Odd Lots

[jeff_duntemann]

• Happy Thanksgiving Day to all who celebrate it--and to those who don't, well, this guy is still thankful that the world is big enough for both of us. In terms of Thanksgiving Day meditations, I'll simply offer the one I wrote in 2008. I may not ever do better than that.
• From the Words-I-Didn't-Know-Until-Yesterday File: seedbox, a remote and generally headless system on a high-bandwidth Internet connection, used exclusively to seed torrents in defiance of ISP speed-throttling of BitTorrent users.
• Also pertinent to yesterday's entry: Penguin Books got into a snit of lender's remorse, and basically shut down access to its titles previously available to public library patrons through Amazon's Kindle lending program. Apparently the DRM wasn't DRM-y enough, and Penguin (through the Overdrive technology) locked its titles out. Precisely what the technical issues are is still unclear, but I'm researching it.
• We have lost Anne McCaffrey, at age 85. She died of a stroke at her home in Ireland on November 21. She was the first woman to earn a Hugo or a Nebula award, and did a great deal to drag SF out of the locker room to which the pulps had led it.
• Having recently become an Android user (via my Droid X2) I have now begun to dream of SparkFun's Electric Sheep.
• Debsnews now has a wine channel. It's one way to focus in on specific short videos (example: WalMart's new $3 wine line) without having to spend a third of your life parked in front of a TV.
• Anybody who's tried to spread a Ziplock bag with one hand while pouring leftover spaghetti sauce into it with the other may appreciate this gadget. Everybody else, move along.
• Many people are sending me links to stories about canned goods containing greater than acceptable levels of BPA. This is not new news. However, I didn't know about it until yesterday, right after opening a can of Spam.
• Maybe the new Spam Singles packaging is the answer. No can!
• Carol met Colonel Sanders at the Mayo Clinic back in 1975, and the guy does get around. You can now see him from space. This is not photoshopped, but the real deal. It's been there since 2006, and consists of 87,000 colored tile "pixels." (Thanks to Frank Glover for the link.)
• Make describes a steam-powered bristlebot. Somehow this reminds me of those little scrubbing-bubble guys on the TV commercials.
• There may be another reason (quite apart from battery life) to turn your smartphone's power off every night. (Thanks to Pamela Boulais for the link.)
• If you've never gone up to the Car Talk Web site and looked at the staff credits page, you're missing out on people you haven't seen since your study hall attendance-sheet days. (Thanks to Pete Albrecht for the link.)