bstroke6\/2006\/11\/in_message_to_i.html\">the                 infamous Zango adware package<\/a> for several months. <a href=\"http:\/\/sunbeltblog.blogspot.com\/2008\/01\/update-on-snopes-pushing-adware.html\">The                 firestorm seems to have changed their minds<\/a>, according to                 a report issued only today. There is a difference between serving                 ads and pushing adware, and if you&apos;re going to be considered one                 of the world&apos;s Good Guys, you have to stay on the right side of                 that line.<\/li>\n<li>The video snippets taken by my late Kodak digital camera are                 all in QuickTime .mov format, which is a pain in the ass to edit                 unless you&apos;re a Mac guy. Pete and I recently found <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Avidemux\">AVIDemux<\/a>,                 a free open-source utility <a href=\"http:\/\/avidemux.sourceforge.net\/\">on                 SourceForge<\/a> that converts .mov clips to .avi files, and in                 the limited testing I&apos;ve been able to do, it seems to defy the                 codec chaos that reigns today and works beautifully.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.wired.com\/geekdad\/2008\/01\/lego-celebrates.html\">Lego                 was fifty years old yesterday<\/a>, and I will have to admit here                 that I never owned Lego as a kid. Never. I had a significant <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Meccano\">Meccano                 set<\/a> from the time I was eight, which was my favorite toy until                 I got into electronics in a big way several years later. (I built                 a differential when I was nine, and hence I know how these slightly                 mysterious mechanisms actually work.) I boggle at stats like the                 fact that there are 62 lego parts for every person on Earth, which                 must mean that a certain number of people have a <i>lot<\/i> of                 them. People have built <a href=\"http:\/\/goldfish.ikaruga.co.uk\/logic.html\">Lego                 logic gates<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amyhughes.org\/lego\/church\/index.html\">Lego                 cathedrals<\/a>, and (more recently) a <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.makezine.com\/archive\/2006\/10\/stargate_lego.html\">Lego                 Stargate<\/a>. Wow. I have a few more years to build my missing                 Lego skillset before Katie (and her as-yet unborn sibling) will                 be ready to build her own Stargate with some uncle-ish help, but                 time flies. I&apos;d better be at it.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From Rich Rostrom comes a pointer to an amazing gallery of 50s-70s transistor radios and transistor radio ephemera. Almost every radio I had in that period or remember is here (including a nice one belonging to my grandmother) plus some true oddities, like phony transistor radio cases concealing liquor bottles, and a transparent pen with [&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":[21,14,58],"class_list":["post-531","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-oddlots","tag-electronics","tag-software","tag-toys"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531","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=531"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":546,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531\/revisions\/546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}