if you have just shy of 7 minutes to spare you may enjoy watching this amazing youtube clip titled Ants! and that’s what it’s about - ants. more specifically, the vast subterranean ventilation system and structure of an ant colony. it’s very fascinating. the researchers poured cement into the openings of the ant colony to create a casting of how the ant tunnels looked. that process took 3 days and over 10 tons of cement! excavation of the casting took over a month! now as a former ant, i can say that having cement poured into one’s home is really jacked up. but the end result is quite amazing.
Tag Archive for 'insects'
avoid it! avoid it like the plague! do NOT upgrade your mac or pc to iTunes 7. stay with iTunes 6. if you still don’t like itunes 6, at least it works and won’t delete your music files. itunes 7 (7.0, 7.0.1, 7.0.2, etc.) is absolutely wretched. on my mac, it’s as slow as molasses, crashes and/or freezes, and if you hook an ipod or ishuffle up to it, set aside a lot of time if you want to edit your playlist - if it will connect at all. this has been happening since late september with my automatic update to 7.0 - and with all subsequent upgrades and ‘bug fixes’ up to 7.0.2, these problems remain. itunes 7 is just incredibly buggy and it’s a shame apple is using it’s customer base as beta testers. here’s a direct link to an old version of 6.0.5 for mac online (link is 19.8 megs). and here are some tips on uninstalling itunes 7 here and here.
UPDATE: followed the great instructions on the macfixitforums and the rollback to iTunes 6.0.5 worked great!
dig these awesome macro photography shots of bugs and critters and the like from this russian macro photography page. don’t know much about the page or the photographer (found the link via metafilter) but i do like the macro images! simple layout too.
do you like arthropods? then you will enjoy this insect photography website by richard seaman that is buggy for bugs. great for reference or just checking out cool images of insects. like beetles, caterpillars, spiders, and such. links of note are his sections such as the spiders of vietnam (yikes!), the lovely dragonflies of fiji, and back to vietnam & some butterflies.
note to self: if there is such a thing as reincarnation, i’d like to establish right now that i do not want to come back as a government insect trap. no sir. just wanted to get that out there.
really amazing photographs by Poul Beckmann of some even more amazing beetles and bugs! check out Living Jewels when you get a chance. the beetles are quite beautiful. you can buy books and prints as well. nice stuff. the beetle photos are Copyright 2004 Poul Beckmann.