Odd Lots

[jeff_duntemann]

• Somebody over at USA Today seems to think that Colorado is just a little too high... (Thanks to Sarah Hoyt for the link.)
• Not new news, but startling: They're still digging up live, century-old ordnance in France and Belgium. I suspect they'll still be digging it up a century from now.
• Here's an overview of how to write custom components for the Lazarus Component Library (LCL). Doesn't have anything on Ray Konopka's book, alas.
• How much of each chemical element is there in the Earth's crust? Among other revelations, there's 150% as much ytterbium as uranium. In fact, there's more ytterbium on Earth than tin.
• There is a small circuit-board add-on that snaps onto a Raspberry Pi and provides a tube audio amp. (Thanks to Rick Hellewell for the link.)
• Going further back in Unlikely Time reveals a plethora of Steampunk Raspberry Pi cases.
• In truth, my experience shows that you can search for images of "steampunk [whatever]" and find it. Oftentimes a lot of it. Try steampunk Geiger counters.
• Ya blink and ya miss it: Sandisk now has a 512GB SD card.
• Note well: There are also fakes. Amazon keeps taking them down, and they keep coming back. (Read the single comment.)
• Baron Waste sends a link to a marvelous gallery of high-res photos of mechanical calculator innards. One of the inspirations for The Cunning Blood was the insight that my Selectric typewriter contained no electronics at all, and could be run from a windmill or a water wheel.
• From the I-Am-Not-Making-This-Up Department: Wikipedia has a list of sexually active popes; it's incomplete. Who knew?
• A guy at a Russian Renaissance Faire hurled a spear at a drone--and hit it. That is capital-B badassery in my book. Me, I would have used a Wrist Rocket--but I'm neither medieval nor Russian.
• Not all of us are fooled: If you have to signal it, it's not virtue.