Author Archives: dr.hypercube

Snakes ‘n bugs

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Off I went to the semi-annual herp show in Manchester to pick up supplies – frozen mice, calcium powder, tomato worms (treats for the chameleon), etc. As always, a great venue for people watching and great prices on the weird items that local pet stores charge an arm and a leg for – when they have them at all.

I’m not wild about designer reptiles – not a big deal – just a pretty minor matter of taste. That being said, this Gonysoma oxycephala x G. janseni is a stunning creature. In some ways it reminds me of pictures I’ve seen of Green Mambas. It may be just that both snakes are green (duh – though the mamba is greener) and the scalation is striking; I don’t know.

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There was a vendor there with phasmids! Hello, Ms. Stick Insect. This one is a female Eurycantha calcarata. Big and interesting – the size makes her something more that just another bug. You can see joints and jaws and antennae without a hand lens. Very cool.

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Not my arm – not that I would have minded – just didn’t want to take credit. On the subject of stick insects – a bleg – I’d like to get my hands on this – anyone out there with access to it?

Later – the oxy x janseni’s head shape helps a lot with it’s mamba-ness. On a mamba, it gets described as coffin shaped (wonder why?). On the stick insect front, an email today from JM – he’s got some Peruphasma schultei nymphs – beautiful creatures.

Diecast fun

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COOP’s post and Flickrset caused me to dig out my (very) old box of Matchboxes, Corgis, etc. I took one set of photos, but the sun isn’t above the big pine tree in the back yard yet – I don’t have any fancy flash equipment – so I’m going to start over in an hour or two. The pictures will be uploaded here; in the meantime, something to prime the pump:

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Blooming Heliamphora neblinae

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I like carnivorous plants. There’s the man-bites-dog aspect, of course, but there are also all the interesting adaptations that make bug (and frog and mouse and…) eating possible. I grow a few different types – I’ve never had any luck with the canonical carnivore: the Venus Flytrap, but I do have pitcher plants (Nepenthes, Sarracenia and Heliamphora), sundews, pings (butterworts), and utrics (bladderworts).

Heliamphora have a special place in my heart – blame it on George Edward Challenger. I read The Lost World as a kid; a little later when my family was living outside Pittsburgh, PA – I was about ten – the Carnegie Museum or the Pittsburgh Zoological Society (or somebody in Pittsburgh – I can’t find any references on the web) sent an expedition to Auyantepui that got a lot of coverage in the local paper. One of the pictures that sticks in my mind to this day was of a scientist and an enormous clump of helis. For those of you who don’t know from tepuis, click here – they are fascinating mesas in southern Venezuela – sky islands isolated from each other by distance and from the surrounding Gran Sabana by altitude/climate.

With all that as background, a few weeks ago my largest heli, H. neblinae, started sending up an odd looking spike.

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I wasn’t sure what it was – flower spike? Keiki (though I’d never heard of Heliamphora keiki-ing)? I posted a query on a carnivorous plant forum and found out that it was, indeed a flower spike. I suppose I could have waited a week and found out for myself; here’s what happened:

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Notice the very pitcher-like top on the flower scale/sheath – is this a cool plant, or what?

While trying to find some reference to the Pittsburgh expedition, I ran across this:

It was Im Thurns accounts that also attracted British mountaineers Hamish MacInnes, Joe Brown, Don Whillans and Mo Anthonie to Mount Roraima in 1967. They wanted to climb the mountain by a new route and chose ‘the prow’ located at the northern end of the plateau that juts into Guyana. MacInnes’s account can be read in his book Climb to the Lost World. *

Hmm – interlibrary loan time…

Burfday

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Many things to post about (sub-prime mortgage mess, backing up PCs, dogs), but not much time. I did want to get this one out there though, just because it’s so much fun.

I had a birthday this past weekend. The daughter and her boyfriend took me out to dinner; I chose The Friendly Toast – a local alt.food establishment – big plates of food, ridiculous decor, and, as far as I’m concerned, comfortable.

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There were presents, oh, were there presents. Wrapped in brown paper and tied with brown wool – it makes me smile just thinking of it.

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Two nice books (Gorey and Airstreams) and two toys. Did you know that koalas, penguins and seals used to prey on cetaceans? True! The cuddly ones almost drove narwhals into extinction – something narwhals have not forgotten. Thus The Avenging Narwhal Play Set:

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Four interchangeable magic tusks! Three adorable animals to impale!

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Thanks J – the Tusked Avenger is on a shelf in my office using the crystal tooth on a koala.

The daughter gave me some temporary tattoos suitable for the elderly. I’ll post a picture when I apply one – I think the first up will be a snake coiling around one of those pill organizers with compartments for each day of the week.

Vivarium work

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I just put up a page on some tuning I’ve been doing to the large vivarium. To see it, click here or go to the Pages section in the right margin. I’m liking the results – if the plants agree, woo-hoo!

Lookee what I found!

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Found in my back yard right at the lawn to woods transition. I couldn’t decide whether it was bear or coyote, then I figured out what the triangular things are. Sunflower seed hulls. I vote bear. For those of you muttering, “Ew, gross” under your breath, please refer to the title of this blog *grin*.

Also spotted in the back yard a week ago – the rare and dangerous New Caledonian Laundry Hound. Isn’t she helpful?! I know – what’s cute now will be a PITA when she’s grown. Luckily, the laundry thing seems to have been a one time occurrence – or maybe it’s just that she can’t resist her fave blanket.

Pictures

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In response to my Ranchero post below, Steve sends along this picture of a ’61 taken 300 feet away from his house:

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Cue Homer Simpson slobbering noises from yrs truly.

Let me also put in a shameless plug for A Certain Design Student’s MoMA Flickr set. Well worth a peek. The shot below is not from his museum set, but I post it because I love panoramas (as usual, click to embiggen).

You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.

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T-Rex and Pluvialis teamed up this morning and caused me to guffaw, then reminisce a bit. The laughter you’ll have to take on faith; unfortunately, I’m going to subject you to a couple ‘way back when’ stories. I first played Adventure on a Honeywell DPS6 or DPS8 – I’m not sure which hardware we were running at that point. I do remember the model number of the glass teletypes we used – the usual Honeywell suspect – VIP7814s (VIP = visual information processor, I believe). The system software used to control and communicate with the terminals was the time sharing system (TSS – everything must be reduced to initials).

The systems software person was an wonderful guy named Jack. At one point he was fighting with a really gnarly bit of mis-configuration; stuff that absolutely should have worked and absolutely did not. One night during this struggle, he had a work nightmare. As he told it, for a grand finale, he sat bolt upright in bed, yelling “It’s time sharin’! It’s time sharin’!” His wife, who obviously was awake at this point, turned to him and asked (with the look that causes all men to start looking for a means of egress), “So… Who the f*ck is Sharon?”

There was a legendary systems programmer in the General Electric/G200/Honeywell world: Guy Wayne. He apparently liked his cigarettes and his coffee; this was back in the days when one could smoke just about anywhere – an exception being a raised-floor computer room with Halon fire suppression equipment. So, if Mr. Wayne had not finished his smoke, but needed to go into the computer room, he’d carefully put the cigarette out and pocket it to be finished later. One day he came back out of the machine room and got into a conversation with someone. After a few minutes, Guy was informed that there seemed to be smoke coming from his jacket pocket. Without missing a beat, he took his coffee cup and poured his coffee into the pocket. Problem solved.

Moleskine mania

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Via Cool Tools:

A second skin for your Moleskine that itself will become an elegant heirloom. Priced at $39.95 it is an excellent value and will provide exceptional service, becoming a comfortable second skin for that valuable Moleskine. We used our regular English kip, a thin very tight-grained leather that is exceedingly durable. (Also available in Chocolate or Black calf finished cowhide or buffalo, depending upon availability.)

Droolworthy – and Gfeller Casemakers offer some other wicked pissah leather goods. I’m sure Gfeller is a familiar name to some out there (my money is on RF, for one), but they are new to me.

Karma Repair Kit: Items 1-4

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1. Get enough food to eat,
and eat it.

2. Find a place to sleep where it is quiet,
and sleep there.

3. Reduce intellectual activity and emotional noise
until you arrive at the silence of yourself,
and listen to it.

4.

– Richard Brautigan *


Two Argentine links

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First, a follow-up to an earlier post on Borges’ Library – via BoingBoing, a paper titled Information Policy for the Library of Babel. To quote the BB entry, “James proposes that the Internet bears striking similarities to the Library of Babel — and applies the lessons from its infinite depths to the question of information policy for the net.”

And – a bit of hyperlinked serendipity. One of the widgets on my Netvibes page shows me my Fickr contacts’ most recently posted pictures. This morning I saw this picture of a Ford Falcon Ranchero posted by Telstar Logistics (as COOP and A Certain Design Student know, the Ranchero is a huge favorite of mine). I zipped over to Flickr to mark it as a fave and while I was there, I read the comments. GiselaGiardino23 wrote, “(The sedan version, apart from being the most used Ford car, was used by the military dictatorship and the police, painted green, so they are widely linked in the collective memory to the violence and atrocities of the 70’s here).” “Wow”, said I, “I wonder where she lives?” I clicked through to her Flickr home page – the answer was immediately apparent: Argentina. And to close the loop, she has a “Borges, the infinite and me” photoset!

I am reassured by the delight I feel when these kinds of odd connections occur – age and cynicism (aside from the military dictatorship considerations) haven’t swamped me yet!