{"id":25789,"date":"2020-04-11T06:20:46","date_gmt":"2020-04-11T10:20:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/?p=25789"},"modified":"2020-04-11T06:20:46","modified_gmt":"2020-04-11T10:20:46","slug":"a-post","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/2020\/04\/a-post\/","title":{"rendered":"A post"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/NottaSilhouette.jpg\" alt=\"pair of yellow-bellied sliders Trachemys scripta scripta on snag\" width=\"750\" height=\"955\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-25790\" \/><br clear=\"all\"\/>I have found myself fairly busy for the past several days, but not in a way that can be reflected here too well, so with a few minutes to spare, I&#8217;m just doing a small update for my millions of imaginary followers, who have already flooded my inbox with imaginary e-mails asking me if I&#8217;m okay and when the hell I&#8217;m going to put up something new. <em>This<\/em> is what you get for being demanding.<\/p>\n<p>Between work &#8211; that other job that helps pay bills and is in that way alone essential &#8211; and various house projects, I&#8217;ve been not only busy, but beating myself up a bit, crawling under cars and the house and up on the roof while the weather was amenable, which it no longer is, having turned colder again, so <em>now<\/em> I won&#8217;t be chasing any other critters for a few days even when I <em>do<\/em> have time. It&#8217;ll change back though, soon enough.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve also been helping The Girlfriend with her projects, among them doing some video shooting and editing &#8211; not like I&#8217;m some kind of authority on it, but among the two people that she can actually ask for assistance right now, I&#8217;m the only one who&#8217;s done anything of the sort<strong>;<\/strong> the most experienced video editor in the household according to JD Power and Associates (no, that&#8217;s not at all true, because we didn&#8217;t give them a dime to make that claim.) Given that I still have to render video projects multiple times to find the balance of size and quality that I&#8217;m after, plus the search for the <em>right<\/em> free background music, this takes a long time for a brief video clip, but that&#8217;s the nature of the beast.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve done a couple of local excursions, really not finding anything worth an entire post, but the occasional bit here and there.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/JustaBlue.jpg\" alt=\"male eastern bluebird Sialia sialis in tree\" width=\"750\" height=\"623\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-25791\" \/><br clear=\"all\"\/>There&#8217;s the photo sorting, deleting all of those that don&#8217;t pass my exacting and stringent standards (let it go) and relegating the remainder into appropriate categories. I&#8217;d put this off for a little too long as usual, but it&#8217;s going faster than anticipated and I should be done with it today. This is also the opportunity to catch those images of interest that I didn&#8217;t immediately write about and set them aside for a later post, but most of the worthy ones have already been featured here.<\/p>\n<p>And then the ongoing, little things, an ever-changing list. Among the items awaiting attention on my desk or otherwise<strong>:<\/strong><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<li>Getting Linux to play nice with some exterior IP cameras to monitor the property, for critters and assholes<strong>;<\/strong><\/li>\n<p><\/p>\n<li>Getting a webcam to work with Linux too, because I may be engaging in some online games and meetings soon. No, I don&#8217;t have a laptop with that shit built in, because laptops suck (just for the sake of it, I have three harddrives, 10Gb of RAM, expanded USB ports, and a multi-card reader installed on my system, all to support my normal activities, so you can keep your portable folding toys)<strong>;<\/strong><\/li>\n<p><\/p>\n<li>Cleaning the sensor in the 30D, which is notorious for attracting dust, though my habit of changing lenses in less-than-clean-room conditions just <em>might<\/em> be contributing to this<strong>;<\/strong><\/li>\n<p><\/p>\n<li>Planting and transplanting a bunch of stuff &#8211; we&#8217;re a little behind on that too<strong>;<\/strong><\/li>\n<p><\/p>\n<li>I was recently given a <a href=\"https:\/\/pyrofarms.com\/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Bio Orb<\/a>, a glass globe containing live <a href=\"http:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/2009\/02\/florida-beckons\/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">dinoflagellates<\/a>, so the obvious next step is to obtain photos of them through the microscope. The idea of capturing their bioluminescence is intriguing but most likely impossible without special equipment that I do not have. Nonetheless, I&#8217;ll at least make the attempt<strong>;<\/strong><\/li>\n<p><\/p>\n<li>Along the same lines, I&#8217;ve had a zoom magnifier head for some time, having picked it up from university surplus, a bit of lab equipment that would fill the gap between macro lenses and microscopes very nicely, <em>if<\/em> I can get it in a useful mount &#8211; I&#8217;m almost there now, so pics and results will be forthcoming once I get the whole affair in order<strong>;<\/strong><\/li>\n<p><\/p>\n<li>And there&#8217;s a big project that I&#8217;m not going to say a lot about right now, mostly because this may take a while to come to fruition, not at all helped by <em>a)<\/em> going about this in no approved manner, <em>b)<\/em> trying to tackle multiple aspects at once, and <em>c)<\/em> requiring a certain mood, motivation, and block of free time. When it all comes together, however, you&#8217;ll be sure to hear about it here.<\/blockquote>\n<\/li>\n<p>So hang loose, more is on the way, and in the meantime, I leave you with another mantis image that I neglected to put into the appropriate post about a week ago. How could I miss this one?<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/UprightMantis.jpg\" alt=\"newborn Chinese mantis Tenodera sinensis standing upright between two leaves\" width=\"750\" height=\"1083\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-25795\" \/><br clear=\"all\"\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I have found myself fairly busy for the past several days, but not in a way that can be reflected here too well, so with a few minutes to spare, I&#8217;m just doing a small update for my millions of imaginary followers, who have already flooded my inbox with imaginary e-mails asking me if I&#8217;m [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[1262,1124,5410,5471,3126,1125,3189,2828,169],"class_list":["post-25789","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-random","tag-chinese-mantis","tag-eastern-bluebird","tag-excuses-excuses","tag-hear-here","tag-projects","tag-sialia-sialis","tag-tenodera-sinensis","tag-trachemys-scripta-scripta","tag-yellow-bellied-slider"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25789","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25789"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25789\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}