June 2008 Archives
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June 25, 2008
Cool Polyphemus Moth on Our Door (Updated)
He barely moved around while I was taking pictures, even with the flash. Using a macro, I was easily under an inch away at times. It's hours later and he's still there, too.
The slideshow here is from my Picasa account, but the Flickr image set can be found here. I wish Flickr could do the same sort of thing so easily without any additional tools. Oh well, this works well enough. He was too boring to take video of and he didn't even open up his wings.
The other night, up in our top-floor office, we had one of these flapping around in a window. At first we thought it was a bat because of the size, but we quickly realized it wasn't. It, or one like it, visited us on subsequent nights, too.
I looked up what moths eat because I was hoping maybe big moths would eat things like mosquitos. Sadly, it doesn't work that way. If anything, they absorb moisture through their long tongues. Many adult moths don't eat at all and some don't even have mouths. I guess that means they aren't terribly long lived in their adult form. As a caterpillar, though, it can apparently eat 86,000 times its weight in just two months. Too many of these can strip a tree naked.
Still, it's neat. It's also so amazingly furry that I kept wanting to just try to pet it. I didn't. I was worried about hurting it or simply scaring it away. Trying to pet it without touching it's wings would be pretty hard. Speaking of wings, you can see in one of the images just how furry it's wings are, too.
Anyway, enjoy the pictures. :)
Update: These moths natively exist across all of the US and Canada except Alaska, Hawaii, Arizona, Nevada, and Newfoundland. This particular moth is male because of it's large antennae. They're used to detect female pheramones. This site has much more information.
June 24, 2008
Neat Weather Underground Feature
I've been using Weather Underground alongside weather.com for a while now as it gives an alternate view on things, even if not particularly more accurate. Just today, though, I followed a link that generated a great Google Maps view with lots of overlays that can be turned on and off. It's quite wonderful -- they call it the WunderMap. Also neat is that you can create links to it -- the one I got this screen shot off of is right here.
One great feature is the ability to turn animation on and off as well as the "storm track" feature -- you can see it in the shot as the long white arrows. These seem most accurate for figuring out of a particular piece of weather will cross your area or not.
Additionally, at their iPhone site (simply i.wund.com), they have a nice summary page for zip codes that can even animate the radar image. The whole page is nice, quick, and designed well for the iPhone. Their "tab bar" is pretty well done, too, even if it isn't a "real" one.
The iPhone site works great in Firefox but draws more accurately in Safari, of course.
Anyway, I just found these to be interesting, even if well known to others.
June 23, 2008
Anticipated Route
This image shows the route we expect to take on our return trip from CA to NH on an upcoming road trip. Aggressive? Perhaps. Scenic? Definitely. Stopping by to visit folks? Included, but unfortunately minimal. Blogged and photo'd the whole time? What do you think? Geotagged images? If our equipment is all working. Twittered and Qik'd? Probably not -- roaming cell coverage isn't exactly cheap. Sorry. :)
(Click on the image for the full version.)
June 5, 2008
A Great Library Feature
So, I went in to get my library card today. We had a look around at the library. It's quite nice and modern inside, with a separate computer lab for kids and for adults. There were lots of well organized books, too, of course (something about that in the definition of the word library).
In any case, on the counter, I saw a sign about downloading audio books. Naturally, I was intrigued. So, I grabbed the card and took it home so I could remember the simple site for it: http://nh.lib.overdrive.com.
So, I go there and find that there are, indeed, plenty of books for free download. Well, let's call it checking them out, actually. More on that later. On the front page was a link I had to click: "iPod and Mac users, click here". Being an iPod user, I clicked and got this:
Read the rest of "A Great Library Feature"