Fear of Clowns

Today was my mom's 80th birthday. My mom and dad are both 80 and super healthy. And still a good-looking couple!

Labels: photos

// posted by Erik @ 8/15/2008 09:31:00 PM
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Today I received five Brazilian yellowheads, a beautiful D. tinctorius morph. Pictures don't completely convey the brilliance of their metallic coloring.

Labels: pets, photos, poison dart frogs

// posted by Erik @ 8/14/2008 08:20:00 PM
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Three of my four new banded D. leucomelas froglets. They are about two months out of the water (meaning two months since they morphed from tadpoles to froglets). They're really tiny.

Sexed pair of adult/sub adult D. azureus. The males are smaller and have broader toe pads.

Sterilizing wood for the vivariums. I had it in a 225° F oven for 3 1/2 or four hours.

Sterilizing live oak leaves for the vivariums. boiled in R/O water for about a half hour.

Here are the plants I've collected so far for my four frog vivariums. As you have to throw out plants that have been exposed to frogs with parasites, I'm waiting until I test the frogs fecals before planting them in with the frogs.

The azureus have not yet figured out they can jump into the petri dish and chow down ... both repeatedly try to nab crickets through the plastic.

The last few seconds of a cricket's life.

Labels: pet food, pets, photos, poison dart frogs

// posted by Erik @ 7/20/2008 08:52:00 PM
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A few photos I took from the balcony at work using my new and awesome and wallet sized camera.

Labels: photos

// posted by Erik @ 7/17/2008 09:49:00 PM
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One out of the five D. leucomelas I received today didn't survive shipping.

Labels: pets, photos, poison dart frogs

// posted by Erik @ 7/17/2008 09:41:00 PM
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Bought a PowerShot DS1100 IS.

The water fountain at work,

A drain in the bathroom at work,

Diet Dr. Pepper at work,

Bird splat in the skyway,

Dinner at Tao Foods,

My D. auratus, scared into a corner,

My D. imitator,

Labels: pets, photos, poison dart frogs

// posted by Erik @ 7/14/2008 07:41:00 PM
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Flightless fruit flies are the staple food for most captive dart frogs; I've so far been more successfull with other feeder insects. My cricket ranch is producing hundreds of pinhead crickets.

This is the bedding I removed from the main colony - it's now in a 6 quart Seralite container with some dry catfood, powdered milk and damp sphagnum moss. What else could a baby cricket need?

By the way, I'm watching Dave Letterman interview a very drunk Jack Black at the moment.

I'm not exactly sure what these are - I've read them referred to as bean beetles and bean weevils. They're amazingly easy to culture - all they need is dry black-eyed-peas. No water, no anything else. There were 8 or a dozen individuals in my starter culture - all dead for weeks now. Three days ago, a single beetle emerged, yesterday two dozen, today swarms. I split the "used" beans into two new cultures and added fresh beans to the original culture.

They must emerge from the beans sexually mature as all they do is crawl around and mate with each other.

Here I have a mixture of vermiculite, small pebbles and LECA. On top I've layered damp corrugated cardboard. This is a culture of isopods - similar to pill bugs, rolly-pollies and woodlice - the things that roll up or scatter when you lift up something that hasn't been lifted up in a while. They are all isopods.

This page and video was really helpful to me. Not sure what to try for food, I'm giving them a smorgasbord: watermelon rind, banana peel, yeast, oatmeal and a tortilla.

Covered with a final layer of cardboard as these are the things you see when lifting up something that hasn't been lifted up in a while.

Springtails - another animal you'll only see when looking under things. I'm using charcoal as a medium as their buoyancy allows one to harvest them by flooding the container and scooping a mass of them off the top of the water.

Food for the springtails: yeast and oatmeal.

For my tadpoles, bloodworms. Purchased frozen from a pet store.

I moved my tads to larger containers.

I killed two of my three turquoise and bronze and auratus tadpoles by using straight reverse osmosis water. By osmosis, the mineral free water sucks minerals and salts out of the tadpole. Here is the single turquoise and bronze that made it - you can see its eyes here.

Finally, some food for the human.

Labels: diy, pet food, pets, photos, poison dart frogs

// posted by Erik @ 7/01/2008 08:58:00 PM
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The eggs hatched today. As D. auratus tadpoles are cannibalistic, it's best to keep them in separate containers.

Labels: pets, photos, poison dart frogs

// posted by Erik @ 6/07/2008 08:16:00 PM
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Today, I picked up my first frogs from Brian, a breeder in Wisconsin. They are green and black poison dart frogs, actually better known by their scientific name, Dendrobates auratus. Within the frogger hobby, this morph - or variation within a species - is called "turquoise and tan".

At this stage they can't be sexed. I got 5 total, which gives me a 94% chance of having at least one breeding pair. This morph is somewhat variable - note the frog on the right is bluer than the others.

Brian also threw in three auratus eggs.

Labels: pets, photos, poison dart frogs

// posted by Erik @ 5/31/2008 07:06:00 PM
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My purple American pitcher plant is doing rather well. Unlike other American pitcher plants, S. purpurea collects rainwater in which to drown its prey. I have read that its digestion is aided by mosquito larvae and bacteria living in its pitchers. However, with no larvae and only the bacteria that came with it turned a large cricket into a translucent film on the top of the water in a short week. I first filled the single pitcher with water at the same time I fed it a cricket - a few days before the second following photo was taken.

Here it is at week 0, just planted from bare-root,

Week 4, digesting its first cricket - it was not until it was fed that the faintly darker green veining became strikingly purple and pronounced,

Today, a bit shy of week 8,

Labels: carnivorous plants, gardening, photos

// posted by Erik @ 5/15/2008 07:57:00 PM
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Pictures from the 2008 Chaitén eruption. Before:

After:

Volcanic ash replenishes soil nutrients.

Labels: botany, climate change, photos, science

// posted by Erik @ 5/09/2008 01:36:00 AM
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One's first thought about the plants in this picture isn't "They eat meat."

Labels: botany, carnivorous plants, gardening, photos

// posted by Erik @ 4/29/2008 10:37:00 PM
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• 3 habenero chili peppers
• 6 cloves garlic
• 3 Roma tomatoes
• salt

I first diced then slightly browned the habaneros and garlic in chili oil, adding salt and the diced tomatoes later.

This mixture was blended and pureed with about 8 oz. of each of three bases,

• mango
• avacodo and honeydew
• carrot and lime juice

Served with chips and black beans,

Labels: chili peppers, photos, recipes

// posted by Erik @ 4/29/2008 06:30:00 PM
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Two of my pings are in bloom and hopefully will give viable seeds. Based on its distinctive flower, I believe this first one is P. vulgaris,

It has a very long quick growing stem,

I didn't see roots on this, my first ping so pulled off half the leaves in an attempt to root them aqnd planted the rest what seemed right-side-up to me. It's regenerating,

Here you can see some fruit flies I crushed until barely alive and let this P. moranensis (I think) finish them off.

Labels: carnivorous plants, gardening, photos

// posted by Erik @ 4/28/2008 11:22:00 PM
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I could no longer stand Snoopy's growling, barking fits, pooping on the carpet and biting, so we gave him back to the agency to deal with. We picked up Comet, who doesn't know what to make of our other cat, Willie, but is adjusting quite quickly.

Labels: cats, foster pets, photos

// posted by Erik @ 4/26/2008 11:45:00 PM
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For their first encore, the curtains opened to robots playing "We Are the Robots".

The band came out in "Tron" suits for the second encore.

Labels: art, music, photos, YouTube

// posted by Erik @ 4/20/2008 07:01:00 PM
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The following pictures of Abu Dhabi are from an email forwarded to me by Rami in Syria.

Now a metropolis of nearly half a million people, the first paved road on the island was laid in 1961.

Also from Rami,

Labels: gardening, photos

// posted by Erik @ 4/17/2008 11:44:00 PM
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Our animals love one another.

Kisses.

He can be biological.

We are hopeful the dog will work out for the couple interested in trying him out. He's a menace though - every time I'm away from him for an hour or so he seems to forget who I am - or remember I'm the guy he should snarl at before running under the bed. If I'm quick enough to catch him, he immediately becomes loverboy, licking all of my exposed skin. He also hasn't figured out he can let us know when he needs to go outside although he does seem to "hold it". He'll get up from the couch and poop behind the chair. Maybe he's just kind of dumb. I wish him good luck. Next stop: glue factory.

Labels: cats, dogs, foster pets, photos

// posted by Erik @ 4/12/2008 10:34:00 PM
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My order of carnivorous plants came yesterday. The only one recognizable as such is the Venus fly trap,

The rest are in the genus Sarracenia (American pitcher plants). Most carnivorous plants live in low-nutrient acidic wetlands - thus their adaptation of acquiring nutrients from insects and other small animals digested in modified leaves. The bog-like environment is simulated by creating a peat moss and sand mixture which is kept wet by standing a pot in water, reversing the intended function of the pot's drainage holes.

The pitcher plants came as rhizomes with a small strawberry-like crown.

Labels: carnivorous plants, gardening, photos

// posted by Erik @ 3/21/2008 08:38:00 PM
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Luna was adopted yesterday into a home where the woman has retired and claims to look forward to Luna following her everywhere. More than any other cat I've known, she always has to be where the action is. Sometimes she watches from a distance but is completely unabashed about the fact she's following you around.

She was a top-notch cat with flamboyant habits and although I'm sad to see her go (and she was difficult to get in the carrier) I'm sure she'll quickly fall in love with her new keepers, even though their house is jam loaded witrh knick-knacks of figurines and dried flowers and such.

Labels: cats, photos

// posted by Erik @ 3/15/2008 12:27:00 AM
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• Repotted sinicuichi and lagochilus seedlings
• Started kratom seeds on top of soil (I've twice failed to establish them on rockwool)
• Transferred 7 varieties of chili pepper sprouts, pesto basil, oregano and rosemary into a flood and drain system (lower right corner of photo)
• Started 6 salvia species on rockwool cubes - they get gelatinous like basil seeds. I'm intending to come up with an interesting hybrid.
• Fed the three flats of chili seedlings I'm growing 100% organic for sale on eBay.
• Transferred a few more chili sprouts and black tomato sprouts into rockwool
• Foliar feed everything with stinky Fish-Mix solution.

Labels: chili peppers, germination, hydroponics, peppers, photos

// posted by Erik @ 3/14/2008 01:55:00 AM
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She's been with us about a month. I call her Lulu as Luna is a stupid cat name. She's a real ham. One of her favorite tricks is crossing her arms in repose.

Labels: cats, photos

// posted by Erik @ 3/11/2008 07:31:00 PM
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This Winter's first produce: a baby cuke, 12/05/2007.

Labels: photos

// posted by Erik @ 12/06/2007 09:20:00 AM
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From the MnDOT website. Bridge inspection reports are available there, search for 9340, the bridge's official name. A lot of the language is technical jargon I don't understand, but at a few things are clear.

• Inspections assumed replacement as a reasonable option.
• MnDOT's statement that the recommendation to reinforce support with plates was rejected out of concerns "that drilling holes to attach the steel plates would weaken the bridge" is a load of crap: cracks in support beams are remidied by boring holes around the crack.
• Gov. Pawlenty's call for immediate inspections of similarly bridges was nothing but a PR move. The I-35 bridge and all Minnesota bridges are inspected annually as evidenced by the plain fact MnDot has all the inspections publicly available through its website. These pictures are from the 2006 inspection report.

Labels: I-35 bridge, Minneapolis bridge, photos

// posted by Erik @ 8/04/2007 10:33:00 PM
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