Thursday, June 28, 2007

Harmonia axyridis

After three tries i finally got a time lapse of my ladybugs emerging from they pupated states as adults. Please enjoy. Things to look for: Wings filling with fluid, and spots appearing on the wing covers. This ladybird beetle is Harmonia axyridis, the Asian Spotted Ladybird Beetle. A native of Japan, it was introduced as pest control. The time lapse is a picture every ten seconds. You can see the date and time in the corner, so you can see how long this process took over the course of the morning, starting at about 7 am.



here's a some pictures of its life cycle, minus the reproducing because i let it go. All photos by me.







and here's a picture of the setup for the time lapse. Click on it for the stereoscopic version!

Monday, June 25, 2007

3d pictures

I saw a marquee at walgreens a few days ago that said they were selling those keychain digital cameras for on;y $10, so i got the idea to make a small 3d stereoscopic camera. I like taking stereo images but its hard with a single camera. that you are hand holding. you kind of have to get lucky that way. This way takes the guess work out of it, though since it's a $10 camera, the image quality suffers. Have a look! To view these, look at the image cross eyed and line up one of the objects in the image and then sort of relax your eyes and it should work. Sort of like a magic eye. Clicking on the pictures will take you to the picasa album, with all 5 pictures.



The first picture there of the actual camera was taken with my other camera. Again, i just got lucky that it worked out. I took a piece of wood, marked where my pupils were using a mirror, lined up the cameras' pupils and stuck them on with velcro. I'd like them to be mounted permanently, except that the USB ports would be blocked. Here's the samples i made this evening. The camera seems to work best in a lot of light.















I hope you enjoyed them. I hope to get some pretty good ones at work tomorrow, or on the train to work, or at least when there is some sunlight. I've seen some stuff on making a tripod mount so you can do it with a single camera. I might try to do that too.

Thursday, June 21, 2007

summer vacation


This week has been my summer vacation, since I only have a little over a week off between terms. And it's been pretty good. On tuesday night Ben, Callen and Alex of the group Lemonade
came to stay at our house because they were playing a show in Portland. It's been a good time. they got another show this evening, at holocene, which is a better venue than berbati's pan, i think. their set last night was very enjoyable.
Also, a lot has happened the last few days with the insects i've been keeping. My moth pupa finally emerged and, as I suspected, it was Leptartica californiae.
I had suspected that's what it was after I mowed the lawn and many of them kept flying up from the grass. Also, my mystery eggs finally hatched!

this is what came out:

I am not sure what they are but they are tiny. That picture is on the side of a jar. They sort of look like tiny turtles. I am not sure what they are, so I am not sure what they eat. I found some more of the eggs on some ivy in my backyard. I think they are some kind of hemiptera, or true bug, but i really don't know. The best way to find out is just let them grow up.
My ladybug larvae finally got some aphids and at them all, and three of them went into a pupa stage. I hope to get the time lapse camera on them tomorrow. I think I have some time.
There are a lot of baby grasshoppers around. They are very small. Smaller than half a penny.

I gave this guy some lettuce and some leaves from the corn we bought and he seems to be enjoying them.

I start classes again on monday. I ordered a textbook from powells and saved about a hundred dollars, and then they emailed me and told me that it was unavailable. Lame. I found it on amazon and ordered it from a guy in WA. Right after I placed the order I found out that there are two versions of the book: Calculus and Single Variable Calculus. I really hope that I got the right one. I can't realy afford to order a text book I don't need. Luckily if I do need to order another one there are a lot of amazon that are about $70.

I think that's about all. I got an email from my mom that said that she made it to florida ok.

Also, I have to profess my love for daigasso! band brothers for the DS. like DDR for your fingers. Very good way to pass some time on the toilet.

Saturday, June 16, 2007

also, i got an A in biology, which means I got an A on my final, I think, which is remarkable because i didn't feel like a knew a damn thing. 
after two days of time lapsing the ladybug larva, it finally emerged. but then upon reviewing the photos i had filled up thew alloted memory amount with pictures of it not moving at all, so it didn't snap any pictures of it actually emerging. a total disappointment. In frustration, i smashed the ladybug. I'm just kidding, but i didn't get any pictures of it. hopefully if i can find some damn aphids i can feed the other larvae i have until they decide it's time to metamorphosize too. 

Friday, June 15, 2007

schools done for the term. i get a full week off and then i start calculus and chemistry, which'll set me back about $250 in textbooks and lab manuals. 

my math and science finals were harder then I expected, and I think that I may have blown my A's in those classes. I did get an A in japanese, which was downright shocking, as I had opted to get a P in the class. She had forgotten though and gave me a letter A grade, thank goodness. 

for my week off I have to work some of those days, but i am going to the gorge on monday morning I think. hopefully i'll be able to get some stonefly, and some other insects i've never seen before by going off the path. 

OH one of my ladybug pupae hatched. I have a timelapse camera set up on the other one downstairs, which you'll see as a movie after it emerges. 


Monday, June 11, 2007

finals week

sorry for the lack of updates, if you are even reading. I had a great big final project due in bio, which i decided to make twice as big buy constructing a field guide describing the insects that I caught. if i had webspace i would upload it. Maybe i will upload it to one of those public site things. If you want it, you can email me or leave me a comment. 

Tomorrow I have my japanese "final" which is a five minute interview. I forget what time it is. i thought that i was all done with japanese but my teacher just emailed me and told me to resubmit a couple of assignments before tomorrow, and that it was urgent. i am hoping that it's because if i redo them i can get an A. that'd be great. Except that I think I may have blown my A in Math today because i didn't study very hard for my final, and I didn;t know how to do a couple of the problems. Oh well. I think I still did just fine. I didn't fail, that's for sure. I have a bio final on weds that I was supposed to be studying for tonight but I didn't so much because beatrice was being a jerk. 

I'm not really looking forward to starting calculus and chemistry in a couple of weeks, but I am looking forward to going to southern california in a couple of weeks. 

I finally got a haircut. now i just need a shave. 

If you are on facebook, look for me, i guess. or don't. I started it because i was wondering what my old roomate sabastian was up to, and according to his wife jasmine, that's the best way to get ahold of him. this blogger post won't let me upload a picture. I wonder if it's because of the new safari beta 3. It is faster than firefox, that's for sure, though.