new pet [25 Jul 2008|04:07am] We now have a pet frog. It was found in the parking lot of Southdale mall after watching the new Batman movie. (Oh, you should see the movie.) It is either the Gray Tree frog (Hyla versicolor) or the Cope's Grey Tree Frog (Hyla chrysoscelis). They are difficult to tell apart. One frog species is a tetraploid while the other is diploid. The tetraploid species apparently evolved from the diploid species in recent geologic times. The hybrid offspring would be triploid and sterile, which happens to present a strong selective force for avoiding hybridization by all involved. The two species tell each other apart by slightly different songs. Tell me something.

[25 Jul 2008|12:30am] [ mood | studenty ] I turned in my two-weeks notice at work, last day is August 8. I start school on August 11, so I get a full weekend in between. I might want to do something that Saturday, but we'll see when the time arrives. 3 things said | Tell me something.

DIY photo gear [17 Jul 2008|03:10am] http://www.ganymeta.org/~darren/photo_lens_wrench.php The short writeup for how to make my lens wrench. Tell me something.

[17 Jul 2008|12:36am] I'm going on a weeklong road trip out to Devil's Tower and back. I'm bringing along my homemade supertelephoto lens. I say supertelephoto because it is both superlong in focal length and supercrappy in looks. Tell me something.

[17 Jul 2008|12:34am] yay, a pair of pants is patched and ready for use again. also I've been playing with reaction diffusion systems and posting the results to my flickr page, http://www.flickr.com/photos/darrenabbey/. Tell me something.

diy [08 Jul 2008|12:13am] Almost done reapolstering my desk chair. Actually I'm using the same apolstry as it had before. I replaced the creaking/bending plywood base with a same shaped piece of hardwood and am almost done putting it back to usable status. Tell me something.

[04 Jul 2008|08:21pm] I just finished making an adjustable lens wrench. now to go watch fireworks. Tell me something.

grubs [04 Jul 2008|06:13pm] You want some interesting little bit of parasitology? http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/ig126 Tell me something.

[01 Jul 2008|12:30am] A few months ago a good friend of mine gave my name to a fellow he knew who was looking for an origami Iron Man model to be published in his webzine. I thought it was a fun sounding idea, but I've stalled out on the project and feel somewhat bad about it. I also feel kinda bad about not hanging out with said friend in most of a year. Sorry Russ, I'm working on it. -- Yesterday I fixed a shirt of mine where a seam had broken open. I felt so proud of myself for the minor sewing job that I decided I'd next fix a pair of pants or few. I got myself some appropriately blue thread and am now looking forward to the project. (yes, yet another project.) -- Lately I've been watching some TV programs over at hulu.com. Programs are shown with the occasional commercial break, but less offtime than you get while watching on the TV. I've been catching up with House and have almost finished watching the second season of Heros. Tell me something.

[23 Jun 2008|03:02am] I have an old digital camera, a Kodak DC40. I would like to use this camera with my linux system and more generally with whatever system I use in the future while I have the camera. I've been playing around with snooping on the serial interface between the camera and my windows computer, trying to work out the communication protocol. I've also been working out the raw file format for the camera. It is based on the tiff file format with some differences. The thumbnail is a simple bitmap, as defined in the tiff formatting data. The full image looks to be a JPEG or similar compression scheme, while the tiff formatting data indicates no compression is used. this would count as one more of too many projects I'm working on transiently. Tell me something.

[19 Jun 2008|04:25am] Tonight I saved a snapping turtle from a messy road death. About 1am I drove by said turtle sitting just on the other side of the line of a two way access road to the highway. I pulled to the nearest safe stop. As I was stopping and getting out of my car, I saw a motorcycle dude note the turtle and turn around to check on it. I stood by the turtle, watching traffic go by. The guy said, "I hope he gets moving on soon." I said, "Oh, I'm going to pick him up and move him once the traffic is clear." I tried to grab the turtle's tail and he made a show of being big and vicious. I commented that I wished I had some thick leather gloves. The motorcycle guy asked, "Can you pick it up by the shell?" I mentioned how flexible a snapping turtle's neck is and that I was going to lift by the tail. I then checked the traffic situation again and leaned down deftly grabbing the turtle by the tail. I succeeded in carrying the beast across the road in the direction she was travelling and gently set her down on the edge of a slope. As she scrabbled down into the dark she was still holding her tail tight... I said, "Crap, I should have taken some pictures before I did that." Bike guy asked if there was a pond down there. I answered obliquely by saying "he's older than either of us, so he probably knows where he's going." 1 thing said | Tell me something.

[06 Jun 2008|03:37am] I want this car and so does my girlfriend. 1 thing said | Tell me something.

[31 May 2008|03:00pm] I finally found a good explanation of how to code a reaction-diffusion system. I've got it written up in my language of choice and am now playing with the simulations. yay. I captured a melanistic Parson's spider at work the other day. The regular one's look like this. The one I caught is pure black. I got some decent photos with my newly reconstructed macro photo rig and then I let the spider go out in the garden. Tell me something.

[28 May 2008|04:01am] It is really strange to find hits to my website which track back to wikipedia. Not a page about me, but still... 1 thing said | Tell me something.

[26 May 2008|12:25am] I just came across a program called Autostitch for making panoramas from your snapshots. It is entirely automated, using some nifty machine vision algorithms, and produces results much better than the other panorama compositing software I've used. Tell me something.

[21 May 2008|05:19am] yay! I just finished putting my auto macro bellows back together. The new cable was chosen and installed in a way to avoid the stresses which led to the failure of the original cable. The cable is still the weak point, but it is attached to the bellows by the SATA ports I ordered so when it does fail I can simply remove it and make another. Tell me something.

[21 May 2008|03:28am] [ mood | irritated ] ( Minor rant about proposed change in US copyright law. ) 4 things said | Tell me something.

[18 May 2008|04:21pm] Last night I made a batch of hot salsa. turns out it's not going to be as hot as I thought. A couple of days ago I helped rescue a young squirril from a stairwell airconditioner at my apartment. I got some parts I've been needing for my camera projects. I took a while to find a vendor willing to sell me only 4 SATA receptacles. Most wanted to sell me 400+. I need to get some glue. A very hard set, resilient, and non-conductive epoxy. Tell me something.

[28 Apr 2008|06:32pm] We've got a nice pet crab named Rufus. Rufus will eat anything. We had to move him to his own tank so he wouldn't eat the livestock we actually paid for. We now have some cool photos of Rufus, so something may get posted soon. -- We had a large Aiptasia in our main tank. It was starting to sting some of the soft corals, so it was time to go. So we took him to surgery... or rather butchery. Putting the little slimey bits which remained under the dark-field microscope revealed some really nice ciliated tissue writhing around and a bunch of nematocysts (some unfired). Now all that remains of the poor Aiptasia is a lump of healing tissue which will need killed later. Did I mention they are hard to kill? Tell me something.

[28 Apr 2008|06:20pm] So I get my car into the shop a little over a week ago. ( some car story ) Tell me something.

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