April 30th, 2012:
- J. D. Hildebrand endorsed Contra today over at SD Times. He mentions a falling out we had in ancient times (I think 1993 or so) which I remember as being a publicity stunt. Even if it wasn’t, 20 years is plenty for a falling-out. From one J. D. to the other: You’re OK in my book. (His blog at SD is here.)
- Quite by accident, I stumbled upon a clock app written in Lua, a language which I had heard of (vaguely) but never read up on. I mean, really, does the world need YADSL? However, a closer look showed that Lua does not use almost-invisible curly brackets for structuring code and instead relies on those big, bold, evil kiddie-language END keywords. It is to rejoice. LUA for Windows is here; will report again when I fool with it a little.
- I’ve linked to this before, but it’s been a few years: Tom Swift Lives, home of some of the best fanfic I’ve ever seen, much of which is yards better than the original Tom Swift material.
- Over the past year, I’ve discovered that the most effective single pain reliever for my occasional migraines is…aspirin. I dropped Tylenol like a hot rock. Now there’s evidence that aspirin reduces the risk of cancer. Avoiding gastrointestinal bleeding is an issue, but I can’t imagine that that’s not just engineering.
- And here’s how the food industry’s quest to undercut butter and lard gave us trans fats, more heart disease, and the myth that animal fat is bad for you. I believe in evolution. We evolved eating animal fat. We did not evolve eating vegetable oils dissolved out of seeds with hexane. Q.E.D.
- I never gave this a thought, but it’s obvious if you think about it: Setting printed material in Japanese using movable type involved an immense amount of lead.
- Although I’ve never seen a railbike in action, the concept has always fascinated me, and here’s one that doesn’t need any welding. There’s no abandoned trackage convenient to me, but it’s around. My only reservation is that it must be easy to run off the rails by letting the front wheel pivot even a little bit. (In Europe railbikes are called Draisines.)
- Having killed Microsoft Reader, which I liked a great deal, MS is apparently investing in the future of the Nook. Will Reader return? Let us pray; I have a number of ebooks in that format.
- At least these Macbooks won’t be subject to trojans now. Or anything else.
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