November 17th, 2008
An 80+ year old hand drill got an upgrade in my first lesson on a lathe. This drill came from a box of old woodworking tools that was gathering dust in my parents’ barn. From what I can find, it was made between 1910 and 1930 by the Millers Falls tool company.
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October 27th, 2008
I built a tallbike for a friend. Unlike most of the designs I’ve seen, my version uses a rear derailleur to offer several (in this case, 5) speeds. I would feel really nervous about riding a tallbike that couldn’t shift into low gear; it’s just too far to fall.
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October 4th, 2008
I found this excessively fattened spider on an overturned stew pot outside my friend’s place.
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October 4th, 2008
Native Americans used the simplest of techniques to bring down a deer: they chased it until it was tired.
You can use a similar strategy to catch a grasshopper.
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September 8th, 2008
This waifishly thin spider was wandering around inside one of the windows at work.
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August 14th, 2008
Ordinarily, I’m a little nervous around yellowjackets. This one seemed to care less that I was there, and even after several minutes I couldn’t get her to fly away. She was too busy cleaning herself.
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August 5th, 2008
It’s a one-liner:
for t in \
$(mysql -u your_username \
-pyour_password \
--batch --column-names=false \
-e "show tables" your_database) ; \
do \
mysql -u your_username \
-pyour_password \
-e "alter table $t type=InnoDB" your_database; \
done
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July 25th, 2008
This hoverfly seemed more interested in licking my hand clean than doing any actual hovering. I found it while camping.
Looking like a yellowjacket, it must not have many natural enemies — either that, or it was desperately hungry — because I was able to pick it up by the wing from my friend’s leg without it getting agitated. It just crawled up onto my thumb.
I let go of its wing when I realized that it had no intention of leaving.
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July 9th, 2008
Something about this type of spider, with its long and thin legs, is a little creepy to me.
This one inhabited my bulkhead, which is slowly rusting.
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July 8th, 2008
I’m not exactly sure what type of fly this is, but it met enough of criteria for a good photo subject:
- I’ve never seen one before
- it’s larger than “average”
- it let me approach
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