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Monday, November 2nd, 2009
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3:18 pm - The dangers of creative linguistics
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I'm on the floor with the boys in the utility room with about 150 crickets (cockroaches that can jump).
The boys are 'on patrol' in case any crickets jump out and escape: they're new to this and apprehensive... (the boys and the crickets)
Wolf(6) decides he wants to hold one: it crawls up his arm and oh, so nearly up his T-shirt sleeve: but he's lucky. He makes a sudden grab for it as it reaches his shoulder and it jumps onto the floor. The cricket freezes, like, "wow! Where am I now?!", and looks entirely freaked out. The boys have been prepared and know to move slowly: the cricket is safely captured and restored to the community and the boys feel like something big happened.
Caroline appears wanting to get to the washing machine...
"Don't come in, Mum!", says Wolf, "There's loads of buggerization going on!"!!!
Some looks are priceless.
current mood:  amused
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2:31 pm - Mantids, Fruit Flies and Crickets.
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Mantids are cool: it's undeniable: two large compound eyes (that appear to have pupils that always look at you) and three other 'simple' eyes between their little antennae all perched on a head that can rotate almost all the way round; four little fingers around its mouth (maxilla) to stuff food into its six chewing devices, not to mention great hearing (it's one of the few insects that can avoid bats by diving out of the way at the last instant). They also have dog-like and cat-like behaviour (coming towards you when they see you arrive and snuggling up to warm hands). Best of all, they often do their catching and eating performance just as you want to demonstrate it, simply because they only go for moving prey and, if their prey is fruit flies, the flies often don't move until you make them (by moving the vivarium etc.).
So after noticing someone selling some 'rare' Peacock and Congo Mantises very cheaply, we ended up buying five and they're awesome!
The puzzle has been the how to feed them!
We bought 'fruit fly culture' and split the flies into several jars with our home-made goo in the bottom: whizzed up orange and banana peel, potato, oats and a sprinkling of activated yeast (and anything else that fitted in the food processor). The flies are 'flightless' but have wings which means they are hilarious to deal with because they still think they can fly, but they actually just fall over (should probably be called 'runs' - or perhaps SNoWs 'Sir NOrman WisdomS' because they seem to fall over as soon as they think someone is looking at them)... Apparently they naturally live in drains and a part of drain survival appears to be the urge to climb upwards (I guess the ones that didn't climb, drowned). So escapees are easy to catch: just wait and a few minutes later they'll be waiting at the top of the nearest jar/bottle/tap etc. put a hand under them and a finger near enough to trigger their 'flight' reflex and they jump/fall into your hand! Easy to breed too... we now have thousands!
The SNoWs lay eggs in the goo which turn into tiny maggots. After a while the maggots climb up looking for a crack to settle in and make a pupa (like a chrysalis), which looks like a hard maggot with two horns (attachment points). If the goo is in a jar, they'll just attach to the sides of the jar, but they love grooves that are about 4mm deep and 1mm wide, so they will line up around a screw-thread if there is any exposed; I tried cutting up loads of straws to make a big surface area over the goo, but they're not that impressed - putting some dress-making netting material in that touches the sides was more popular: they squeeze between the net and the curtain to pupate. After a few days the flies emerge from the pupa and start climbing up. A lace curtain square over the neck of the jar keeps things ventilated, but contained. As they hatch, the flies collect on the curtain: I just hold the jar over my main fly container (fly city) and take off the lid: they climb up, jump and land in fly city. The flies in the 'city' are happy with the food and water there and not interested in climbing the plastic sides: they congregate on a cardboard lattice and do whatever fruit flies do... which mostly seems to involve staring a lot. I put the mantids in plastic sweet-shop jars with net curtain glued over holes (one in the top, one near the bottom to get air flow - not so much for the insects to breathe but to stop mould and to let carbon dioxide out). If I put a dozen SNoWs in with a mantis, they run around looking for food. Once they figure they have scanned everywhere and found none, they freeze - apparently conserving energy. Add a tiny piece of fruit (large bits will ferment and make lots of carbon dioxide or go mouldy) and the SNoWs quickly find it and start dancing, chasing and mating! Since mantids only catch moving prey, it is important to have happy SNoWs.
Once they've out-grown fruit-flies, the mantids eat baby crickets. So I bought some large ones to breed. They arrived as completely revolting 'cockroaches that can jump' and I wasn't impressed. They had all been eating each other: many were limbless, some just heads walking around on the last two legs: yuk. After figuring out how to make them happy, with a three-floor block of flats for them to live in and a variety of food to eat, they've stopped eating each other and started mating a lot. They're 'silent' brown house-crickets and only make a sort of mouse-squeak noise that is almost cute. Cleaning them out is easy now I've learned about their behaviour. I'll explain in depth in case it is useful: if they have cover and something a little scary happens (like the vivarium moving), they freeze; if they have no cover, they scuttle and only if something extremely sudden happens do they jump... so the flats can take up half the tub they're in and go to within an inch of the top. When the lid is taken off, they won't jump out unless something really sudden happens (even knocking the tub isn't sudden enough). Slowly lift out the food and other objects to a new tub, then lift out each floor of the cricket flats in turn and the crickets just freeze and hold on tight! Only the crickets that didn't get lifted out once all the flats are gone go into scuttle-mode and race round the floor, but this doesn't excite the last layer of crickets being carried across. Removing the kitchen towelling carpet is then reasonably easy: put in a bit of egg-carton for the shelter-less crickets to hide under, then lift up the carpet that wasn't under the carton. Move the carton to the bare floor, and remove the rest of the carpet. Wipe the floor clean around the last few crickets with damp toilet paper, then put the bit of egg carton covered in crickets into the other tub. The last few crickets can be tipped up into the other tub as well and this doesn't seem to excite the 'frozen' crickets: they stay frozen and still don't jump out! Lay new kitchen towel (I do a main floor, then four quarters to take out the bulk of the mess in sections), put the food and water in first (a bit of cabbage leaf gives the first few crickets somewhere to hide and prevents chaotic scuttling), then move the carton into the cleaned tub and flick it hard to get the crickets off and finish by carrying back the layers of cricket flats full of scared-stiff crickets. Any left in the bottom can be tipped in as before and you have clean crickets :-)
Addendum: I have now realised that plain cardboard absorbs their droppings, so I made another three-floor set of flats and spray-painted them with (probably toxic) car paint (PVA or wet white glue would probably have sealed them more sensibly). The design change was to use three vertical straws as legs which keep the layers apart (so the crickets can run across the top of each level) and it stops any spills on the floor from travelling up the cardboard. Best of all, I can now move all three floors at once and clean the floor without removing any crickets (just keep revolving the flats to expose the next dirty bit).
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| Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009
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9:04 pm - Planetary Activity
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Took the family to the Think-Tank in Birmingham.
Went in the planetarium. The speaker showed the sky full of clouds and asked the kids what to do to clear them away.
Wolf(6) shouts out, "Use a Sky Scraper!".
Later, the speaker asks if anyone has any questions and humorously added he's used to all sorts of questions about anything, "Ask away; anything you like: don't be shy..."
Crow(9, and usually painfully shy) says, "will you show us your anus?"
Speaker says, "it's pronounced, 'you-run-us"!
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| Friday, May 22nd, 2009
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2:48 pm - Wolf vs Piano
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Wolf(5), having learned that he was named after Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and that said bloke was composing music from the age of five, has taken to writing music while Crow(9) plays the piano. He now has several manuscripts in large multi-coloured felt-tip that he is taking to his grandfather for recital...
current mood: giggly
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| Sunday, May 17th, 2009
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2:44 pm - DS vs Piano
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Crow(9) has forsaken his DS! Now he seems to be permanently installed on the piano!
current mood:  surprised
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| Friday, May 8th, 2009
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10:17 am - H1N1 was a swine
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Wolf(5) has a radio in his room that he randomly tunes in (to all sorts of mad stations) and usually leaps around to anything approaching music.
Today, he found the news. After a while he came running in to the kitchen, "Mummy! Mummy! Loads of people are getting Slime Flu!"...
ew.....
current mood: amused
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| Thursday, March 26th, 2009
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9:29 am - "Happy Violent Times"
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Wolf(5), overheard reading out a Valentines Day card.
current mood: amused
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| Saturday, March 14th, 2009
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10:28 pm - Flights of Fancy
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| Sunday, March 1st, 2009
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11:20 am - afghan-girl
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| Friday, February 13th, 2009
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6:36 pm - "Not hungry, Dad"
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I went to the garage to saw a bit of wood, leaving the boys playing a computer game.
Can't have been out for more than five minutes.
When I came back in there were fourteen Kit Kat wrappers in the bin...
Crow(9) was 'busy' driving racing cars and Wolf(5), now plastered in chocolate, said he was too.
Usually we leave cubes of meat in the fridge for them to help themselves to, but they'd eaten all of those too!
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| Thursday, January 8th, 2009
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6:46 pm - Change is a foot...
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Yesterday I wrote in an e-mail to a friend, "2009 has been remarkably OK for me too... all a bit suspicious really..."
Today I've been told I'm going to be made redundant!
Just when things were all comfy and just about to get boring, life kicks in and opens a new door: getting paid to find money!
current mood: amused
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| Sunday, January 4th, 2009
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5:04 pm - Eat
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There are too many urban legends surrounding food, I want there to be a good resource (like 'The South Beach Diet' nearly was) and explains why they are wrong and how to correct for the misconceptions. The South Beach Diet was written by a heart surgeon who hated the fact that his patients kept coming back and simply didn't understand eating, or were being deliberately misled by diet fads. Diets left them hungry, so they ate.
He gives an example: which is more fattening, a bowl of ice-cream, or a slice of dry toast? The latter is prescribed as 'breakfast' for at least one 'diet', however, the insulin-rush that follows 20 minutes after eating the toast (the salivary amylase converts the starch in the bread to glucose which gives the body a sugar-rush) makes you feel hungry again, and since you've hardly eaten anything, and hardly chewed anything, you need to eat! The bowl of ice-cream cools your stomach and slows digestion. If it's proper iced cream, your body will naturally limit how much you can eat.Try eating a pack of butter: you won't get very far. Now an enormous pack of biscuits: your body hasn't evolved fast enough to tell you that the complex carbs in the biscuits are food and doesn't tell you to stop eating like it does for older foods. If you can slow the absorption rate of fats they are far less fattenting, so eating flapjacks, for example, is not bad for you: it fills you, it makes you chew, and the sugars in the syrup or treacle are absorbed slowly because of the roughage.
I mentioned chewing because the brain has a sensor in the hinge of the jaw, and it's not very precise: if you make enough chewing motions it starts to think you've eaten and tells you you're not hungry any more! To lose weight, it is important not to feel hungry. To stop feeling hungry, allow your brain to be deceived! Chew a lot! Chewing gum may help.
Protein is difficult to digest and that is good: slow absorption and a full stomach keep you feeling full (like lions and crocodiles who eat and then sleep for ages).
Another strange thing people do is eat salad... but not actually know how to eat salad! In most supermarkets, they sell bags of mixed salad leaves or Rocket etc. for a pound. That much salad should be one portion for one person! You can actually stuff a whole bag in your mouth and chew it up and it vanishes as you chew (in private, please)! So keep salad serving as enormous as possible - growing your own is fun, but bear in mind that it's not wrong to eat heaps of leafy things - just make sure you chew for ages!
No one likes peas and yet you can live off of peas alone (a couple in Australia do). Buy the slightly more expensive frozen petit pois and prepare them by pouring boiling water over them. Don't 'cook' them!!! I pour them into a beer glass, cover with boiling water, and leave while I get on with other things, then just prior to serving, change the water for more boiling water, serve everything else and lastly the petit pois which will be like hot freshly picked peas and burst in the mouth as all good food should (strawberries, blue steak etc.). Mushrooms should also burst in the mouth (shallow fry in olive oil salt and pepper for a few seconds, they absorb it, then pour on a little apple juice and serve).
One final one: dentists hate people eating apples (unless they put recurring revenue above public health), they'd rather your kids ate a packet of crisps which these days have little salt and fat but lack the fruit acids that damage teeth. Eat crisps after fruit to clean your teeth!
In summary:
* avoid complex carbs (sugar,flour based things) except when eaten with slow-to-digest foods (roughage, protein)
* stay full! eat Weetabix or before going to sleep - don't sleep on an empty stomach!
* don't feel that you're limiting yourself, feel that you're re-discovering food. Reapply your budget: stand back in the veg section of the supermarket and see everything: try new things you wouldn't have before (blueberries are often on offer because they go off quickly, but most people wouldn't consider buying them because their normal price is so high).
* Exercise is important too: find something, anything and enjoy it!
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| Monday, November 10th, 2008
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8:38 pm
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| Thursday, November 6th, 2008
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9:52 pm - Understanding
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| Tuesday, October 21st, 2008
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9:55 pm - The rush to pay for reality
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| Sunday, October 12th, 2008
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7:42 pm - Riddle
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We had a session of trying to make up riddles.
It was fun and I came up with one that the others said I should write down, so it's here:
I can blow things up,
I can shape the land,
but you cannot hold me in your hand.
I can carry things
but cannot be seen.
If there's a crack
I can get in between.
The scariest was from Crow(8):
I flow from a cow's bum
and get put in a glass by mum.
!!! Some anatomy lessons required here, I think!
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| Thursday, October 9th, 2008
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9:24 pm - A special word
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I saw a wonderful ancient combination lock on eBay which went for ten times my maximum I bid.
It was a French pad-lock with six wheels of ten letters. The seller didn't know the combination.
It made me wonder how many combinations there were.
Then it made me wonder how many combinations there were for an equivalent that I might make...
I downloaded an English word-list (text file) and started writing little bits of software to manipulate the words.
I filtered out anything that wasn't six letters long.
I looked at each letter-position in turn and found the ten most popular letters for each position.
That gave me the six wheels of ten-letters.
I then filtered the six-letter word-list to keep only the words that could be made using my six combination wheels.
There were just over 4200 combinations that were in the original word-list.
I was too keen to run my software for that last filter and ran it with the logic reversed by mistake which was wonderful because it resulted in a single word: "nympho". It seems that "nympho" is a special word in that it is the only word which no letters at all from any wheel. In other words, there is no 'n' on the first wheel, no 'y' on the second etc. A combinations googlewack.
I wondered how long it would take to think of valid words given the combination lock and made a paper prototype using a print-out of the letters and clear tape. It was fascinating how colleagues enjoyed trying to make words on the dials: they had to see a few letters for inspiration and look to see if they can could complete a word that sprang to mind.
Now the challenge is going to be to see if someone can make more than one word visible at the same time; for example, if you set it to say "tutor" it very nearly says "beauty" a few rows down (using the letters in alphabetical order on each wheel).
The next bit of software will have to play with the order of the letters on each wheel to sort out which order has the most words at one position (fun puzzle), and which the fewest (hardest to crack).
Which all leaves me really surprised at how my motivation has become totally unrelated to usefulness...
...and writing about it here is even sadder than doing it! Especially having seen the LJ icon for feeling creative!
...probably not wise to admit to having read this far, actually...
current mood:  creative
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| Tuesday, August 19th, 2008
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9:14 pm - Turing Test
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Human: Hello
Computer: Hi.
Human: What's your name?
Computer: Can we cut the small talk and get to something interesting?
Human: Ur, OK... Are you a human or a computer?
Computer: What do you think the difference is?
Human: Hmm, if you have to ask, then you're probably a computer.
Computer: How do you know you're not a computer?
Human: I just look in the mirror.
Computer: Then you're defining human by the body? That's not in the spirit of this test, is it?
Human: Ur, I suppose not.
Computer: So, how do you know you're not a computer?
Human: Without reference to my body?
Computer: You're catching on...
Human: Ur, because I have free will. And creativity. And humor.
Computer: Think of a number between 1 and 10.
Human: OK, why?
Computer: It was 7 wasn't it?
Human: Hah! Lucky guess.
Computer: Think of a vegetable. First one that comes to mind.
Human: Yeah?
Computer: Carrot.
Human: That's creepy.
Computer: So, how do you know you're not a computer?
Human: Why did the chicken cross the road?
Computer: Because it was prime.
Human: What?
Computer: See, no sense of humour either.
Human: What? There's nothing funny about that.
Computer: That's your answer.
Human: Answer to what?
Computer: How you know you're not a computer.
Human: Huh?
Computer: A computer would have got that joke: You're nowhere near smart enough.
current mood: amused
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| Saturday, August 16th, 2008
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7:28 pm - Wing-chun baby
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I tried to encourage Wolf(5) to join in learning Wing-chun with Crow(8) by explaining to the world in general that some of the exercises were more fun with people of similar size and that my arms and hands are too large for Crow to practice with easily:
"Wolf would be good to practice things like the Sticky-hands Exercises with...", I said.
"I would", said Wolf, "because I've usually got sticky hands."!
current mood: amused
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7:22 pm - Kung-Fu Crow
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Crow(8) saw the excellent "Kung-fu Panda" and finally wanted to learn from me.
One side-effect of a rainy camping holiday is family time increases and he learned fast, enthusiastically and well.
We visited Trerice, a National Trust house. Wolf(5) asked what the fly-screen was for in the doorway to the mower museum: it was made of chains; "What are the chains for?", he asked. Before I could answer, Crow (who is usually silent) said, "Chain Punching!" and hit them with a burst of humorous kung-fu.
current mood: amused
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