Odd Lots

[jeff_duntemann]

The biggest list of links to homebrew radio sites I've ever seen (many, but not all, specific to ham radio) is here.

Another good one is here.

And while we're talking tubes, here's a link to TubePad, a very nice clipart collection of schematic symbols and parts images, for drawing schematics and parts layouts for tube-era projects using drawing tools like Microsoft Paint and (more recently) Macromedia Freehand.

Mac people think the Mac is a superior platform to Windows, and it might even be true-but many of them have dangerous delusion that the Mac is somehow immune to the sorts of security holes that plague Microsoft. Not so. Macs have fewer security problems than Windows simply because there are fewer Macs in a sparser network, and thus it is more work for less gain to compromise them. There are lots of holes, but it's just not worth the Black Hats' time to create exploits for them. This may not always be the case. Be ready.

From Pete Albrecht comes a Pun Recognition Test that made me blush. Heh. With fronds like these, who needs anemones? (Back in 1984 I watched while Barry Gehm hit Isaac Asimov with that one.)

Ever wanted a rotary cell phone? (Have you young'uns ever even seen a rotary landline phone?) If so, you can roll your own. I have too much else to do to attack such a project, but it would be wonderful to lug one of these onto a commuter train and talk to your office
all the way downtown. Thanks to Kevin Anetsberger for the pointer.

Google's AdSense ads rotate periodically, and some pretty odd stuff comes up in my little ad towers. Because I don't spend a lot of time reading my own site I miss most of them, but Roy Harvey scraped a shot of one (at left) that makes me wonder what the context-searching AdSense spider was smoking when it blew through Contra.

A fascinating blog entry and ensuing discussion of DRM and ebooks in an SF context, from John Scalzi, is here. Worth reading, and one of the few hopeful things I've seen on book publishing in a good long while.