So, therefore I'm abusing the power gifted upon me by
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92.1){kind=small}
altariel the Great and decide that we'll follow her excellent advice and do the mid-year pico in two teams: Team June and Team July. (And, as someone has suggested, I insert a proper Bwahaha! here. *g*)In any case, please sign up to the team of your choice. As promised, I'll do the daily posts for Team June and most of July, and my sincerest thanks for the volunteers who offered to take over between July 8-14.
Expect the kick-off post for Team June next Wednesday.
Poll #1842740 Poll results and sing-up
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 0
Which month's pico team do you want to sign up?
0 (0.0%)- Mood:accomplished
http://bookviewcafe.com/blog/2012/05/26/a-s
http://bookviewcafe.com/blog/?p=24315
An old proverb says:
A swarm in May is worth a load of hay,
A swarm in June is worth a silver spoon,
But a swarm in July isn’t worth a fly.
Of course that’s from the perspective of the person who finds the swarm. The later in the year you find a swarm, the less pollen there is around, and the less time there is for bees to make honey. But from the perspective of the person whose queen abdicates and takes a couple of thousand followers with her … it’s a pain whenever it happens.
So beeks (beekeepers) keep a lookout – especially when their hives are full and it’s a sunny day. Sunny days being a rarity for the past six weeks, it hasn’t been a problem. Then this week the sun came out and the temperatures began to climb. Shelagh earmarked a hive inspection for the morning of the second sunny day. After six weeks of rain and roofing we’d let the garden slide somewhat – and the priority was weeding, planting, and lawn mowing.
Half an hour before the intended hive inspection, I went to fetch a seed tray full of tomato seedlings from the greenhouse and … heard that telltale buzzing sound. When a hive starts to swarm, you know it. The buzzing can be heard from a hundred yards away as ten thousand bees take to the air and form a cloud above the hive. This cloud lasts for several minutes and rises to thirty feet above the hive. A thirty foot tower of bees flying in a loose cloud over the hive. They’re looking for a place to gather. In our case they like the huge pear tree about twenty feet from the hive. The queen picks a spot in the branches and gradually the swarm join her. It’s not like in the cartoons where the swarm fly as tight group. They take their time – minutes – to join her. At first they cover a large area of the branches, then gradually they close up forming into a ball.
The first picture shows the swarm settling in the tree. The swarm is the brown mass in the bottom right of the picture, but note how many bees are still in the air. A larger picture can be seen here. The second picture shows the same scene ten minutes later. The airborne bees have joined the swarm on the tree. The third picture shows a close up (or as close as this reporter was prepared to go:). It’s difficult to see with so many twigs and leaves in the way (and I wasn’t going to hang around to get the perfect shot!) but the swarm had begun to bunch together.
The swarm can stay like that for thirty minutes to a few days. Scouts are sent out to look for a new home. Eventually a decision will be made and the swarm departs. Many beeks attempt to retrieve their bees by putting ladders up to the tree and attempting to knock the swarm into a cardboard box (and from there to a new hive). These are braver beeks than I. And our bees always choose a branch beyond our longest ladder.
This particular swarm left after an hour or so. We didn’t hear any screaming so we assume they didn’t move into any of our neighbour’s homes.
An hour later we opened the old hive to see how many were left and were heartened to see it teeming. Shelagh then came up with a cunning plan – and a near neighbour to the one she would have carried out earlier to prevent swarming. That is – to split the hive and fool them into thinking they’ve swarmed. As there were two frames with queen cells in the hive, she took one of the frames out (along with its nursery bees) and put it in our spare hive. The spare hive was given some honey frames for food and empty frames for expansion. The idea is that the nursery bees feed and hatch out a new queen and a new colony begins. To give them some flying bees to bring in food, we execute an even more cunning scheme. We wait until night and swap the hives around. The flying bees from the original hive fly out the next morning from the old hive and fly back, with pollen, to the new hive. The old hive, wondering what happened to their food gatherers, will then send out a new shift – but the new shift, not having flown before, will not have the former position of the old hive imprinted, and so will return to the correct hive. That’s the theory. We’ve never attempted it before. Watch this space.
Chris Dolley is an English author living in France with a frightening number of animals. More information about his other work can be found on his BVC bookshelf .
An Unsafe Pair of Hands – a quirky murder mystery set in rural England charting the descent and rise of a detective on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Which will break first? The case, or DCI Shand?
Medium Dead – a fun urban fantasy chronicling the crime fighting adventures of Brenda – a reluctant medium – and Brian – a Vigilante Demon with an impish sense of humour. Think Stephanie Plum with magic and a dash of Carl Hiaasen.
What Ho, Automaton! – Wodehouse Steampunk. Follow the adventures of Reggie Worcester, consulting detective, and his gentleman’s personal gentle-automaton, Reeves. It’s set in an alternative 1903 where an augmented Queen Victoria is still on the throne and automata are a common sight below stairs. Humour, Mystery, Aunts and Zeppelins!
French Fried - true crime, animals behaving badly and other people’s misfortunes. Imagine A Year in Provence with Miss Marple and Gerald Durrell.
International Kittens of Mystery. If you like a laugh and looking at cute kitten pictures this is the book for you. It’s a glance inside the International Kittens of Mystery – the only organisation on the planet with a plan to deal with a giant ball of wool on a collision course with Earth.
Other than being almost entirely unable to sleep, I'm having a very good Wiscon.
This entry was originally posted at http://boxofdelights.dreamwidth.org/1921
(alt: http://youtu.be/YjuvIlskUf4)
Compare the original:
(alt: http://youtu.be/nw3dWOssOhs)
Incidentally, it says something about my musical tastes that I was the only person in the cinema to burst out laughing at the line about 'the Alan Parsons Project'. Nothing wrong with liking prog rock...
This entry was originally posted at http://major-clanger.dreamwidth.org/5426.h
http://ww4report.com/node/11111
A court in Bahrain on May 24 sentenced Zainab al-Khawaja, the daughter of jailed pro-democracy activist Abdulhadi al-Khawaja to one month in prison for trying to organize an anti-government protest, according to Bahraini opposition groups. The court also fined her $530 on a separate charge of insulting a government employee. Zainab al-Khawaja refused to pay the fine and will face an additional 40 days in prison unless she pays it. Abdulhadi al-Khawaja has been on hunger strike for three months, expressing opposition to the Bahraini government's ongoing trials of pro-democracy protesters. He was sentenced to life in prison n June 2011. Zainab Al-Khawaja is scheduled for another hearing on Sunday [AP report] on other protest-related charges.
http://ww4report.com/node/11110
We noted in September, after the fall of Moammar Qaddafi, that hundreds of Tuareg were being forced to flee into Algeria by Arab militias in the western Libyan town of Ghadames. This exodus apparently continues. More than 55 Tuareg crossed over into Algerian territory in the last two days for fear of reprisals by armed groups, according to Algeria's El-Khabar newspaper May 24. The Ghadames tribe, which is backed by forces affiliated with the National Transitional Council, is said to carrying out attacks on local Tuareg families and businesses, putting stores and stables to the torch. According to the refugees, many Tuareg were subjected to "illegal" detention at secret locations under inhumane conditions. They added that members of the Ghadames tribes are searching for Tuareg members everywhere, even in hospitals, to abduct, abuse or kill them. A large number have been illegally arrested, including women. (Al-Monitor, May 24)
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/icanhasch
http://lolcats.icanhascheezburger.com/?p=5
Oh for… glasses Alice? And take the baby outta the litter box.
Picture by: - Mood:
amused
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3
In the Ukrainian Vekhovna Rada (parliament) Thursday evening, there was a full and frank exchange of views on language policy:
Andrew Roth and J. David Goodman, "Push Comes to Shove, and Punch, in Ukraine Parliament", NYT 5/25/2012:
What began as a legislative debate over Ukraine’s official language policy escalated into a fist-swinging, clothes-ripping brawl between screaming, sweaty lawmakers that reverberated around the Internet on Friday, embellishing the country’s standing in the pantheon of parliamentary punchfests that are captured on camera. […]
The 450-deputy Verkhovna Rada, as Parliament is called in Ukraine, was debating a measure that would elevate the status of Russian to a second language, equal to Ukrainian, in about half the regions of the country, including Kiev. The proposal’s passionate advocates and foes reflect the deep political divisions in Ukraine, a former Soviet republic where some regions harbor deep-seated resentment of Russians.
“You’re a corpse, you have two days left to live, we will crucify you on a birch tree,” the author of the legislation, Vadim Kolesnichenko, said his lawmaker adversaries told him.
"Row over status of Russian language threatens to split Ukraine", The Guardian (Reuters) 5/25/2012:
Ukraine's ruling party has triggered violent protests with a move to upgrade the official role of the Russian language, a sensitive issue in the former Soviet republic and one that opponents say will effectively split the country.
A draft law by President Viktor Yanukovich's Regions party rekindled an emotional debate in Ukraine. Russian is the mother tongue of most people in the east and south of the country, while Ukrainian – the state language – predominates in parts of the centre and in the west.
This is everyone's favorite line from the debate:
I wrote up a piece for Tom's Guide that I pitched as the quirky side of tech - robotics (robot plant waterers, robot camera tripods that follow you around filming), DIY hardware, 3d printing, tiny computers like Raspberry Pi, milk jugs that tell you when the milk goes off, conductive paint (so you can literally draw a circuit board), electroluminescent screens you can print like a T shirt and the future of the kind of hardware projects that will show up on Kickstarter. You can read about all that and more over at http://www.tomsguide.com/us/pictures-sto
We interviewed Eben Upton of the Raspberry Pi foundation and reminisced happily about 8-bit computing and game writers who made so much money they bought Porsche's they were too young to drive; that's coming soon on TechRadar.
I took lots more photos than fitted in the feature, many of them of delightful flaming sculptures; we also got to watch the solar eclipse through a handheld safety viewer, a pinhole in a sheet of card, a stretched sheet of mylar, the shadows of the trees and a proper telescope with safety filters that let us see a sunspot.
More pictures on my SkyDrive
The weekend was great fun as usual, very tasty thanks to 4505 Meats whose 'pork; the noun not the verb' T shirt is in my future as a tribute to deep fried mac and cheese with bacon-studded frankfurter & sweet chili pork rinds, and exhausting. It was so nice to tumble into a hot tub afterwards. This whole trip has been fun, informative, tasty and exhausting and we're only halfway through. So far:
- we flew to LA (I met a charming raconteur on the plane who regaled me with stories about mass lobster dinners and the music business), tried a new breakfast place with maple bacon biscuits, drove to Vegas via Barstow and the usual excellent cheap Mexican restaurant
- walked about 4 miles a day and wrapped out heads fairly thoroughly around the possibilities for managing Windows 8 & Windows RT as well as how System Center and Intune will manage iPhone and Android. Dinner at Shibuya, birthday lunch at Olives with a table on the patio to see the fountains, the ever-reliable BLT and lunch with 
spikeiowa</span> and Tom who were in town for Corflu, at Morel's Steakhouse at Palazzo which is outside on the strip, with a view of the Sirens, excellent Blood Orange margeritas and very nice food but slightly too small umbrellas on a bright bright day. The impressionist garden in the Bellagio and the impressive fountains outside were photographed.
- we headed back to Barstow and on to Paso Robles where we fitted in two new wineries (Looking Glass where they have a lovely garden to taste in and Sculpeterra where they have sculptures and pistachios) and dinner at Artisan (sweet potato bacon tater tots with ramps dressing and rabbit sausage) and then on to San Jose so we could get up far too early for
- the Creative Suite 6 announcement in the de Yonge museum accompanied by inflatable CS logos that were so inflated they nearly lifted the fountain they were tethered to into the sky, and drink-n-interview time on the top floor of the de Yonge tower where you can see out to Point Reyes up the coast and over the hill to the tips of the Golden Gate Bridge. Ritual Coffee and purchasing of my lovely insulated tea glass and then down to San Jose for a week sitting in Barefoot Coffee and writing furiously
- got up far too early to fly to Orlando and talk to RIM about BlackBerry 10; the new CEO has a convincing mien and talks well but didn't have time for the kind of one on one interview where we can really assess how he thinks, but we did have time to talk to Dan Dodge, the QNX founder who impresses us a lot (and laughed heartily when I said QNX reminds me of Plan 9). RIM is working like a startup, with late nights and pranks and more energy than it's had in years. Nice ideas we said to them; now you have to execute. Then our plane was delayed over three hours by potential fog which I hope isn't an omen for RIM. The Virgin America gate staff kept the passengers amused with quizzes (guess the cumulative age of the gate staff) and paper airplane contests and we took off late but in a good mood. Watched Tower Heist which was funnier and more poignant than I expected. Alan Alda continues to rock my world. Landed at 1am SF time, took an hour (an hour!) to get the luggage and the rental car and got to San Jose in hem-hem record time
- proceeded to sleep off the trip, sit in the hummingbird-visited sunny garden of friends writing furiously, enjoy hanging out and catching up, fit in a few meetings with security companies, visit the Facebook campus, visit Parc (a Xerox company), queue for the longest time for a crab/shrimp/crawfish boil that was very yummy, have lunch in the excellent Mayfield Bakery restaurant in the Town & Country (much more than a bakery - fantastic chicken and steak sandwiches and a refreshing pomegranate lime spritzer) and pop over to San Jose to pick up some rose at David Bruce (where we got to meet the winemaker and hear about the chardonnay from the Judgement of Paris he'd tried the previous week). And dinner at Dish Dash (yummy Mediterranean)
and dinner with friends and dinner at Caffe Ricci where the sculptures are screamingly funny - the washerwoman is a woman with a washer-drier on her head
- we decamped to downtown San Jose for the Nvidia GTC conference: virtualising GPUs, learning the reason for locust swarms (can't stop, locust behind me will eat me) which the daily newsletter reported in the style of a con newsletter, and pondering the amateur lunar rover that will launch on a Russian rocket next year. Ate at *all* the downtown San Jose restaurants; Original Joes, Il Fornaio, The Grill on the Alley AND McCormack & Schicks. Do you get points for restaurant bingo? The event party had roulette and blackjack (which I know how to lose at) and poker and craps (which I don't) but we watched the excellent jugglers instead. Nice patter, nice pattern juggling, and chainsaw juggling to the music and pace of The Blue Danube.
- thence a day of writing and errands and on to Maker Faire for the weekend, followed by a two-day drive to Santa Barbara (coffee, cherries, fried chicken and crab and lobster we hammered into submission at Arch Rock Fish) and on to Laguna Beach (scary LA traffic is crazy and scarey) for this week's conference, Future in Review. This is a treat, although a conference that starts at 8am and carries on through conversations and film showing and dinner lectures until at least midnight every night is exhausting as well as fascinating. It covers everything from cloud to the language of prairie dogs, melting glaciers to the uniquely US approach the FTC has to privacy (speedbump to innovation on the information superhighway to how technology could help human trafficking to interviews with Mark Hurd and George Dyson, plus David Brin and Kim Stanley Robinson bringing their towels on stage. Chatting to them afterwards turned into lunch talking SF and different cultures and then a walk on the beach picking up shells and testing the water temperature. Special mention to O Sushi in the mall across from the hotel, which has excellent sushi, sashimi and rolls, all made with real crab the way I like them, plus cripsy fried antenna. I feel like my antenna are crispy fried now (we've been writing this week as well) so bed calls.
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/H
They don't make energy-storage infrastructure like this any more [photo]. Tall and imposing, with metalwork manufactured far more intricately than necessary because that was the Victorian way. They were erected between 1872 and 1878 on behalf of the Gas Light and Coke Company, London's 19th century equivalent of British Gas. The surrounds are all made of cast iron, while the central telescoping drums are all made of steel. Viewed up close you can see the connecting bands are decorated - a different repeating pattern on each storey [photo]. If you want to stand alongside and sound knowledgeable, you should point out that the lower part of each column is Doric, while the upper part is simplified Ionic. They're a set of gasholders with genuine classical influences - Boris would be so very proud.
Gasholders aren't the modern way, and now only those that have been listed (like these seven) are likely to survive. There are plans afoot to add a visitor attraction here, to make the gasholders some sort of sports facility destination, but these appear to have stalled on the drawing board about two years back. Certainly there's no current sign of access being granted, artificial sports pitches being laid or well-meaning ladies with clipboards handing round questionnaires about sustainability. And hurrah for that. Standing here in the evening sunlight, admiring the maze of columns and ladders, it's hard not to be impressed with this lot just the way they are.
A list of London's gasholders: Beckton, Bromley-by-Bow, Cambridge Heath, Edmonton, Fulham, Kennington, Kings Cross, Kingston, Lower Sydenham, Motspur Park, North Greenwich, Romford, Southall, Tottenham. help me out with this! commentsImmediately across the road from the Twelvetrees gasholders, hidden from view by a shield of trees, lies a secret garden. I say secret, even though it's shown on maps and everything, because I've somehow never known it existed despite living less than a mile away. The path's not signposted or anything, neither is it obvious from the 323 bus stop that anything this intriguing might lurk within a clearing in the trees.
It's a war memorial, a war memorial in three parts. On the left is a domed pergola, clearly intended for trailing plants, but any such foliage is long gone. In the centre is a large plaque, rather bolder than those on either side, etched with the names of a hundred or so fallen men. And on the right, blimey, it's a memorial gas lamp. An ornate octagonal iron casing sits on a tall white column, topped off with spikes and crown-like flourishes. And within the glass, 24 hours a day, a gas ring burns. There must be a dozen or so vents, and if you watch carefully you can see the gas gently flickering as it burns in permanent memory.
Across the grass, unseen by any casual passer-by, is a statue of a kindly-looking gowned man. You'd think might be nationally important, but he turns out "only" to be Sir Corbet Woodall, Governor of the Gas Light and Coke Company during the Great War. Industrialists merited their own statuary back then, not that anybody seems to care today. Indeed the building down by the road used to be the London Gas Museum - yes there really was such a thing - but that was closed over ten years ago and the exhibits dispersed elsewhere. The surrounding area may now have become a bland business park full of cavernous warehouses, but at least the company's gasholders still stand as a fitting reminder of the capital's industrial past.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/c
A draft of the memo sent by the culture secretary to the PM has revealed the extent of his support for News Corp's BSkyB bid
PX117- $20
UMU1- $13
Tiki Princess- tol- $12
Chewing Little Bits of String- $25
Desiccated Frostberry Pie Filling- TOL- $12
The Gorroble- $15
Ein Kuss Von Krampus- $12
Conjure Oils Mlle. Whiard- $10 (strawberry cream kiwi sugar and clove)
Genres: Science fiction Thriller, Action-Adventure, Suspense
Does Not Accept/Want: Graphic sexual content; Excessive profanity or unnecessarily crude writing; Graphic violence is acceptable but make sure it is necessary.
Fiction: 5,000 to 10,000 words
Essays/Articles:
Poetry:
Reprints: no
Simultaneous/Multiple Subs: no / no
Deadlines/Reading Period: August 1, 2012
Est. Response Time: up to 3 months after deadline
Payment: $10.00/accepted story and one contributor's copy
Submissions:
submissions@psychokittyonline.com
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/icanhasch
http://lolcats.icanhascheezburger.com/?p=5
Oops, sorry. Time portal dysfunction. We were suppose to materialize in the dryer.
Ai fink sumting mite be wrong wib our motivator. Oar maybe de flux capacitor?
Profile
- muninnhuginn
- Muninn and Huginn
Page Summary
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif?v=92.1)
picowrimo :: wiseheart : Poll results and sign-up for the mid-year pico [+0] ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/syndicated.gif?v=92.1)
bookviewcafe : A Swarm in May… [+0] - boxofdelights : pleased with myself [+0]
- major_clanger : Dragon has these things called (airquote) "lay-zers" ... [+2]
- ww4report : Bahrain activist's daughter sentenced to month in jail for staging protest [+0]
- ww4report : Tuareg face ethnic cleansing across Sahara [+0]
- lolcatssite : Damn crazy broad. [+0]
- snapes_angel : Again, Just Because (Redux) [+0]
- apod : Scorpius in Red and Blue [+0]
- languagelog : Debate on the status of Russian in Ukraine [+0]
- marypcb : Robots, fire, solar eclipses: all things we saw at Maker Faire [+0]
- icanhaschzbrgr : Cyoot Kitteh of teh Day: Sleep In; It’s Caturday! [+0]
- icanhaschzbrgr : I Has A Hotdog: Corndog [+0]
- alex_ross : Die Flabbergast [+0]
- dg_weblog : Twelvetrees [+0]
- wrrn_ellis_rss : by ELLEN ROGERS [+0]
- guardiancomment : Martin Rowson on Jeremy Hunt's appearance at the Leveson inquiry – cartoon [+0]
- bpalmarketplace :: alshneato : Short BOGO [+2]
- market_finder :: domynoe : SF Thril | LOST: An Anthology of Exploration (Antho; Closes: August 1, 2012) [+0]
- lolcatssite : Never get directions from somebody whose name is question–like Who! [+0]
