Hey folks, there's someone nifty who I'd like you to meet. Her name's Sky. We met on Second Life ages ago, and became good friends. She's had a livejournal for a while (which she got in order to comment on posts of mine) but has never really used it for much else; some of you may have read her occasional comments to posts of mine. Recently she ( Read more... )

I'm not enjoying this week. I'm in the middle of a multi-day migraine so bad that even my eyelashes hurt. (No, I'm not kidding.) And to top it all off, yesterday my car broke. I think I definitely want to trade this week in and get one that works. Since my brane is so full of porridge at present that I can't work usefully, I've been consoling ( Read more... )

What's the best thing ever for a cat who (a) loves crawling into any bag left unattended for more than 30 seconds, and (b) delights in being carried around the house with me when I'm doing random stuff?

A Kitty Bag!

( Read more... )

As you may recall from previous posts, I recently obtained some Triops australiensis (Australian tadpole shrimp) eggs via mail order and have been attempting to hatch them. Well, my attempts have met with success, and now that they're big enough to photograph with my rather dodgy digicam here are some Triops Action Pics! ( clickie for 4 piccies! )

I spent some of this afternoon (between data collection runs) playing with my microscope, and found some intriguing wee beasties lurking in a fragment of algae from my aquarium. So I edited up some video footage of them, and offer for your viewing pleasure (?) Stuff from my aquarium: Blobules I have known.


David Attenborough I ain't. The video ( Read more... )

I have a microscope! This is a quickish post so you'll just have to imagine all the bouncy squeeing, but I got it on eBay, wound up paying much less than I expected to and so had some money left to buy a decent ccd camera to use with it! It's an old Olympus E model binocular 'scope with Koehler illumination and a bunch of other bells and whistles. ( Read more... )

My data collection is being... difficult. The fact that the uni laptop that I'm using for some of the on-road tasks has a habit of running out of battery power mid-task even when it should have plenty of juice is deeply aggravating. (Auto power adapter is now on order for it.) But what's really pissing me off right now is the software that I'm ( Read more... )

I've just got home from a dental appointment with the Marquis de Sade. You'd think that even if he didn't hear the muffled "ow!" noises from the dental chair, he might have noticed the shivering and hyperventilating, right?

I think I will just sit here and shake for a while. That was not pleasant.

There have been some pretty peculiar music videos done, and the 80s is responsible for many of the most grandiose, pompous over-the-top efforts. Right at the top of the list has to come the clip for Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart", a mishmash of bizarre imagery, wind machines and draped gauze. But what if, instead of the lyrics and ( Read more... )

If ever you were naive enough to think that the phrases "battle of the sexes" or* "war on women" were just hyperbole and rhetoric, consider the recent murder of Dr George Tiller for the heinous crime of providing perfectly legal late-term abortions to women in dire medical straits who in their desperation could turn to few others for help ( Read more... )