…bamboo. Phyllostachys aureosulcata to be precise – a picture of the the new growth – I’m trying to get a grove established in the side yard. Once it’s really going it’ll shade the house from afternoon sun, block headlights as they come around a corner up the road a bit, and act as a windbreak in the winter. Very useful – even before I start harvesting shoots and messing around with the wood.
I just did a loop of the yard to make sure I’d brought in all my gardening junk and got a real treat. The area is alive with birds: robins, downy woodpeckers, cardinals, an oriole, and it looks like I have three nesting pairs in residence. The flycatchers are back – they’re using a two year old nest (refurbished, I’m sure) that is perched on top of a shutter, right under the eaves. I have to admit that I don’t know what kind of flycatcher they are although they’ve raised many clutches either on the shutter or in a nest a foot away from the back door. I guess it’s time for a little close observation with one of my bird books in my lap. The other two pair are easy to identify. The ruby-throated hummingbirds are nesting in the big lilac tangle again this year. Last year I got to watch a bit of the male’s mating display; this year (about 20 minutes ago) I got to watch the female perform her evening clean-up. Feaking (I hope it’s OK to use that word on an H-bird), some scratching, wing preening – she was sitting in the evening sun and the her iridescence was jaw dropping. Finally a black fly flew up my nose and I twitched – it was all over. There is a tufted titmouse nest in a hole in an old, dead apple tree. I was thinking about cutting what is left of the tree down last winter – I’m glad I didn’t.
I saw this on the way home this afternoon and grabbed my camera. If you can’t see the name on the roof sign, click the picture for a larger version. I guess Ebola, Genocide et Frères Driving School was too long for the sign, and Apocalyptic Death was a little over the top.
And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. Rev. 6:8
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I hope that the owner of this concern is a huge Clint Eastwood fan who doesn’t pay much attention to dialog (or anything else) – it’s pretty tough to watch Pale Rider and not get the point – there’s a scene where Megan reads the verse quoted above. The alternatives are all pretty crazy – I’m left hoping it’s (rotting) tongue in (corpse-like) cheek. In any event, I think I’d want to speak to the driving instructor before I let him take my child out for a lesson.
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In October of 1872 the Utopian Antarctic colony of Nadiria printed it’s first paper money. For the next twenty seven years, until the community’s strange disappearance in 1899, a variety of beautiful currency was produced. For the complete story, click over to Dream Dollars.
h/t Table of Malcontents – a great stop for all your Cthulhu/steampunk needs (for the next month and a half – word is that Wired is going to pull the plug on them in June). Refresh the page a couple times – there’s a title banner that features a school (shoal? rabble?) of fez-wearing krill.
More good comment on the dog/wolf post – I may have to look at adding a ‘greatest hits’ category to the Blogroll/Booklist/etc. series on the right…
As I was dashing off a reply to the latest comments, it occurred to me that I had read a pretty good fictional account of prehistoric wolf cub raising. I think it was in Elizabeth Marshall Thomas’ Reindeer Moon, but it could have been in The Animal Wife. I’m on the road right now – I’ll check when I get home and post an update. Both books are highly recommended – stories of prehistoric life written by someone who lived with hunter-gatherers. IIRC there was a major omission from both books, though – no giant hyenas! I have been very close to Siberian Tigers (couple feet away w/ a chain-link fence between us, up close and personal with wolves (also in captivity) – the one critter I didn’t want to get anywhere near was a spotted hyena. They are scary animals, as far as I’m concerned. And, before you ask, no, they are plenty intimidating on their own – I don’t think I need to invoke any Jungian race-memory or suchlike.
Update – the wolf passage was in Reindeer Moon.
You might have seen long load times for DoaMNH over the past couple days (or maybe not – what do I know?). I’ve been seeding the Ubuntu Studio torrent – I have the torrent bandwidth throttled back, but the number of simultaneous connections is stressing my little consumer-grade router. I’ve turned off BitTorrent for the day – I’ll probably try to run it overnight (east-coast US, which means late night into the morning UK/Europe and early evening to late night western US). The Ubuntu Studio folks are getting hammered – their web site is currently down – but for those who don’t follow such things, Ubuntu Studio is a variant of the very popular Ubuntu Linux distribution with added packages for audio, video and graphics editing. Tutorials and Studio download status here.
Non-technical version of above – the site may be slow – it’s probably on purpose, because of weird stuff I’m doing – I’m going to try to make it as painless as possible.
Via Engadget, a dog collar that combines a GPS receiver and a cell phone. The collar can phone home with long/lat coordinates – with the right device on the other end, putting a dot on a map is trivial. Right now it’s way too bulky, but I’d imagine that a year or two down the line we may be able to put a similar unit on a large hawk or falcon. Many folks put two telemetry transmitters on their birds now – substituting a GPS/cell unit for one might make sense in some circumstances. Two critical considerations – battery life (always an issue) and density of cell towers. What might make sense here in the east (or across the Atlantic) might be foolish in the middle of Wyoming where the falcon is more likely to be eaten by a Goldie than it is to find cell service. There’s also the fair chase aspect – incorporating yet another gadget into an ancient practice. The question may never arise – my bit of technological prognostication may be off base – but if it does, I have to think that avoiding a plane rental (for an aerial search) may be a good thing. To illustrate the post (you may have noticed that I likes me some pitchurs) a falconer with bird and sighthound:
I crack myself up. I just uploaded a few springtime flower pictures to Flickr; click here to go to my account (or you can use the Flickr badge on the right).
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As always, click to embiggen. All shots taken in the yard – I’m messing with the macro capabilities of my newish camera.
A few months ago, Steve posted about John McLoughlin’s visit to the Black Hole in Los Alamos. Last night, while wandering around Flickr, I came across Telstar Logistics’ Black Hole photoset. It’s well worth a look, and man – that is one great Kachina string tie!
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Via BB, I found the Reading Stack photo pool – pictures of the To Be Read stack that folks have staged and ready. I find it reassuring – my bibliomania may only be garden variety – though I might be BS-ing myself…
One of the Reading Stack pictures featured a Sticklebook. Aside from a good name, it is a very interesting gadget. I’ll bet it would allow me to double or triple the number of books on or around my nightstand (actually clean my nightstand off? ha ha ha ha – it is to laugh!).
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Later – by way of explanation: I can’t think of sticklebacks without thinking of Mr. Jeremy Fisher, and I can’t think of Mr. Jeremy Fisher without also remembering the “I know a good place” quote (also the title – not coincidentally – of an enjoyable book).
Courtesy of Sam, over at Altered-Screens – these pictures of what I guessimate to be a 19′, 50’s vintage Airstream – sighted in Newington, NH. Check out the shine!
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Yes, six degrees of separation and all, but this stuff continues to be scary. I was checking Bruce Sterling’s blog this morning; there’s an entry where he mentions that ‘I’m staying at Cranbrook — in this guy’s house‘. ‘This guy’ is Carl Milles, a sculptor I was unfamiliar with but whose work (in 2D and on a computer screen, unfortunately) I like. So, I’m reading the wikipedia entry on Mr. Milles when another name jumps out at me – one of Milles’ sculptures is ‘Sven Hedin on a Camel’. Hedin traveled though Asia and the Mideast; I was reading The Silk Road, Trade, Travel, War And Faith over coffee this morning. Here’s a bit of an image dump inspired by all this.
One of Milles’ sculptures, with work by an artist I was already familiar with (I’m not completely ignorant!) – Dale Chihuly:
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Europa and the Bull (aurochs!):
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Hedin on a camel (sorta courtesy of the RGS – thus the watermark):
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Hedin w/ camel in front of yurt (I’m going somewhere with this, I promise):
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Interior of a present day yurt – one way I’m thinking about doing up the interior of the Airstream (when I get it):
