squirrelitude | Reading

lizardjay posting in

At the end of last month I visited Indiana for a week, and in that time went on FOUR hikes. There are too many pictures to put here so I'm posting a link to my ~150 picture album: My sister and I are both very into taking pictures so the hikes were very slow :D but I think it really helps in remembering that there's something interesting to see in pretty much every square inch of the outdoors. There is always a bug, or a fungal disease on a leaf, or a shiny drop of water.

The Album

We visited, in order:

Ritchie Woods Nature Preserve
Summit Lake State Park
Shades State Park/Pine Hills Nature Preserve
Southwestway Park

The pictures feature:

many, many insects
a stately gentleman frog, who very kindly let me get within an inch of him
snails
two snakes
cool looking plants/fungi
general landscapes

For the most part the locations are broken up by a couple non-nature photos, except for Southwestway Park (which begins at the photo of the yellow spider in the web). Once you get to the art museum pictures there's no more nature, unless you count the clouds outside the plane window.

( a couple representative photos )

cmcmck posting in

common_nature

We spent a few days in Conwy in north Wales recently and had wonderful weather for it.

A view across Afon Conwy (the River Conwy) with Conwy castle as a bonus.

( See more: )

Current Mood: photographical
Current Location: ici

full_metal_ox posting in

common_nature

Content advisory: the following images portray animal decomposition and a messy (though not scatological) plumbing mishap, respectively.

This is the very first photo I took in the process of exploring my new surroundings in Florida. I was recovering from a lengthy illness and a lengthy road trip, and coming to terms with a discombobulating succession of life upheavals; accordingly, I began with a local animal in no condition to evade me.

This roughly crow-sized bird (species and cause of death unknown) lay in an oddly heraldic position suggesting a necromancer’s coat of arms, on the disheveled curb strip of a business that was both recovering from Hurricane Ian and changing hands—likewise in a state of transition. The red spot at heart level is a dried wild fruit of some sort.

Taken on 4 June 2023 at 19:48 U.S. Eastern Daylight Savings Time:

( Fined_be_ye_who_move_my_bones. )

Some while later, I suffered a clog of mysterious blue-gray residue in my bathroom sink (don’t worry; it’s long since been dealt with, although not conclusively explained)—and was fascinated by the delicate poinsettia-like radial pattern created when the water finally receded.

Taken on 20 July 2023 at 14:16 U.S. Eastern Daylight Savings Time:

( Mystery_plumbing_sludge. )

mindstalk

No one badly injured, probably.( Read more... )

pauamma posting in

dw_dev

It's time for another question thread!

The rules:

- You may ask any dev-related question you have in a comment. (It doesn't even need to be about Dreamwidth, although if it involves a language/library/framework/database Dreamwidth doesn't use, you will probably get answers pointing that out and suggesting a better place to ask.)
- You may also answer any question, using the guidelines given in To Answer, Or Not To Answer and in this comment thread.

minoanmiss

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Current Mood: pleased

minoanmiss

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Current Mood: cynical

mtbc

We have been somewhat lucky with the weather recently. We had a lovely day for when my two children visited for some walking and shopping in Glasgow city centre. We similarly had a lovely day for visiting Edinburgh, we finally got to explore the botanic garden. Our luck runs out this weekend: we had planned to go camping again. Last time went well but the weather forecast for tomorrow looks grim so we will get things done here at home instead.

pilottttt posting in

common_nature

This ~~big and scary~~^{small and not scary at all} spider was discovered on our ceiling. It was my macro lens that made it big and scary ;)

( See the big and scary spider )

minoanmiss

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Current Mood: contemplative

minoanmiss

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Current Mood: angry

puddleshark posting in

common_nature

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pilottttt posting in

common_nature

It was their first day out of the nest, which they spent on a branch just opposite our window.

( Read more... )

For more information (in Russian), see here.

mindstalk

Nothing deep here, just griping about today.

Avi and I set out to the Drexel Museum of Natural History. I took Indego ebike, to not worry about leaving my bike out locked, and to keep up with him. That was mostly okay, though my bike started making rattlings sounds on the way, and 20th has so many potholes, and manholes that are deep enough to potholes. I am once again baffled by how the US goes all-in on car dependency, yet can't keep the streets smooth.( Read more... )

To leaven the negativity: the museum was decent. Nice hall of dinosaur fossils (or their casts), and a lot of good dioramas. OTOH even making a second pass, I'd basically squeezed it dry in 2-2.5 hours, and our first pass took just 1.5 hours. Is that good value for $22 full-price ticket? I doubt. Fortunately we weren't paying full price.

Logan Square was kind of nice, with its flowering bushes and water fountain, and I finally checked out the main library of Philadelphia. Was nice to be in a big library again, and I accidentally found a shelf full of bicycling books, several of which I checked out.

But Philadelphia hasn't gone in on the sort of checkout technology where you can 'turn off' a book after checking it out, so that it doesn't set off the detector. At my branch library (which has no self-checkout), the librarian gives my books to me after I've gone through the detector. At the main library, you need to have brought your printed receipt with you; I ran into a bit of trouble because I'd actually turned in some other books I checked out, to make room in my backpack for the bike books, and didn't keep the first receipt for the remaining book from the first set. Fortunately the guard decided I probably wasn't doing an elaborate scam to steal one book.

asakiyume

It's a cold, surreal post-apocalyptic world, plagued by meteor showers, crumbling apartments patrolled by tigers, one where former tar-spreading technicians repurpose themselves as morning soup sellers. Bobby is wakened by a knocking at his door. He doesn't open it, but he's told, through the closed door, that Belle-Medusa, an immensely huge jellyfish, needs his help. Belle-Medusa has a library of scents in her memory, but they're mainly ocean scents. She wants Bobby to collect and convey land scents to her:

In truth, she only had one passion anymore: she collected smells. Aromas, perfumes, whiffs, and scents of all types. She numbered them and she put them in tiny special cases in her memory, in a classification system that nobody, apart from herself, was able to understand.

For this purpose, Belle-Medusa has already "plugged into" Bobby. There are various ways he can convey the scents to her, but the way he settles on is to plunge his face into water and speak them.

I had my cheek pressed against the windowpane. Just under my nose, fed by the steam that escaped from my mouth, the frost drew branching ice wisps, which imprisoned the dust. If I had had to specify the smell that lingered on the surface of the glass, I would have spoken of a dusty ice floe, of frozen goose down, of dark sherbet. Wait, I thought, maybe I could send that to Belle-Medusa, in order to check that the communication between us is well established.

I left my observation post. I groped my way to the bathroom and I filled the sink with what flowed from the faucet, water that carried with it cubes and needles of ice. Before immersing my face, I had to stir it with my hand so as not to use the end of my nose to break the film threatening to form ... I sank my head into it to my ears.

"It's me, Belle-Medusa," I said.

( Heh, this got long. Let's put in a cut. )

It's a strange and wonderful story, and I recommend it. I read it in an anthology called XO Orpheus: Fifty New Myths, edited by Kate Bernheimer and published in 2013. The anthology was lent to me by a friend who had picked out that story especially for me to read because (I'm flattered to say), they said it reminded me of the story of mine they'd read--and also, I suspect, because the story's important to them: it's entered their vocabulary. They talk about their scent library. The other stories in the collection look promising too; while I'm borrowing the book, I think I'll read some more.

It also exists as a 64-page standalone publication, but only in its original French, as Belle-Méduse. For the anthology, the translation was done by Sarah and Brian Evenson.

*Manuela Draeger is a fictitious author, a librarian whose stories are intended as distraction for children in containment camps. The author of her world is Antoine Volodine ... which is in turn a pen name of the writer Jean Desvignes.

Current Location: Manu Chau: Mr. Bobby (Playing for Change version)

minoanmiss

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Current Mood: calm

mindstalk

I want to talk about one-lane city streets: streets with only one travel lane (and are thus also one-way, at least for cars.)

Advantages:

They're great for pedestrians, with only 3 meters to cross to get out of the active car zone. (A pedestrian refuge between each lane would give similar benefit; in reality you'd likely only get that in a one-lane-each-way street.)

( Read more... )

mindstalk

I previously talked about different bidirectional two-lane streets in Berkeley/Albany. Gilman, which was narrow, and annoying and crossable; Marin, which was wide (parking, bike, wide travel, plus turn lanes), and a high-speed stream of death. Tonight I'll talk about Christian, also two-lanes, and even narrower than Gilman since there is parking on only one side[1]. It is objectively much more crossable than Marin, but has felt more annoying than Gilman, such that on my casual walks with no destination, I will often avoid crossing it. Why should this be the case? I don't know, but some ideas. ( Read more... )

minoanmiss

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ysabetwordsmith posting in

common_nature

Today we visited the butterfly gardens at Lake Charleston.

( Walk with me ... )

Current Mood: accomplished

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Page generated Jun. 15th, 2025 01:08 am

Scamperings

Reading

say hello to Indiana

Conwy

A future fossil, and a moment of strange beauty in embotherance.

witnessed a bike crash

Question thread #142

I should do this more often

Help me talk to my parents

Variable weather

And now about the spiders

A couple of thoughts about work

LA Protests and WH military response

Following a path through the bracken in the rain

Chicks of the laughing dove

bikeshare rant, and library stuff

Wednesday reading: Belle-Medusa, by Manuela Draeger*

Kitties

The power of one-lane streets

two-lane street: Christian

three things make a post

Photos: Lake Charleston Butterfly Gardens

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August 2024

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