The recent White House wiretap affair and technology

ars technica has a great overview of the probable technology behind the recent non-authorized wiretapping affair. I am not at all a fan of a leader, American, Canadian, or other, feeling that he or she has the authority to eavesdrop on the lives of its citizens with not even minimal oversight. However, that is not what I am most interested in here. The ars technica article outlines an eavesdropping system that essentially samples up to one percent of phone conversations being made at any given time. Knowledge of details such as the country being called is used to home in on the most desirous calls, but the fact remains that an automated system will still come up with a few thousand possible phone lines to monitor every day. The decision as to whether or not a call is of interest is made, at least in part, by looking for keywords in call conversations. So, what we end up with is a surveillance system set up in many ways as a high-tech fishing expedition. The premise for a judicially approved wiretapping system is that wiretaps will be made based on pre-existing evidence. This is at odds with a technology-driven system that uses keyword matching as a large part of its algorithm. No free and fair judicial system would approve wiretapping of its citizens purely on the basis of their having uttered forbidden words while talking on the phone, yet that is what this technology demands. We have a basic conflict here between a technology and its needs and a democracy and its underpinning values and rules. The technology's judgements become our new judgements. Now, instead of being guilty of having done something illegal, we are guilty of having uttered something forbidden. The axis of our system of justice and valuations of freedoms is moving to a new centre of gravity.

The ars technica article points out that for all its technological beauty, the system being pushed is not one likely to notice only criminals. It is very likely that a machine-driven system will end up flagging lots and lots of non-criminals as potential terrorists or drug dealers or whatever. Once flagged by a beaurocracy, especially one that loathes oversight and transparency, one is always suspect. We seem to be swimming farther and farther into dangerous waters with very little thought to the implications of our actions. The love of technology instead of thoughtful human insight is not only an American problem. Perhaps they are the early adopters. Perhaps Canada's spies are even less accountable than ours. Perhaps the US system is more leaky or more transparent. The point is that as long as we undervalue human judgement and insight and the checks and balances that keep us free from tyrrany and overvalue technology, we are at risk.

Update: Josh Marshall comments on this as well

From a technological point of view there's not really much outlandish about this at all. This is just the sort of thing the NSA is in the business of doing overseas. But you can see how this would just be a non-starter for getting a warrant. It is the definition of a fishing expedition.

May I submit that wholesale eavesdropping on people around the world is outlandish, especially if it's done with minimal oversight. The bigger the machine the bigger its appetite and the more likely it will turn on its creators.

Testing Flock Blog editor

Well. Here goes. Downloaded the preview release of the Flock browser and am testing it out. Uses de.licio.us to store bookmarks and hooks into blogging. We'll see how revolutionary it is.

Be-pollened Eastern Carpenter Bee

Latin name: Xylocopa virginica

Bees are busy and difficult to photograph. I did however manage to get get this side profile of an Eastern Carpenter Bee covered with a remarkable amount of pollen.

Phidippus clarus female hiding out on Parsley leaf

Latin name: Phidippus clarus

This little female Phidippus clarus was hiding out in our Parsley. The pose shown here is the typical defensive posture; crouching and ready to strike while maintaining maximal ability to view surroundings.

Green Bottle Fly on Sweet Pea flower

Latin name: Phaenicia sericata

This is the unpleasant part of flies (besides their oftentimes diet of rotting flesh or garbage). The front of their heads looks like the front of a human skull, or at least the nose part.

Jumping spider - Sitticus sp.

Latin name: Sitticus sp.

This teeny Jumping Spider was found by Janneke on the sill of our living room picture window. It was only about 2mm in length, total. I brought it outside to our porch and took some pictures of it. It's amazing that something so small can be so complete and capable.

Red-banded Leafhopper

Latin name: Graphocephala coccinea

These bugs are cute and colourful! I don't know how it's adaptive to be red and blue on a green leaf. Perhaps it's less conspicuous in the spectral range visible by its predators. In any case, they look great to humans. Teeny too (about 7mm).

Green Bottle Fly on paving stone

Latin name: Phaenicia sericata

I am not normally a fan of flies, but yet I keep on taking pictures of Green Bottle Flies. It's the irridescence. Looking at them face-on is not pretty, I think because they have indentations similar to those one might see on a human skull. Of course, the fact that they start out as maggots in rotting flesh can be off-putting. In any case, horrid or not, this fly was grooming himself on the lovely walkway through our garden when I took its photo.

Since she's gotten new grandkids my mother simply refuses to use cool shots like this as her computer wallpaper. Imagine!

Long-jawed Orb Weaver on reeds

Old


New

Latin name: Tetragnatha sp.

I re-edited a shot of a female Long-jawed Orb weaver on some bent reeds to bring out the colour more (I blogged about it before). Now the colour is warmer, reminding me of how things look on moist, overcast days. What a spider!

Platycryptus on windshield

Old (non colour adjusted)


New (colour adjusted)

Latin name: Platycryptus sp.

Last night I used the GIMP to do more clean up an image I'd already posted to Flickr. The challenge was to reduce the visual influence of the blueness of the windshield on which the spider stands. The spider, thankfully, did not have any natural blue colouration, so turning down blue and magenta saturation accomplished this goal quite well. This allowed the subject to become much more visible relative to its background. Secondarily, I found that the Gimp allows one to define white and black reference colours in its colour spectrum selector tool. Doing this had the effect of removing a blue cast on the spider's white hair that I hadn't noticed earlier. It seems the camera's electronics where overwhelmed by the blue background and added the cast. In addition to removing the cast, the black/white baseline choosing made the whole picture more clearly defined.

I'm glad I've discovered the black/white baseline setting capabilities of the GIMP. It should help make my images much more attractive. I'm sure Photoshop does this very very well too. However, it costs $500.

Male Black and Yellow Argiope

Latin name: Argiope aurantia

This male Black and Yellow Argiope was literally hanging around above a female in her web, waiting patiently to mate. The female is visible here as the earth is visible to an orbiting satellite. One can see the male transferring some sperm to his palps. I read that males of this species die at the end of mating to inhibit other males from getting at the female. After resting for about twenty minutes the female will pick the male off and eat him, but but that time it's too late for other males.

Wolf Spider lateral view

Latin name: Hogna frondicola

This Wolf Spider was wandering about on the large stone I used as a background for the grasshopper photos I took. As with the grasshopper, I used a polarizing filter on shots of this spider. This spider had a total length of about 9mm.

Two-Striped Grasshopper frontal view

Latin name: Melanoplus bivittatus

Well, I don't get too excited about grasshoppers, but Janneke suggested I photograph one she'd caught and was keeping in her bug collection cage. She said that after release it would stick around for a while. True enough, when we placed it on a large hunk of stone it stuck around long enough to take about a dozen photos. They turned out ver well indeed. I used a polarizing filter to cut down on glare from the rock and reflection from the grasshopper.

Fishing spider on stone

Latin name: Dolomedes tenebrosus

This is a good rear view of a female Dark Fishing Spider (Dolomedes tenebrosus). She has a missing leg. This is not as uncommon as I'd have thought before taking so many spider pictures this summer. Perhaps they lose limbs in their nursery web or in territorial combat with others of their species.

Black and Yellow Lichen Moth on flowers

Latin name: Lycomorpha pholus

Also known as the Black and Orange Lichen Moth and the Black and Red Lichen Moth. Its colour varies by region. This lovely specimen was feeding on flowers in a garden by a restored grist mill we were visiting last Sunday.

Butterfly on Goldenrod

Latin name: Phyciodes sp.

Got just one shot of this butterfly on Goldenrod, but it was a good one.

Restored late 1800s mill

Near Brock University and the site of the War of 1812 Battle of Beaver Dams is a fully restored grist mill with accompanying mill pond. Beyond the mill is a spectacular waterfall and lovely river gorge. All of this is home to delightful insect life, including huge Millipedes and gargantuan Fishing Spiders. The skill and devotion put into restoring what once was a dilapited wreck of a mill is inspiring.

"The acquisition of Canada this year, as far as the neighborhood of Quebec, will be a mere matter of marching, and will give us experience for the attack of Halifax the next, and the final expulsion of England from the American continent."

-- Thomas Jefferson in a letter to W. Duane on Aug 8, 1812

I'm thankful for more peacable times.

Funnel Spider and prey

(1)

(2)

(3)

(4)

Latin name: Agelenopsis sp.

This past Saturday morning I put an ant in a Funnel Spider's web and photographed the ensuing subduing. The results were pretty graphic and kind of sobering. Number 3, shown here, I found especially troubling. One steps on ants, one poisons ants, one watches ants teeming about the garden. One does not always see an ant one has put in a web gaping as he's fatally bitten by a spider.

Long-jawed Orb Weaver on reeds

Latin name: Tetragnatha sp.

Long-jawed Orb weavers are neat, but not photogenic. They are too good at camouflaging themselves and don't look enough like regular spiders to stand out in a photo. Thus, when I post one on Flickr I don't expect lots of views, even if it's a photo I think is very good. Bright green grasshoppers are popular though and bright orange Colorado Potato Beetle larvae.

Jagged Ambush bugs on Goldenrod

Latin name: Phymata pennsylvanica

Finally! Got some shots of Ambush Bugs. They were on my list for this summer bigtime. They act a whole lot like Mantids, attacking swiftly from a position of ambush. They have a sucking mouthpart that they stab into their victims and use to suck out their body fluids. Notice the hooked ends on their forelimbs.

Fishing spider frontal view

Latin name: Dolomedes tenebrosus

Nancy found this huge spider on a stone in a creek where we were exploring. The creek flowed through a protected river gorge, providing a great environment for rather large insects to thrive. This is a female Dark Fishing Spider, one of three species of Fishing Spider I've come across in Ontario. It lives in North America east of the Rockies.

Although this individual was large (about 5cm), Nancy soon found an even larger one (about 7cm). I had not expected such large spiders to be found in Ontario outside of a zoo.

Note the missing leg on this spider's left side.

The genesis of Google

Wired has a nice story on the genesis of Google at Stanford.

Another Green Bottle Fly

Latin name: Lucilia sp.

Here's another shot of a Green Bottle Fly. Flies close-up are not pretty, especially their faces. The Green Bottle Fly makes up for its fly-ness by being shiny and green and having red eyes. This photo is nicely saturated. The green-ness of the leaf is a nice touch too.

Pole Borer Longhorn Beetle frontal view

Latin name: family Parandra sp.

Nancy found this Pole Borer Beetle in the back yard two week-ends ago. We put it on a freshly cut stump and I proceeded to take several pictures of it. As with many close-up shots of insects that I take, viewing the photo revealed details not noticed with the naked eye. In this case, I was surprised at the sharp segmentation of the antennae and the wierd little feelers under the head.

Female Wolf Spider with egg sac

Latin name: family Lycosidae

Here's the same Wolf Spider mother at the edge of the pool. Note how she is not carrying herself so high due to the cooler temperature at poolside.

Female Wolf Spider with egg sac

Latin name: family Lycosidae

I was at a public wading pool with the kids this past Saturday. It was rather hot, over 30 degrees. The kids had a great time splashing around. While the kids were lying on their towels soaking up the heat, this little female Wolf Spider with her egg sac tucked beneath her abdomen ran out from the grass onto the cement that surrounds the pool by about 3 metres. It initially ran under Janneke's towel. I shooed the spider away so that it wouldn't bite Janneke if she inadvertently rolled onto it. The spider ran back into the grass and disappeared from sight for a while. About five minutes later she (the spider) reappeared and made a beeline for the pool, in a quick run interspersed with little jumping hops. She went to the edge of the water, took a drink, then proceeded back to the grass. I got a few shots of her as she paused periodically. Note how she raises herself up as far as possible from the hot cement.

Capitalization

I have been at a loss as to the rules of capitalization for named insects. Wikipedia has a good entry on capitalization. Here is a relevant snippet:

Some authors, though few if any grammar books, also treat the names of individual species of living things (animals, plants, etc) as proper nouns, and use initial majuscules for them, as in e.g. Peregrine Falcon while asserting that others, e.g. horse or person are not common names of species and should not be capitalized.

Mating Japanese Beetles

Latin name: Popillia japonica

We visited friends in Welland this past Sunday. They had a rather wild area behind the garage full of Goldenrod, Mint, and grapes that grew over the fence. These Japanese Beetles were found on grape leaves and were obviously in some state of mating. You can see some sort of discharge from the female (the one on the bottom). I am happy with the lighting intensity and clarity of this photo. The field of view is pretty close to lateral, giving good focus along the length of the beetles with a bit of a bias to their heads. This picture has been having a good run on the top20macro group on Flickr (a sort of Darwinian-modelled group whereby everyone is an administrator, only one post per day is allowed, and only 20 posts are allowed in the group).

I had noticed that some Japanese Beetles took on a pose whereby their hindmost limbs would splay out to the side. I think this may be done by females in order to provide purchase to the male when mating (you can see this in the photo). I don't think Japanese Beetles play coy when it comes to reproductive rituals. They pretty well just go at it. Often one can find two beetles mating with a third (presumably a patient male) sitting nearby.

Bottle fly on poppy flower head

Latin name: Lucilia sp.

This image was quite popular when I posted it on Flickr. Bugs on flowers are passe, but when you post a picture of a bug on a dead flower, well! Seriously, though, the lighting was pretty good for this shot and so was the clarity, without being overbearing. Looking at the phot some more, the depth-of-field worked out pretty well too. The Green Bottle Fly is also pretty, as Blow Flies go.

Picture wing fly

Latin name: Delphinia picta

This is a shot of a Picture Wing fly (got to figure out the rules for capitalization ) that was resting on our rear deck. I was able to stabilize the camera and obtain this clear image. What an odd insect. Most of its oddness comes from its rather elephantine or Tapir-like probiscus.

Male Hover/Syrphid fly on Gypsophila

Latin name: Toxomerus sp.

Havn't posted an image for a while. Here's one of a very small (about 6mm) Hover/Syrphid fly that was resting on a Baby's Breath (Gypsophila) flower bud in our front yard garden last weekend.

I like this photo because even with the small size of the fly it provides good detail. Additionally, it is in a pretty well ideal pose, not completely horizontal but stilll giving a full view of the form of the fly. Finally, Hover flies just don't stay still very often. Getting a shot of one is a bit of an accomplishement.

Note the good view of the vestigal rear wings now used for balance only.

Bruce Scheier interview

Bruce himself pointed to an interview he made. A great quote:

Unfortunately, there are two aspects of modern society that throw this all out of whack. The first is technology. Our security intuition evolved in a world where nothing ever changed. Fear of the new made a lot of sense in that kind of world. But the pace of today's technology means that things change all the time. Look at the Internet: every week there's a new attack tool, a new vulnerability, a new danger. Every year your computer and networks change in some radical way. Technology means that your car, your house, and your bank accounts all have features that they didn't have ten years ago, and people simply don't have the detailed expertise to make sensible security trade-offs about them.
The second problem is the media. Modern mass media has degraded our sense of natural risk, by magnifying the rare and spectacular and downplaying the common and ordinary. If we're wired to make our security trade-offs based on our sensory inputs, media gives us a wildly skewed view of the world. It's why people fear airplane crashes and not car crashes, even though the risk from the latter is considerably higher.

Letter to John Reid, Information Commissioner of Canada

Note: Corrections unfortunately not included in the email sent to John Reid in square brackets.

To: John Reid, Information Commissioner of Canada
From: Ian Marsman

I direct your attention to the website of National Resources Canada, in particular, to the section of the site dealing with downloads of place name data. The data in question deals with populated areas and geological features and includes for each place information including latitude and longitude, province, type of location, etc. In order for a Canadian citizen or anyone else for that matter to gain access to the whole dataset a fee must be paid and a licensing agreement must be agreed to. The fee to be paid ranges from $70 for information about obsolete place names to $660 for the complete dataset. The licensing agreement (called a "sales agreement" on the link to the agreement file) reads like a software end user licensing agreement and includes restrictions on usage, referring to additional licensing that must be obtained if the data is to be accessed from a centralized server. I have a few questions.

• Is it legal to charge a Canadian citizen [for data] whose collection has already been paid for by Canadian taxpayers (I am both a Canadian citizen and taxpayer)?
• Is it legal to place restrictions on the legal usage of the data, restrictions that seem to be designed to extract additional revenue?

I would like to point out that the United States government makes available at no cost downloads of data for US place names and for place names for other countries, including Canada. I have not found any mention of any sort of limitations on legal usage for this data. Why in the world should National Resources Canada charge me for data on place names in my own country while the US govenment provides similar (probably not as comprehensive) data without charge?

I am interested in using data on place names in Canada, the US, and possibly Mexico for a web-based business I am in the process of starting. I will be selling identification cards, posters, games, and other things relating to insects one can find in North America. My target audience is educators and amateur naturalists. In addition to the products I will be charging for I will be providing a service whereby people can submit places where one can find diffferent insects. This information will be available for free. Additional free services may include submission of insect sightings and display of sightings in the context of maps using Googles map service and their freely available map API. The idea is to be able to make a living and also to get people more interested in insects and in issues such as biodiversity and the effects of human enterprise on the natural world. If I am unable to obtain Canadian place name data for free or for the cost of to Natural Resources Canada of downloading I will use the data freely available from the US government. I will then be in the ironic position of providing much better service to Americans than to Canadians, since the US data will be much more comprehensive.

Why is Natural Resources Canada getting in the way of educational and legitimate business usages of Canadian Place name data by Canadians, data whose collection has already been paid for by the Canadian citizen and taxpayer? I could understand a small charge to offset the cost of data storage and transmission bandwidth, but the fees charged and restrictions on usage made don't match this sort of cost-recovery strategy. I'd finally like to note that I wrote [to Natural Resources Canada] a few years ago asking why Natural Resources Canada charges for this data and received a reply that in effect said that this was their policy. This correspondence occurred in the context of my interest in using the data for a course I was teaching at Malaspina University College in Nanaimo, British Columbia. I ended up using the American data. I would appreciate your timely investigation of this matter and reply as to your planned actions. Thank-you very much for your time and attention to this matter.

Google Map API

Google has now made available an API to allow embedding of its maps in one's own web pages. The API requires a key, as many web service APIs seem to. Lets you do all of the things unofficial hacks did, namely fetch a map, set zoom level, place markers with accompanying text, etc. One can use the API on websites when the page containing the map does not require any sort of payment to access.

Free software users/developers as "believers"

Letter to the globe in response to an article published on the failure of passage of legislations allowing patenting of software in the EU.

"Wednesday's vote was preceded by weeks of massive lobbying between big businesses and free software believers."

This is an odd way to describe people on two sides of a debate over software patents. "Big business" presumably refers to a group of people and corporations involved in doing business, in carrying out a group of activities. Now, the term "free software believers", what does that refer to? Does it refer to a group of armchair philosophers, advocates, zealots, what? It might come as a surprise to the author of this article to learn that the Globe and Mail's website runs on the Apache webserver which itself runs on the Linux operating system, both examples of free software. If any of this software was made unavailable through lawsuits under new patent legislation, the effects on the Globe would be very measurable, just as they would be if the availability of the proprietary Sun or Microsoft or Adobe software the Globe uses changed. In summary, the allowing of software patents could have very real and very measurable business implications for not only advocates of free software but also many who had no idea how important free software was in putting bread on their tables.

Any change in law can have ramifications felt differently by different groups. Calling users, developers, and advocates of free software "believers" trivializes the very real stake these people and business interests have in how patent law is implimented and interpreted.

Water lily in marsh

Latin name: Nymphaea odorata

This is the most popular of the Water lily photos I've posted. It is indeed balanced, with an inky black water region, a green lily pad region, an interesting browned lily pad section, and the lovely flower at the centre. The reflection of the sun above the flower is evocative as well. The flower's brightness makes a good contrast with the darkness of the water and the lily pads. From a technical standpoint, I was able to avoid glare and get reasonable sharpness of detail by holding my polarizing filter over the camera lens.

Many pictures of Water lilies I've seen are bright and well saturated throughout. I like the fact that this one has a lot of dark elements, an inky look to the water, and insect-eaten leaves. It gives the feel of the marsh, a different feel from a swimming pond or lake edge. A marsh has the feel of a messy, lively hive of activity and fermenting plant matter. A bright lily in a marsh is the sign of a momentary escape from ferment.

Long-jawed Orb weaver spider

Latin name: Tetragnatha sp.

Here's a female of the same species as the one posted below. A good example of sexual dimorphism. Note the excellent match between her colouration and the dried out thistle she is on. It was really a bit of a fluke that I noticed her at all.

Long-jawed Orb weaver spider

Latin name: Tetragnatha sp.

I'm pretty pleased with this shot of a Long-jawed Orb weaver. It was taken in pretty poor light I think at 1/60 sec exposure time. This is a male of the species. I'm not sure exactly which species it is. There were many of these fellows hanging out on top of the leaves of the Touch-me-nots that covered the forest floor in the hickory forest at Selkirk provincial park where we went camping this past weekend.

Cobweb spider with prey

Latin name: Enoplognatha ovata

Here's another Cobweb spider at work. This one's captured a firefly or some other related beetle. I hadn't really known much about Cobweb spiders until this past weekend's camping trip. They are spiders that spin disorganized webs and usually have rather round abdomens. A Black Widow is a Cobweb spider. It's difficult to nail down which species a Cobweb spider belongs to. There are several and they vary a lot within species as well.

Cobweb spider with prey

Latin name: Enoplognatha ovata

Not that many people have looked at this picture on Flickr. I like it a lot though. Not surprisingly, in retrospect, pictures that seem to be popular are ones that show up well as thumbnails. I enjoy this shot because it shows a Cobweb spider about to bite into newly captured prey. It's hard to get a picture of an insect doing its thing. Mostly one is happy to capture one after having chased it all over the foliage or over countless rocks.

Mating Wool Carder bees on Lamb's ear

Latin name: Anthidium manicatum

Yesterday at around four in the afternoon I was still hoping to get some more insect pictures. However, I was unable to go to a wonderful park. Fortunately, our neighbours have a patch of Lamb's ear in their front yard. I got some photos of Wool Carder bees, including this one of two of them mating. The male Wool Carder bee will scare competition away from a nice patch of flowers but will let females through, then mate with them once they've fed. Females apparently gather fuzz from plants like Lamb's ear and then work it to make a nest in a manner similar to a person carding wool. From this picture, mating does not seem to be either glamourous of fun for the female, whose wings get bent down by the male (this does probably protect them).

The Wool Carder bee is an introduced species from Europe.

Colorado potato beetle larvae dining on nightshade leaves

Latin name: Leptinotarsa decemlineata

Nancy and I went to a garden centre this past Saturday. While Nancy was ogling herbs and ground cover, I looked around the place for insects to photograph. In a grassy area by a pool of water in a culvert I found many Colorado potato beetles munching away on Deadly Nightshade leaves.

The Colorado Potato Beetle is actually thought to have originated in Mexico somewhere. It feeds on plants in the Nightshade family, which inludes the potato, tomato, petunia, tobacco, and eggplant. The increase in cultivation of the potato led to its spread around North America. Members of the Nightshade family of plants produce alkaloyds at dangerous levels various parts of the plant. The orange colour of the Colorado Potato beetle larva may serve as a warning that it is toxic.

Female Dolichopodid fly

Latin name: Dolichopodid (family)

Here's a female Dolichopodid fly, also known as a Long-legged fly. She was being harassed by a hovering, hopeful male.

Male Dolichopodid fly hovering over female

Latin name: Dolichopodid (family)

I was so pleased to get some shots of a Long-legged fly in flight. This is a male Long-legged fly. He was hovering over a female hoping to mate. The light was good so I was able to have the shutter speed at 1/800 second. Faster would have been even nicer.

Surprisingly, this shot has gotten little attention on Flickr, much less than an earlier shot of mating worms. I am apparantly a poor judge of what will be popular.

Attempting a meal

I got this photo of a fly starting to bite into my leg last Sunday afternoon. I got another of a horsefly, but it was fuzzy. Have to try again for a clearer shot (cringe).

Sac spider

Latin name: Clubiona sp.

Our house has been the home of several Sac spiders. I generally consider myself to be a friend to bugs. For the most part if we find a bug in the house we gently put it outside. Not so for the Sac spider whose bite is cytotoxic (kills cells) and painful. Putting a Sac spider outside would risk having someone get bitten there. Lewis has a small body mass and would suffer rather a lot from a bite. I choose to kill those we find. This one I kept in a jar and photographed yesterday after work. Then I squished it.

Bug site

The University of Kentucky has a great site on bug identification and categorization, including sections on plant bugs and assassin/ambush bugs. Very helpful.

Grasshopper

Latin name: Orthoptera (order)

I don't much go in for grasshoppers, but the shot of this one turned out to be quite clear. Pictures of bugs on bright green foliage often get comments on Flickr from people who admire green things or things that are brightly coloured.

Assassin bug

Latin name: Reduviidae (family)

Here's an assassin bug. Its abdomen seems to be filled with what looks like bright green goo. I'm not sure if this is the case as I didn't try to squish it.

Damsel bugs?

Latin name: Nabidae (family)

I've come across a new category of bugs, namely bugs that stab and poison then suck their prey dry. This category includes Assassin and Ambush bugs (family Reduviidae) and Damsel bugs (family Nabidae). I think that the bugs pictures here might be a nymph (left) and adult Damsel bug. You can see their sucking parts, folded back in the nymph and pointed down in the adult. Perhaps they're male and female adults of the same species or different species. I don't know yet. All of these killing bugs can be found in profusion in grassy fields.

Phidippus clarus spider on clover leaf

Latin name: Phidippus clarus

I have been hoping to find Phidippus jumping spiders in Ontario and did indeed find one this past Saturday at Short Hills provincial park in the form of this female Phidippus clarus. Rather, Janneke found it and I photographed it. She's good.

Robber fly with bee prey

Latin name: Laphria sp.

My first Robber fly! This one looks like a bumblebee. I saw it with Janneke in vegitation in a dry creekbed we were visiting. It was conspicuous initially by carrying around a dead bee. Bumblebees don't do that. After a moment, I noticed that it didn't bumble around as it flew but rather zipped here and there in a very purposeful manner. The light was poor, so the pictures I got were blurry. Nonetheless, a fun first.

Robber flies apparantly can see very well with their two large compound eyes and catch their prey in midair. Their mandible is large and strong enough to pierce through the exoskeleton of a beetle.

AJAX and Ruby on Rails

O'Reilly has a nice aricle on Ruby on Rails and AJAX, the hot new DHTML/remote scripting "why didn't we do this before?" phenomenon.

Apparantly, the new Pragmatic Programmers book on development with Rails will do a good job covering remote scripting/AJAX. I'll be getting this when it comes out in July.

The problem with DHTML and remote scripting has always been the requirement to hand-craft each page in much the same way as one might hand craft a chair. The difference is that a chair lasts a lifetime while a page lasts until you need to refactor it. This is why Flex is so hot; it lets you do neat dynamic and remote-calling things with an easy-to-use API. We'll really be getting somewhere if frameworks like Rails can become easy-to-use APIs whereby you only need to worry about what you need to call on the client side and what you need to send on the server side and not about the plumbing.

I'll be building a site this summer using Rails and will most likely now be adding some AJAX behaviours to the mix.

Here's a snippet from the article that sets up a live-updatable search list:

Live Search:
<%= text_field_tag :searchtext %>
<%= observe_field(:searchtext,                 :frequency => 0.25,
               :update => :search_hits,
               :url => { :action => :live_search }) %>

<p>Search Results:</p>
<div id="search_hits"></div>

The great thing about this is that the plumbing is hidden. Set up the structure and the actions, implement the back-end, and voila!

Sudoku example from Wikipedia

Ran across a Wikipeida article on Sudoku, a logic game that seems to have come together over time, gotten turned into a game in the US, but become a raging sensation in Japan before spreading around the world recently.

It looks fun. You need to make sure that the numbers 1 through 9 occur only once in each row and column and once in each 3x3 grid. Apparantly it can be quite tricky to solve some puzzles. I've downloaded a sample and will give it a try.

This might be a fun thing to expose Janneke to, even if she can't complete one yet. I hope to be able to inspire my kids to be curious or to remain curious, rather.

The Wikipedia article gives a number of links to sites one can download puzzles from, including this one.

Cringely on Apple on Intel

Cringely proposes that Intel and Apple are planning on going into an alliance to give Intel a new and more reliable chip-selling channel and Apple a massive increase in market share and both of them a chance to dethrone Microsoft. That would be fun to watch!

Female Wolf spider with egg sac

Latin name: Lycosa sp.

Just for reference, here's a female from another species of Wolf spider. This one's carrying her egg sac as well. Took this picture a few weeks ago at Short Hills park. It was quite frisky. Note the different wrapping for the eggs and differing carrying technique.