Here's a little further back to show you what's going on. She moved a little.
She's so lazy, she doesn't usually start moving around until 9 or 10.
Saturday, September 5, 2009
last dog post for a long time I promise
I just walked back into my bedroom and this was waiting! I squealed!
Here's a little further back to show you what's going on. She moved a little.
She's so lazy, she doesn't usually start moving around until 9 or 10.
Here's a little further back to show you what's going on. She moved a little.
She's so lazy, she doesn't usually start moving around until 9 or 10.
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Sticky Card Big Top
While looking at sticky cards yesterday for the presence of natural enemies, I caught this performance by some kind of hopper. Look at that leg kick! A little cane and hat too. His act was a little rough around the edges, but I think that he could go far.
Happy Birthday Beatrice, I guess.
I got a card from Banfield Pet Hospital in the mail this afternoon that said "Look who's turning 3!" Insides it said "Happy Birthday to you, Beatrice!". I was embarrassed because I didn't realize that her birthday was in September. I showed her the card and since its her birthday, I let her tear it up into bits, which she seemed to get some birthday glee out of, before demanding more peanut butter.
What is a little strange about the card is that it was addressed to my Corvallis address, but I have never updated the address with them. How did they know? How far reaching is that change of address form that you fill out with the USPS? The last time that I used it, between LA and Portland, it didn't actually work. I can't complain though because a nice woman at the post office near my residence in LA personally went to my old apartment to get a package that had been sent there mistakenly, and sent it to me express mail. Yes, that was the U.S. post office. Yes, in Los Angeles, CA.
Anyway, the dog is three years old.
What is a little strange about the card is that it was addressed to my Corvallis address, but I have never updated the address with them. How did they know? How far reaching is that change of address form that you fill out with the USPS? The last time that I used it, between LA and Portland, it didn't actually work. I can't complain though because a nice woman at the post office near my residence in LA personally went to my old apartment to get a package that had been sent there mistakenly, and sent it to me express mail. Yes, that was the U.S. post office. Yes, in Los Angeles, CA.
Anyway, the dog is three years old.
Saturday, August 29, 2009
Krokodil
I think that my dog may have the strongest jaws of any dog, when she wants to use them. I wanted to read tonight and she was whining because I wasn't looking at her, so I went to petco to get her an updated name tag and some pig's ears to distract her. She ate one of the pig's ears like it was a potato chip. I read about 3 pages before it was gone, but I was reading slowly because I was watching her crunch through dried skin. I wish she didn't get sick from rawhide, that would last a couple of hours.
Here's some recent pictures of the dog for those who may want to look at them.
She got some treats in the mail that are supposed to calm her down. I got a puzzle with beetles on it and this!!!!!!:
I had heard that this existed within the walls of the house I grew up in but my Mother said that it was long gone. My sister found it and now I possess it and it will be unfurled and flown upon the proposed camping trip at the end of september. If you don't know what it is, it's related to my halloween costume from 2008:
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Harmless but Uncomfortable
So i've got nothing against breastfeeding, but I find this picture that was on SFGate.com a little odd. The baby's making eye-contact with the camera/viewer, like we have an understanding, kind of like he's bragging. "Eh? hmmm?" I don't like it. I don't like what it suggests. I don't like the baby looking at me while he's doing that, it's weird. He might as well be tipping his shades:
Notice it also suggests "everything tastes better at grandma's". The whole thing is really weird.
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Some days I wonder if I am a sad man, that if people looked in on my life, if they would say "What a sad man, talking to his dog, standing there in his boxers, and putting golf balls at an electric dust pan." No, dude, look at the pictures of trees I have framed on my wall and the shelves I put up yesterday to hold my cameras! You are so stupid, get away from my window, you are making the dog bark! Today is very hot. It's over 100 degrees out. It's still over a hundred degrees out and it's 5:30 pm. I woke up at 5:45 am to leave for the Filbert orchards and get work done before it got too hot out. We were kidding ourselves, since it was hot at 7 am when we arrived at the first orchard. I have never had sweat literally pour off of me in a steady stream. At one point I was drawing Drew a map and when I tilted my head forward, sweat trickled off my head like a water in a faucet left on for a cat, all over the map that I was drawing for him. We both laughed, but I knew that we both understood this was disgusting. I thought about how I read in a book that circus people rub peanut oil on elephants' heads to keep their brains from drying out when they are stressed, and how that's got to be complete bullshit, because peanut oil is not a good brain moisturizer. Maybe it's true, I don't know, but I have some doubts, seeing as water is essential to life and oil is sort of the opposite of water.
I received a phone call from my boss that said that I no longer have to come in at nights for a couple of hours to check on the life table experiments that we are running. I was happy to hear this, since I don't like having to be anywhere at anytime, really, even if I have no place better to be, and the place that I am supposed to be is neither inconvenient nor disagreeable. The basement of the Agriculture and Life Sciences building is disagreeable in that it's hot, but it's cooler than it is outside. The work is tedious but not hard, a lot of microscope work, looking for the shed exoskeletons of mites to see whether or not they have molted to a new development stage (sometimes I forget this is my job). This is useful information to farmers, sort of. That's not why were doing it. It has to do with effectiveness of control as a natural predator during certain seasons... I am happy to not have to look for insect skins anymore, at least in the evening. I've been there every night for about two weeks, which means I haven't had a day off in over two weeks. I think sunday is my next day off. Hasn't really mattered all that much.
The point is, it's really hot outside, so I can't take the dog for a walk or we'll desiccate into little dusty piles of skin and clothes, so we are sitting around bored in the apartment, where it is warm (about 80) but not unbearable. I dragged out the putter, golf balls, and auto-ball returner (it resembles a dust pan and plugs into the wall) that I got from goodwill when I had no TV or internet to keep me entertained. I have six golf balls, that I line up about 15 feet from the target. The first one I know I will miss, because the dog is ready to leap at it as soon as I tap it, so I just hit it without aiming. She leaps at it and can't quite get it and it goes shooting into the bedroom. After she gets her mouth around it, she puts it onto the bed. I'm able to get about two putts in before she gets back, usually. I mean that I have the time to hit two of the balls towards the hole, not into the hole, as most of them go past. The dog grabs those and puts them on the bed. When I am out of balls I go into the bedroom and collect the eggs from the nest that she has made of the balls. I think that if they hatch into dogs I might be on the news, but I will be embarrassed when they ask about the last time I washed my sheets.
After a few sessions of putting/collecting eggs, I decided that it was time to get serious, to stop dicking around and make some real putts. I went into the bedroom and put on a pair of athletic shorts (I have one pair of athletic shorts) and then returned to the living room. I give the dog the first putt and then I look at the dust pan, and imagine a straight line from the pan to the putter. I look at the ball and I swing and I putt through the ball, I don't even look at the hole and I know it's gone in. I can't describe it, I just know I have sank this putt. The ball returner sends it back THOK. I decide that I am going to sink 100 putts in a row. I think that I am very good at this and should make this a career, but a lot of people already do this, much much better than me, and they are called professional golfers. I think that I need a nickname, but all I can think is "Jonny Greenwood." I make the next putt, but I miss the third. I decide again that I am going to sink 100 putts in a row, but before I do, I check to see if the dog is choking on a golf ball. She wasn't, but I thought that it would be a good idea to google "dog heimlich" and it turns out there is such a thing. I also remember that I wanted to learn morse code and how to identify trees. What for, I dunno. Then I started typing all this out, because I thought that the bit about putting on athletic shorts and the dog heimlich is funny. I look forward to later making coffee and an omelet out of the vegetables that my boss brought me yesterday, but it's still too early, because if I make it now, I will be hungry before bed, and if I eat before bed, I wake up feeling sick. I look behind me because I can hear the dog whining and she is sitting on the side table, and I wonder if perhaps I really did suffer heat stroke this afternoon. Then my phone rang which was just as surprising.
My former just landlord called and asked if I knew that I was aware that my lease ends on Friday. I said "Oh my god, what!?" but I was lying. She didn't think it was funny and least she didn't laugh. She asked if I wanted to do a walk-through when I turn in the keys, and I asked that if the lease ends on friday, and that I have to be out on friday, and you want to do the walkthough friday, when was I going to be able to fix the things that she thought were not clean enough? Should I bring cleaning stuff to the walk through? Is that normal? She said no. I told her that I did a walk-through with another girl, (which she said she remembers), which was sort of useful except that she asked us to clean the patio which was not listed on the list that you gave us of things to clean, and that I decided that the place was a clean as I could get it, and I was told that you don't make a final decision till after we turn in our keys, at which point I can't make changes. So if I can skip a walk-through to avoid being depressed about things that I should have done and will now regret, I would like to just skip it. She said that's fine, she understands. Thanks for understanding your complete power over me in regards to the situation. I should have said that I'd like to learn to walk through walls, you GHOST! What do you say to that? But really I want to be a ghost, so that is not an insult. She then told me a device, that she had previously told me to to take the office, needs to be returned to Comcast. I told her that we only got it because we were told that we needed to get it, and that, in fact, we never opened the box, and our cable TV never changed at all (I was suggesting that she was swindled.) She said she didn't remember that. I reminded her about the Comcast foodcart thing that was parked in front of the office for three days. She said to write my apartment number on it. I checked to see if I had peanut oil because I think my brain is drying out from the stress of the phone call that she clearly thought was going to be about a minute and I dragged into about eight.
It's too hot today, and I live too far away from my friends, and this may be the worst summer of my life, to be perfectly dramatic. Now it's 6:30 and probably time for an omelet.
I received a phone call from my boss that said that I no longer have to come in at nights for a couple of hours to check on the life table experiments that we are running. I was happy to hear this, since I don't like having to be anywhere at anytime, really, even if I have no place better to be, and the place that I am supposed to be is neither inconvenient nor disagreeable. The basement of the Agriculture and Life Sciences building is disagreeable in that it's hot, but it's cooler than it is outside. The work is tedious but not hard, a lot of microscope work, looking for the shed exoskeletons of mites to see whether or not they have molted to a new development stage (sometimes I forget this is my job). This is useful information to farmers, sort of. That's not why were doing it. It has to do with effectiveness of control as a natural predator during certain seasons... I am happy to not have to look for insect skins anymore, at least in the evening. I've been there every night for about two weeks, which means I haven't had a day off in over two weeks. I think sunday is my next day off. Hasn't really mattered all that much.
The point is, it's really hot outside, so I can't take the dog for a walk or we'll desiccate into little dusty piles of skin and clothes, so we are sitting around bored in the apartment, where it is warm (about 80) but not unbearable. I dragged out the putter, golf balls, and auto-ball returner (it resembles a dust pan and plugs into the wall) that I got from goodwill when I had no TV or internet to keep me entertained. I have six golf balls, that I line up about 15 feet from the target. The first one I know I will miss, because the dog is ready to leap at it as soon as I tap it, so I just hit it without aiming. She leaps at it and can't quite get it and it goes shooting into the bedroom. After she gets her mouth around it, she puts it onto the bed. I'm able to get about two putts in before she gets back, usually. I mean that I have the time to hit two of the balls towards the hole, not into the hole, as most of them go past. The dog grabs those and puts them on the bed. When I am out of balls I go into the bedroom and collect the eggs from the nest that she has made of the balls. I think that if they hatch into dogs I might be on the news, but I will be embarrassed when they ask about the last time I washed my sheets.
After a few sessions of putting/collecting eggs, I decided that it was time to get serious, to stop dicking around and make some real putts. I went into the bedroom and put on a pair of athletic shorts (I have one pair of athletic shorts) and then returned to the living room. I give the dog the first putt and then I look at the dust pan, and imagine a straight line from the pan to the putter. I look at the ball and I swing and I putt through the ball, I don't even look at the hole and I know it's gone in. I can't describe it, I just know I have sank this putt. The ball returner sends it back THOK. I decide that I am going to sink 100 putts in a row. I think that I am very good at this and should make this a career, but a lot of people already do this, much much better than me, and they are called professional golfers. I think that I need a nickname, but all I can think is "Jonny Greenwood." I make the next putt, but I miss the third. I decide again that I am going to sink 100 putts in a row, but before I do, I check to see if the dog is choking on a golf ball. She wasn't, but I thought that it would be a good idea to google "dog heimlich" and it turns out there is such a thing. I also remember that I wanted to learn morse code and how to identify trees. What for, I dunno. Then I started typing all this out, because I thought that the bit about putting on athletic shorts and the dog heimlich is funny. I look forward to later making coffee and an omelet out of the vegetables that my boss brought me yesterday, but it's still too early, because if I make it now, I will be hungry before bed, and if I eat before bed, I wake up feeling sick. I look behind me because I can hear the dog whining and she is sitting on the side table, and I wonder if perhaps I really did suffer heat stroke this afternoon. Then my phone rang which was just as surprising.
My former just landlord called and asked if I knew that I was aware that my lease ends on Friday. I said "Oh my god, what!?" but I was lying. She didn't think it was funny and least she didn't laugh. She asked if I wanted to do a walk-through when I turn in the keys, and I asked that if the lease ends on friday, and that I have to be out on friday, and you want to do the walkthough friday, when was I going to be able to fix the things that she thought were not clean enough? Should I bring cleaning stuff to the walk through? Is that normal? She said no. I told her that I did a walk-through with another girl, (which she said she remembers), which was sort of useful except that she asked us to clean the patio which was not listed on the list that you gave us of things to clean, and that I decided that the place was a clean as I could get it, and I was told that you don't make a final decision till after we turn in our keys, at which point I can't make changes. So if I can skip a walk-through to avoid being depressed about things that I should have done and will now regret, I would like to just skip it. She said that's fine, she understands. Thanks for understanding your complete power over me in regards to the situation. I should have said that I'd like to learn to walk through walls, you GHOST! What do you say to that? But really I want to be a ghost, so that is not an insult. She then told me a device, that she had previously told me to to take the office, needs to be returned to Comcast. I told her that we only got it because we were told that we needed to get it, and that, in fact, we never opened the box, and our cable TV never changed at all (I was suggesting that she was swindled.) She said she didn't remember that. I reminded her about the Comcast foodcart thing that was parked in front of the office for three days. She said to write my apartment number on it. I checked to see if I had peanut oil because I think my brain is drying out from the stress of the phone call that she clearly thought was going to be about a minute and I dragged into about eight.
It's too hot today, and I live too far away from my friends, and this may be the worst summer of my life, to be perfectly dramatic. Now it's 6:30 and probably time for an omelet.
Sunday, July 26, 2009
new lampshade
I was bored, and thought that this lampshade was pretty boring too, so I drew some old cameras on it. I have each of the cameras in real life, except for the "Start 66" which noel has and provided the picture of.
Now i'm bored again. I already cleaned the rest of my apartment and made cookies and took the dog for a walk. I have to go to work in about an hour. It's really hot out. I'll be happy when I get my weekends back and don't have to work nights.
Now i'm bored again. I already cleaned the rest of my apartment and made cookies and took the dog for a walk. I have to go to work in about an hour. It's really hot out. I'll be happy when I get my weekends back and don't have to work nights.
Monday, May 18, 2009
Crab Spider versus B. melanopygus
Daniel spotted this dramatic scene (but I took the picture) of predation and mimicry during a field trip two weeks ago to Gathering Together Farms, an organic farm in Philomath. The man who owns the farm looked and sounded exactly like George Bluth, Sr. from Arrested Development.
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
International Shortwave Celebrity!
Skip to the 10 minute mark:
they emailed me this QSL card, so I knew to listen. Sadly I missed the broadcast last night. I was able to hear it on the internet, confirming that there's really no reason for anyone to listen to shortwave radio, unless the power's out.
they emailed me this QSL card, so I knew to listen. Sadly I missed the broadcast last night. I was able to hear it on the internet, confirming that there's really no reason for anyone to listen to shortwave radio, unless the power's out.
Martin Sheen shoots a football
I am a fan of Terrence Malick's films. Maybe he's my favorite director. It doesn't matter. I was excited to read this excerpt this evening while taking a break from scientific writing (which I have had to do a lot of this week, is very boring and is hard to do for a project that you haven't yet started):
"We're just starting work on a project for Terrence Malick, animating dinosaurs, the film is The Tree of Life, starring Brad Pitt and Sean Penn. It'll be showing in IMAX -- so the dinosaurs will actually be life size -- and the shots of the creatures will be long and lingering." -- this comes from an Empire magazine interview with VFX artist Mike Fink.
Synopsis of the film have been all over the place. I had read previously that it was about a child growing up and realizing that life's hard, which sounded sort of lame, but I was willing to give it a shot since I've liked all of his films that I've seen very much (even The New World, if mostly for the look of it). But now it apparently has dinosaurs. Maybe it's a documentary on the big tree at disney's animal kingdom.
I was reminded to look up the status of his new film when I downloaded this mix from this guy who I really don't know anything about, but I generally like the mixes he uploads. His band, deerhunter, is popular I think. The first track in the mix is the from the final scene in "badlands".
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Thursday, April 2, 2009
This shirt is stupid
I thought i'd use my blog to complain for a minute. I saw this shirt for sale at dirtcheapshirt.com (not a site I frequent, but it comes up at dodtracker.com, a site I check daily for rare goodies). The shirt makes no sense. Ideally, you shouldn't "spend" 1-ups at all. You don't get anything in return for using them, so you aren't really spending them, but using them up. You can't sacrifice them for anything, since you start at the beginning of an area or a marker point if you die in just about every Mario game. What are they getting at? There is no way to wisely die in the game. This shirt is totally stupid, like the rest of nintendo's latest ventures, such as fixing the DSi so it doesn't work with cool rom flash cards.
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Medium Format Pictures
I purchased a Lubitel 166B a couple of weeks ago. Yolanda had sent me a link to the one that Lomo makes these days and sells on their website, but that one is very, very expensive. This one was not nearly as much as that, and it is 25 years old, and functions well (You can also load 35mm film into without an adapter, and it seems to work fine, actually fits very snugly). I've also been developing my own negatives, both B&W and color, though the color is not so good. It's been fun. Here's some pictures that I've taken over the last two weeks. I'm not going to post opinions of digital vs. film, as I just like taking pictures. I also like the smell of fixer and feeling around for scissors in the darkened bathroom. I don't have an enlarger, so I put the negatives on the light-table and then photographed them and edited them on the computer, which seems silly. Works pretty well though. I did make some contact prints which turned out ok, but they are 4x4 cm. Little wallet-sizes to carry around or trade, I guess.
I like the pictures of the tombstones, though I understand that the subject matter is a little loaded. Still, I thought they made nice images, and I was happy to take pictures away from my house or school.
also, here's some 3D pictures that you can view with the red/blue glasses. I took them with the camera I made a couple of weeks ago. It's hard to get the exposure right, and the pinholes are slightly different so one comes out darker than the other.
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| Medium Format |
I like the pictures of the tombstones, though I understand that the subject matter is a little loaded. Still, I thought they made nice images, and I was happy to take pictures away from my house or school.
also, here's some 3D pictures that you can view with the red/blue glasses. I took them with the camera I made a couple of weeks ago. It's hard to get the exposure right, and the pinholes are slightly different so one comes out darker than the other.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
I built a camera
This weekend I was without the dog so I decided to take advantage of the time and finish a project that I had been wanting to work on for a long time: Building a pinhole camera that would take 3D pictures. The reason that I waited until I didn't have the dog is because she gets upset when I am not looking at her directly, and there are a lot of small pieces for her to eat.
I designed it myself, though its based very much on the Dirkon design. It's made of basswood (which is like tougher balsa wood, so it's very light) and accepts 35mm film. The pinholes are made in aluminum from a soda can, so the pictures were far sharper than my dirkon, which had the hole in paper. The image is exposed over the entire film, sprocket holes and all, which i felt would look cool, and i also though that more image would be better. It works by sliding the shutter right to expose the film, and left to close the shutter. There is a bubble level on the back to make sure the shots are the same height. The film is wound into an empty canister but it still has to be unloaded in complete darkness. The back and compartment separators are lined in black velvet to reduce risk of scratching the film and to help block any light leaks. It has a tripod nut on the bottom that is flush so it can rest flat on a surface as well. It took three days to complete. The only snag I ran into was the film winder mechanism was really difficult to wind at first for some reason. It was fixed but i'm not sure how. The dot on top lets me know how many turns i've done: 2.5 turns moves the film enough for a new shot. The back is held on with tiny rubber bands, which was a feature I took from another designer's camera.
Here are the results from the first roll that I shot and developed yesterday. The exposures were from 2-4 seconds.
You can view these in 3D using the crosseye method: cross your eyes until the two images overlap perfectly in the middle and let your eyes focus on it. this is easier if you stand back from your monitor a little, so you don't have to cross them so much. I will have regular red/cyan ones up once I get some glasses to test them with: a good excuse to go back to the 3D museum downtown. The daffodils and parking lot ones work better than the sidewalk, since they have foreground.
I apologize for the low contrast images, but yesterday was very grey and rainy, and I underdeveloped the film in my haste to see the results. I also didn't know the exposure times yet, so three images came out. The woody bits on the edges are from the edges of the shutter, so I need to widen those holes a bit. But it works! which is very exciting. I wish that I had made the holes slightly wider than my pupillary distance, because I believe that enhances the depth effect. Something for the next one, I guess.
I designed it myself, though its based very much on the Dirkon design. It's made of basswood (which is like tougher balsa wood, so it's very light) and accepts 35mm film. The pinholes are made in aluminum from a soda can, so the pictures were far sharper than my dirkon, which had the hole in paper. The image is exposed over the entire film, sprocket holes and all, which i felt would look cool, and i also though that more image would be better. It works by sliding the shutter right to expose the film, and left to close the shutter. There is a bubble level on the back to make sure the shots are the same height. The film is wound into an empty canister but it still has to be unloaded in complete darkness. The back and compartment separators are lined in black velvet to reduce risk of scratching the film and to help block any light leaks. It has a tripod nut on the bottom that is flush so it can rest flat on a surface as well. It took three days to complete. The only snag I ran into was the film winder mechanism was really difficult to wind at first for some reason. It was fixed but i'm not sure how. The dot on top lets me know how many turns i've done: 2.5 turns moves the film enough for a new shot. The back is held on with tiny rubber bands, which was a feature I took from another designer's camera.
Here are the results from the first roll that I shot and developed yesterday. The exposures were from 2-4 seconds.
You can view these in 3D using the crosseye method: cross your eyes until the two images overlap perfectly in the middle and let your eyes focus on it. this is easier if you stand back from your monitor a little, so you don't have to cross them so much. I will have regular red/cyan ones up once I get some glasses to test them with: a good excuse to go back to the 3D museum downtown. The daffodils and parking lot ones work better than the sidewalk, since they have foreground.
I apologize for the low contrast images, but yesterday was very grey and rainy, and I underdeveloped the film in my haste to see the results. I also didn't know the exposure times yet, so three images came out. The woody bits on the edges are from the edges of the shutter, so I need to widen those holes a bit. But it works! which is very exciting. I wish that I had made the holes slightly wider than my pupillary distance, because I believe that enhances the depth effect. Something for the next one, I guess.
Saturday, March 14, 2009
Friday, March 13, 2009
News
News Items!
1)Somebody stole the thermometer transmitter from the front of my apartment. It was in a plastic ziplock bag to protect it from the rain. I suppose i should have expected it, but I figured as soon as somebody picked it up, they would have realized that it was pretty worthless without the rest of it. I checked at the office, they haven't seen it.
2)My USB greenhouse is sprouting a lot now that the LEDS are always on.
3)I have heard that dogs have no concept of time, but my dog Beatrice here just climbed into her kennel at 1:20 pm, which is generally about the time I head back to school on MWF, without me telling her to. She has picked up on a lot of visual or audio cues, such as the squeak of my commuter mug lid, or when I put my backpack near the door, or when I put my shoes on.
4) Here's some fun weekend projects for you, I might give it a go soon, after I am done with finals.
Pinhole Cameras
Matchbox Pinhole Camera
Or if you have more time and don't want to dissasemble the thing everytime, you could make one of these
If you've got an SLR or DSLR this also is fun, but I didn't think it was quite as fun. Though it's cheap and easy.
1)Somebody stole the thermometer transmitter from the front of my apartment. It was in a plastic ziplock bag to protect it from the rain. I suppose i should have expected it, but I figured as soon as somebody picked it up, they would have realized that it was pretty worthless without the rest of it. I checked at the office, they haven't seen it.
2)My USB greenhouse is sprouting a lot now that the LEDS are always on.
3)I have heard that dogs have no concept of time, but my dog Beatrice here just climbed into her kennel at 1:20 pm, which is generally about the time I head back to school on MWF, without me telling her to. She has picked up on a lot of visual or audio cues, such as the squeak of my commuter mug lid, or when I put my backpack near the door, or when I put my shoes on.
4) Here's some fun weekend projects for you, I might give it a go soon, after I am done with finals.
Pinhole Cameras
Matchbox Pinhole Camera
Or if you have more time and don't want to dissasemble the thing everytime, you could make one of these
If you've got an SLR or DSLR this also is fun, but I didn't think it was quite as fun. Though it's cheap and easy.
Thursday, March 12, 2009
I tried putting my cellphone's camera up to the microscope's eyepiece today, on the microscope that I use everyday, and was surprised to see that it actually worked, and I could get a fairly good image. Nothing professional, but still interesting.
Here's a video of what I look at everyday: mites. In the video, a mature female eats a spider mite egg, while a pair of juveniles hang around, and a bunch of spider mites walk in and out of the frame. It's a pretty good representation of what I look at most of the day, for whatever reason:
I apologize for the light moving around strangely. I can't rest the lens on the eyepiece, I have to hold it about a cm away from it, and keep it parallel. It's really tiring. Here's a TINY snail that fell out of some moss while I was looking for springtails. At the end, you can see the scope and the setup:
Lastly here's a springtail. It's hard to see but I like the old film look that it has. I just zoomed with the digital zoom on the camera. I wish that I was easier to see but I suppose I could do it again. You can hear me sigh a lot because my arms are very tired at this point:
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
iWeb
I've been trying out the new iweb program. I feel that after taking flash and dreamweaver classes, and being familiar with HTML that I should be putting together my own site and not using some templates from apple. But you know what? I hate putting together websites. This, combined with Adobe Lightroom do a pretty good job in my opinion. However, what I learned from my first website is that no one will ever look at a homepage. In conclusion, I am not sure why I went to the trouble, except that I wanted a place to put some pictures that I took and I liked that wasn't google or flickr.
website
website
Sunday, March 8, 2009
Predatory Mites and Spider Mites
I took some pictures of the mites that I work with last wednesday, here's the album:
The big orange teardroppy ones are the predatory mites, T. pyri, the hairier, yellower ones with black spots are the spider mites that they eat, I don't know the name of the species. They are very small. For a comparison, look at the period on the period key on your keyboard. They are about 1/4 the size of that or less. They still hunt and eat and have reproductive behaviors and all that though. Pretty neat, I think. They also know how to flee a paintbrush tip right after they hatch out of the egg.
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| Mites, March 2009 |
The big orange teardroppy ones are the predatory mites, T. pyri, the hairier, yellower ones with black spots are the spider mites that they eat, I don't know the name of the species. They are very small. For a comparison, look at the period on the period key on your keyboard. They are about 1/4 the size of that or less. They still hunt and eat and have reproductive behaviors and all that though. Pretty neat, I think. They also know how to flee a paintbrush tip right after they hatch out of the egg.
A note on the invoice reads:
"Hiya :) Thank you so much for your patience!
Here you go ;) you finally got what you had waited for!
Please love the stuff and let us know if you need a help.
By the way, we really wish this new year, 2009, will be fruitful, hopefule, and fruitful for you. Many layoffs, salary cut and chilly winds and snow, tough time's still been over here and it's so sluggish X(
Oh, but look! here you go! bright happiness with this tiny gifts. Bless You!"
My recent impulse purchase arrived from Japan today, an 8x telephoto lens for my phone's camera, plus tripod :
(the glowing egg in the background is the USB greenhouse I received for my birthday. It has a single sprout so far, but the light was off all last week since I left my laptop charger in Portland. I added more seeds today because I think I planted the other ones too deep)
It fits very discreetly on my phone:
It feature a focus ring on the front. The tripod mount is standard. The mini-tripod that it came with is better than the ones that I got for free from one of those deal-of-the-day sites a couple of weeks ago.
Here's some sample pics from this afternoon with a normal shot from the phone for comparison!
Normal:
With Lens:
Normal:
With lens:
Its too bad about the dark area around the pics, but I don't really mind that much. I think it's pretty fun. Even came with a tiny lens cap and cloth to clean it. It can be adjusted to fit any phone. I look forward to trying it out at school tomorrow.
"Hiya :) Thank you so much for your patience!
Here you go ;) you finally got what you had waited for!
Please love the stuff and let us know if you need a help.
By the way, we really wish this new year, 2009, will be fruitful, hopefule, and fruitful for you. Many layoffs, salary cut and chilly winds and snow, tough time's still been over here and it's so sluggish X(
Oh, but look! here you go! bright happiness with this tiny gifts. Bless You!"
My recent impulse purchase arrived from Japan today, an 8x telephoto lens for my phone's camera, plus tripod :
(the glowing egg in the background is the USB greenhouse I received for my birthday. It has a single sprout so far, but the light was off all last week since I left my laptop charger in Portland. I added more seeds today because I think I planted the other ones too deep)
It fits very discreetly on my phone:
It feature a focus ring on the front. The tripod mount is standard. The mini-tripod that it came with is better than the ones that I got for free from one of those deal-of-the-day sites a couple of weeks ago.
Here's some sample pics from this afternoon with a normal shot from the phone for comparison!
Normal:
With Lens:
Normal:
With lens:
Its too bad about the dark area around the pics, but I don't really mind that much. I think it's pretty fun. Even came with a tiny lens cap and cloth to clean it. It can be adjusted to fit any phone. I look forward to trying it out at school tomorrow.
daylight "shavings"
Today a funny thing happened: my hair clippers stopped working in the middle of cutting my hair, which left me with a choppy hair cut and a need to go out into the world and find another set of clippers. Luckily I own a lot of toques, and I found a pretty good deal at rite-aid on a cordless clippers. It also came with a barber's cape, which was a garbage bag with a hole. I also found the taco bell in town.
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Whenever I have a lot of homework to do, I usually start changing the icons around on my computer. Tonight I made some new ones. I had mentioned in the controversial "25 Things" Facebook meme that I enjoyed many hot beverages a day, so I made some icons of the tools that I use to make those beverages. If you'd like them for your very own, you can download them here.
Friday, February 13, 2009
ive heard 3 sub-prime mortgage
ive heard 3 sub-prime mortgage jokes in 2 days from the npr movie critic who is complaining about cliches and remakes.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Krazy Klock!
Tim got this clock from a guy who kicked him out of his office. He put in a battery and we thought that they gave him a broken clock, which seemed really mean. We timed it and it's pretty accurate. After an hour it's keeping good time. Here's a video with which to waste a minute of your life. We wasted about 5 making it and blogging about it.
Monday, February 9, 2009
25 random things
This is a post of the 25 random things that's making the rounds on facebook. These responses I have put are not random at all. It also totals 27 but a couple don't count.
1)I really dislike the word "random" because I am pretty sure it's mostly calculated. Many people have told me that my humor is "random" and I find that to be a little insulting, because I usually think that im pretty clever and if it was random it would be really easy.
2) I am a terrible procrastinator, but I am really self-deceptive about it. I do things like look for programs that will help me be more productive, reward myself, take breaks, "relax for a change", all while never ever finishing anything I start.
3)I still don't really consider myself an adult, even though I turn 28 this weekend, have a retirement account and am well into balding.
3.5)I'm not concerned about going bald, in fact it's one less thing to worry about.
4)I am terrible at keeping track of money.
5)When I drive or go for long walks by myself, I will get a lot of ideas for stories, pictures and books that seem really great, but when I get home, instead of working on them, I make excuses why they are bad or can't do them right now, or the feeling goes away. This is why I won't succeed in the art world. No drive.
6)I worry constantly about whether or not I am making the most of my life, and wonder why I am not out walking around the woods. I feel that staring at a computer, watching TV or anything like that is the worst waste of time and totally unnatural, but I do it A LOT.
7)Very often I am on the brink of tears, I'm not sure why.
8)My dog's armpits taste sweeter than the rest of her, and if you kiss them she'll go limp. Anywhere else she tries to put her teeth on you. Thats not about me, but I did discover it.
9) I really enjoy listening to the radio, but not for music. I enjoy weather and traffic reports a lot. I listened to british streaming radio for a while to hear what their commutes were like. I also feel that traffic reports are more of a tradition, rather than something that's useful. I've also gotten into shortwave radio recently. I like the idea that somewhere in the world, someone is broadcasting the signal and I am receiving it a few seconds later, and in the case of shortwave it might only be a couple of us that hear it. I LOVE listening to the NOAA weather station. Here's the link for portland: http://audioplayer.wunderground.com/wh6ko/StHelens.mp3.m3u . I wish that there was better local programming anywhere. I don't know what I want though, really. What would be better?
10) I have no idea how to dress myself. Thank god for Yolanda buying all of my clothes. She's actually made clothes shopping somewhat of an enjoyable experience for me.
11)I like dipping foods into other foods, or foods that involve dipping.
12)I have toes that overlap in a grotesque way. My fourth toes have "sectioned" toenails due to this where there's a seam in the middle and two different textures.
13)Lately I have been misspelling words when writing them by mixing up the order of the letters. That's never really happened before.
14)I worry about not being a very good friend to my friends because I don't call anyone or contact anybody, even though I think about my friends a lot and care about them very much.
15)Sometimes I'll click "home" in my web browser to go to my iGoogle home page. When that's not satisfying in terms of entertainment or information, I'll click "home" again, expecting a different result, I guess. The same page will load, and I'll click "home" again, thinking i just need to refresh it, and something good will come up. I do this until I realize that it's not going to change. This happens at least once a day, and it's probably a sign of internet addiction.
16)I like the idea of being a survivalist, and sometimes hope for some kind of apocalyptic event so I don't have to have a job. I think that I'd be better at running around and hiding than whatever it is I end up doing if I ever graduate college.
17)I drink at least 3 hot beverages a day, generally twice as many as that, even in summer, and I still make terrible coffee.
18)I love text messaging, sending and receiving. Words, pictures, videos. I set up my email to forward to my text messages so I would get more. Text me at five oh three eight four one 7350 why doncha? a joke or something. You can email me a text message.
19)I HATE bumper stickers, each and every one of them.
20)I don't remember how to do any physics, calculus, japanese, or probably general chemistry and I just spent the last 2 years sweating over all of that shit. I hope I really don't need it.
21)I don't like discussing music or movies with most people, because I don't think I am a movie snob, I am just hard to please. People think that I am knowledgable on these subjects - I don't know shit about either. I have seen some films I like and heard some albums I enjoyed, but there's a lot that I didn't and I hate having to defend my opinion in endless and useless discussions/arguments. That said, when it was pointed out to me that I was a grump and more recently that I can ruin things people like by pointing out nitpicky details (sorry yolanda), I resolved to keep my opinion to myself unless asked, and be more careful of my words and comments.
22)There's been a couple of occasions where i have forgotten that my dad died. Where i thought, oh I should call dad I should ask him about that. Oh yeah, I can't do that.
23) I don't floss enough, even though I know the risks and don't have dental insurance anymore.
24)I don't think I read enough books even though I there are many books that I fee have influenced me greatly. For some reason I have this sense that if I don't discover a book on my own or it was written in the last couple decades than it has no merit. Again, I am talking out of my ass and know just about nothing on the subject of literature.
25)I love winding my watch and wished that I had a hundred watches. I really like clocks and watches, but at the same time wish that things were much simpler and that we didn't depend on watches and schedules and that things moved at a much slower pace. From my bed I have the time on 6 devices, and the temperature on 4. Three of them show the temp in my room, they all disagree by about a half degree. It's about 63. (62, 63.1, 63.5). The barometric pressure is 30.5 inches. Humidity in my bedroom is just under 50%. There is a winter snow warning for the valley floor for tuesday morning.
26) These weren't random. This took me about 2 hours to type out, which means I thought about it a lot and edited it and it was greatly biased. I tried to do it randomly with a random number generator and searching my computer with the numbers but I got things like "My dad has a friend named Dave Parker".
1)I really dislike the word "random" because I am pretty sure it's mostly calculated. Many people have told me that my humor is "random" and I find that to be a little insulting, because I usually think that im pretty clever and if it was random it would be really easy.
2) I am a terrible procrastinator, but I am really self-deceptive about it. I do things like look for programs that will help me be more productive, reward myself, take breaks, "relax for a change", all while never ever finishing anything I start.
3)I still don't really consider myself an adult, even though I turn 28 this weekend, have a retirement account and am well into balding.
3.5)I'm not concerned about going bald, in fact it's one less thing to worry about.
4)I am terrible at keeping track of money.
5)When I drive or go for long walks by myself, I will get a lot of ideas for stories, pictures and books that seem really great, but when I get home, instead of working on them, I make excuses why they are bad or can't do them right now, or the feeling goes away. This is why I won't succeed in the art world. No drive.
6)I worry constantly about whether or not I am making the most of my life, and wonder why I am not out walking around the woods. I feel that staring at a computer, watching TV or anything like that is the worst waste of time and totally unnatural, but I do it A LOT.
7)Very often I am on the brink of tears, I'm not sure why.
8)My dog's armpits taste sweeter than the rest of her, and if you kiss them she'll go limp. Anywhere else she tries to put her teeth on you. Thats not about me, but I did discover it.
9) I really enjoy listening to the radio, but not for music. I enjoy weather and traffic reports a lot. I listened to british streaming radio for a while to hear what their commutes were like. I also feel that traffic reports are more of a tradition, rather than something that's useful. I've also gotten into shortwave radio recently. I like the idea that somewhere in the world, someone is broadcasting the signal and I am receiving it a few seconds later, and in the case of shortwave it might only be a couple of us that hear it. I LOVE listening to the NOAA weather station. Here's the link for portland: http://audioplayer.wunderground.com/wh6ko/StHelens.mp3.m3u . I wish that there was better local programming anywhere. I don't know what I want though, really. What would be better?
10) I have no idea how to dress myself. Thank god for Yolanda buying all of my clothes. She's actually made clothes shopping somewhat of an enjoyable experience for me.
11)I like dipping foods into other foods, or foods that involve dipping.
12)I have toes that overlap in a grotesque way. My fourth toes have "sectioned" toenails due to this where there's a seam in the middle and two different textures.
13)Lately I have been misspelling words when writing them by mixing up the order of the letters. That's never really happened before.
14)I worry about not being a very good friend to my friends because I don't call anyone or contact anybody, even though I think about my friends a lot and care about them very much.
15)Sometimes I'll click "home" in my web browser to go to my iGoogle home page. When that's not satisfying in terms of entertainment or information, I'll click "home" again, expecting a different result, I guess. The same page will load, and I'll click "home" again, thinking i just need to refresh it, and something good will come up. I do this until I realize that it's not going to change. This happens at least once a day, and it's probably a sign of internet addiction.
16)I like the idea of being a survivalist, and sometimes hope for some kind of apocalyptic event so I don't have to have a job. I think that I'd be better at running around and hiding than whatever it is I end up doing if I ever graduate college.
17)I drink at least 3 hot beverages a day, generally twice as many as that, even in summer, and I still make terrible coffee.
18)I love text messaging, sending and receiving. Words, pictures, videos. I set up my email to forward to my text messages so I would get more. Text me at five oh three eight four one 7350 why doncha? a joke or something. You can email me a text message.
19)I HATE bumper stickers, each and every one of them.
20)I don't remember how to do any physics, calculus, japanese, or probably general chemistry and I just spent the last 2 years sweating over all of that shit. I hope I really don't need it.
21)I don't like discussing music or movies with most people, because I don't think I am a movie snob, I am just hard to please. People think that I am knowledgable on these subjects - I don't know shit about either. I have seen some films I like and heard some albums I enjoyed, but there's a lot that I didn't and I hate having to defend my opinion in endless and useless discussions/arguments. That said, when it was pointed out to me that I was a grump and more recently that I can ruin things people like by pointing out nitpicky details (sorry yolanda), I resolved to keep my opinion to myself unless asked, and be more careful of my words and comments.
22)There's been a couple of occasions where i have forgotten that my dad died. Where i thought, oh I should call dad I should ask him about that. Oh yeah, I can't do that.
23) I don't floss enough, even though I know the risks and don't have dental insurance anymore.
24)I don't think I read enough books even though I there are many books that I fee have influenced me greatly. For some reason I have this sense that if I don't discover a book on my own or it was written in the last couple decades than it has no merit. Again, I am talking out of my ass and know just about nothing on the subject of literature.
25)I love winding my watch and wished that I had a hundred watches. I really like clocks and watches, but at the same time wish that things were much simpler and that we didn't depend on watches and schedules and that things moved at a much slower pace. From my bed I have the time on 6 devices, and the temperature on 4. Three of them show the temp in my room, they all disagree by about a half degree. It's about 63. (62, 63.1, 63.5). The barometric pressure is 30.5 inches. Humidity in my bedroom is just under 50%. There is a winter snow warning for the valley floor for tuesday morning.
26) These weren't random. This took me about 2 hours to type out, which means I thought about it a lot and edited it and it was greatly biased. I tried to do it randomly with a random number generator and searching my computer with the numbers but I got things like "My dad has a friend named Dave Parker".
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
Don't Do It!
Don't let this recipe fool you, unless you like molten chewy bits that get crispy and sharp almost immediately. Not even a heaping lump of frosting helped. Now the house smells weird.
Also, while your at it, avoid the DS game Personal Trainer: Cooking unless you like white wine vinegar a lot. I've made two salad recipes (foolproof, right?) from it and both have been so vinegary that they been inedible, or felt like I was eating vomit. I am not trying to be dramatic, it was really that acidic. The potato salad was more onions that potato.
That's all.
Also, while your at it, avoid the DS game Personal Trainer: Cooking unless you like white wine vinegar a lot. I've made two salad recipes (foolproof, right?) from it and both have been so vinegary that they been inedible, or felt like I was eating vomit. I am not trying to be dramatic, it was really that acidic. The potato salad was more onions that potato.
That's all.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
im wearing a lab coat
im wearing a lab coat and doing tasks that require i wear it, while being paid money for it! professional scientist!
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
New Time Lapse
It was very clear last night, so I tried time lapsing the night sky. That picture is a link to the movie. The top of the tree looks fake but it's not. I used iStopmotion 2 and my Nikon D50, taking a 15 second exposure every 30 seconds, out my bedroom window. Does the beauty of the cosmos make you feel insignificant ? There's a lot of light pollution from the 1,000,000 lights and porch lights in my apartment complex.
Monday, January 26, 2009
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Picasa for mac
I'm trying out the "blog this!" feature of Picasa for mac, which seems like a pretty solid program so far.
Friday, January 16, 2009
A Few Things
1) Today in my organic chemistry class it was getting towards the end of the lecture, and I was dozing off and half paying attention, when my teacher begain talking about the origin of some substance. He said it showed up about 65 years ago, during WWII, as a biproduct of the Manhattan Project. I perked up immediately and was glued to his every word, because you see I always get the Manhattan Project, which is the development of the atomic bomb, mixed up with The Philidelphia Experiment, a conspiracy theory about a top secret Naval invisibility project that involves teleportation and brainwashing. I thought either "Wow, it's real!" or "Wow, he's totally screwing with us!". This euphoria lasted about a minute until he said the words "atomic bomb" and I realized my mistake, and why every one else wasn't jumping out of their seats. I literally looked around after he said it to gauge the class's response, like "Are you hearing this?!"
2)I put together this ipod dock from an old metal box I had saved and the black foam that was inside of it. I like clocks a lot (in fact, from my bed this second, I can see 5 different clocks in my room, not including my cell phone) and there's a bunch of clock apps for the ipod/iphone, but how to display them without running down the battery? The answer is "a dock". Docks are expensive though. I had this idea to use the tin, and I looked up to see if any one had used an altoid box, which one guy had. He reminded me that the ipods come with dock adapters now, (that white thing on the bottom) which made the project easy and I think nicer looking. And it was no extra money. It'll be even better when its all glued into place. I am pleased as punch.
3) My waders came in the mail, and I get to try them out tomorrow for the first time at Alsea Falls and some other place, for my aquatic entomology class. Last week was a lot of fun. Should be cold. If they look too big, it's because they are. Waders are sized very strangely: as the foot size increases, so does height and waist size, as if you're feet get longer the fatter you get. So while I have big feet, I am not hyper obese. I have no choice though, and the ones I wore last week worked just fine. I guess I wont' be wearing them just around town like I had planned, though, as pants.
4) I put together this Obama desktop wallpaper today after I clicked on the link for the first official presidential portrait taken with a digital camera, and saw that the image was fairly high resolution. If you have a Mac and a dock on the bottom, his eyes are blocked. I made another one, but really, who cares? I made it while putting off doing homework.
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