affable-lurking

Something’s crawling in my hair.

dtl — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 18:30:00 +0000

It’s a flying ant day here in London. The parks and pavements have been covered in large, brownish, winged & wingless females looking for somewhere to start a new colony.

Winged female

Winged garden ant female after nuptial flight.

Wingless female

Wingless female garden ant, after nuptial flight. Stubs of wings visible on second body segment.

Some of the smaller males are also around, looking for a place to die. Their job of fertilizing the females is now over.

Male garden ant

Male black garden ant dying on the ground after his nuptial flight.

Of course, all this flying protein is far too good a resource to waste,

Lunch on the wing

You can wait for it to come to you…

Pro-active ant catching.

Or you can take a pro-active attitude to catching your dinner

Election Commentary

dtl — Sun, 09 May 2010 10:04:57 +0000

Election Commentary

If this is February, this must be Athens

dtl — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 19:00:06 +0000

The Parthenon:

Changing the guard - High kicks are a Must:

If this is January, this must be Marrakesh

dtl — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 19:00:07 +0000

Storks and streets in the kasbah.

2010

dtl — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 15:37:48 +0000

So, tomorrow; the future.
Flying cars, food in pill form and holidays on the moon. I can’t wait.

And I’ve managed to keep this thing going for five years, which rather amazes me. This evening will involve Tea and Cake at The Hidden Tea Room.

London Wetland Centre

dtl — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 19:27:15 +0000

At a visit to the LWC today, I saw a heron stalk, catch and eat a mouse-thing. Luckily I had the camera.

The Stalking.

The Catch.

The Payoff.

And swallow.

X-rays

dtl — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 20:23:12 +0000

Now I have an xray machine to play with at work, I can take photographs of the insides of things. I shall make full use of this. Here’s an old transistor to start with.

Image details : Mullard OC44 PNP Germanium transistor, glass envelope. 90kV polychromatic xrays, filtered with 1.5mm Al and 0.2 mm Cu. CsI scintillator, 6 sec exposure.

30ish feet below Holborn

dtl — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 14:39:39 +0000

Last night I spent forty-odd minutes thirty-ish feet below Holborn in the Kingsway Tram Tunnel, the reason was because I’d always wondered what was down there. The event that made it possible was Chord an installation art piece by Conrad Shawcross. The art is basically a large rope weaving machine, slowly weaving 300m of multicolored rope. I found the engineering more impressive than the art.

Photography of the piece was discouraged, and I’d forgotten my camera anyway, not that this has stopped photographs appearing on flickr.

Bad joke.

dtl — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 15:20:20 +0000

And so it was to be, that after the waters receded, Noah commanded all the animals to “Go forth and multiply.”

The ark quickly emptied, except for two small snakes, who stayed behind.
When Noah asked them why, they replied, “We can’t multiply. We’re adders.”
Noah, being the resourceful man he was, immediately got busy cutting down trees and building a large table with the unfinished lumber therefrom.

And he saw that it was good.
The snakes were overjoyed when Noah picked them up and placed them on it. Noah and the snakes both knew that even adders could multiply on a log table.

Not dead…

dtl — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 09:03:34 +0000

Not dead, just busy. X-raying old books.