So what it's been like a month since I last posted? I must have looked at 30 something houses by now, maybe more and let me tell you I have learned quite a few things.
One, most people live like slobs. Dirty, nasty, houses filled with junk and grease caked floors. Shitty landscaping and old outdated appliances. Two, people have the audacity to price there shitty homes high without even budging during negotiations!! Three, NJ exists in some black hole, twilight zone where the house market has not crashed yet. Well to be fair it came down a little, houses are like 50k cheaper than they were. The insane thing is even with the employment rate still going down these houses are still selling! Every decent house I have seen is sold within a week, some even within a day!
I am already quite tired of it. Haven't seen a house yet that screams home to me, and not going to offer asking price until I see one that does. Until then all low bids. Hopefully I can find something before the summer ends. Thankfully, this Thursday I will be taking a week off from the hunt to visit Greg, Jeanny, and Antonia in California. Yay!
Moving along now....You all remember Walden who I hatched out in the beginning of the month? Well he has a few friends, I now have a flock of 6 ducklings running around the house. The first three; Walden (who you already know), Pebbles, and Bam Bam spend their days outside in the new pen I built. I bring them in at night, but they should be big enough to stay out 24/7 soon. The last three ducklings to hatch, who haven't been names yet, are still young and need to be kept indoors under a nice warm heat lamp. However they will be leaving for a new home tomorrow afternoon. Sad I know, but gives me more time to spend with Walden and Pebbles and Bam Bam. Plus less cleaning!!!
Well that's about it for now. Check out facebook and flickr accounts for more updates. Till next time!
Monday, June 29, 2009
Friday, June 5, 2009
World Meet Walden
Well after one failed attempt I finally had success in hatching a Call Duck last week!! Some of you from facebook know already, but for those who still haven't joined this is new info. The eggs have been coming from the pair I bought for Rita last year. I blogged about them here. They started laying early in the spring, so picked up a cheap incubator and threw in the first batch of three eggs.
They all went full term and quit before hatching out. On closer inspection they were actually deformed :(. I think the incubator did not maintain the humidity high enough. So much for being completely digital, dam Chinese made crap. In the garbage it went and I ordered a new incubator and I also used one of my old styrofoam incubators from when I bred reptiles back in the day. This second incubator I set up as a hatcher. So yeah your probably confused at this point, so let me explain the whole incubation process...
The hen will lay an egg every other day or so, until she gets around 3-4. She will than begin to sit on them and the warmth of her body will start the developmental process. Unfortunately call ducks make horrible brooders and can care less about sitting on eggs all day (remember they are man made breed). This is where I come in. I will collect and store eggs for about 10 days until I am ready to incubate them. If they are stored any longer fertility begins to drop. On day 10 they go into the incubator and take around 26 days to hatch.
The incubator needs to be kept at 99.5F and 50-55% humidity until the eggs internally pip. An internal pip is when the chick breaks through an air cell inside the egg and takes it's first breath. This usually happens 2-3 days before the hatch date and you need to candle the egg in order to find out. Around 24 hours later the chick should externally pip, or push the tip of its beak through the shell. At this point you need to drop the temperature to 98F and raise the humidity to 70%. This is a problem if you only have one incubator, hence me setting up two. I have one running at 99.5F/55% and a second at 98F/70%. With this combination I can get an assembly line going, where new eggs are constantly moving into the first incubator and ones ready to hatch into the second. Once the chicks externally pip it's usually another 24 hours before they fully emerge.
Got it now? Good...
So after my first failed attempt and setting up the above, my second batch of eggs went in, and the third, and the fourth....
In the second batch I had six eggs, three of which where 14 days old already (I was away for a few days). I knew they were too old, but wanted to try anyway. They started out okay, but quit only a few days later as I expected. Of the remaining two, one went full term and quit on the last day (also deformed upon later inspection) and the second hatched! Well sort of, I had to help the little guy out. Another problem with call ducks, they have been bred to have big heads and small beaks, so they have a hard time hatching. On that note I give you Walden (ask Rita about the name)...
So there he is, adorable isn't he? Follows me everywhere too. On posting this Walden is already 8 days old and growing fast! I'll be sure to keep everyone updated both here and on facebook. You can also join my flickr page too.
Oh yah I also have more eggs due to hatch any time now :).
They all went full term and quit before hatching out. On closer inspection they were actually deformed :(. I think the incubator did not maintain the humidity high enough. So much for being completely digital, dam Chinese made crap. In the garbage it went and I ordered a new incubator and I also used one of my old styrofoam incubators from when I bred reptiles back in the day. This second incubator I set up as a hatcher. So yeah your probably confused at this point, so let me explain the whole incubation process...
The hen will lay an egg every other day or so, until she gets around 3-4. She will than begin to sit on them and the warmth of her body will start the developmental process. Unfortunately call ducks make horrible brooders and can care less about sitting on eggs all day (remember they are man made breed). This is where I come in. I will collect and store eggs for about 10 days until I am ready to incubate them. If they are stored any longer fertility begins to drop. On day 10 they go into the incubator and take around 26 days to hatch.
The incubator needs to be kept at 99.5F and 50-55% humidity until the eggs internally pip. An internal pip is when the chick breaks through an air cell inside the egg and takes it's first breath. This usually happens 2-3 days before the hatch date and you need to candle the egg in order to find out. Around 24 hours later the chick should externally pip, or push the tip of its beak through the shell. At this point you need to drop the temperature to 98F and raise the humidity to 70%. This is a problem if you only have one incubator, hence me setting up two. I have one running at 99.5F/55% and a second at 98F/70%. With this combination I can get an assembly line going, where new eggs are constantly moving into the first incubator and ones ready to hatch into the second. Once the chicks externally pip it's usually another 24 hours before they fully emerge.
Got it now? Good...
So after my first failed attempt and setting up the above, my second batch of eggs went in, and the third, and the fourth....
In the second batch I had six eggs, three of which where 14 days old already (I was away for a few days). I knew they were too old, but wanted to try anyway. They started out okay, but quit only a few days later as I expected. Of the remaining two, one went full term and quit on the last day (also deformed upon later inspection) and the second hatched! Well sort of, I had to help the little guy out. Another problem with call ducks, they have been bred to have big heads and small beaks, so they have a hard time hatching. On that note I give you Walden (ask Rita about the name)...
So there he is, adorable isn't he? Follows me everywhere too. On posting this Walden is already 8 days old and growing fast! I'll be sure to keep everyone updated both here and on facebook. You can also join my flickr page too.
Oh yah I also have more eggs due to hatch any time now :).
Thursday, May 21, 2009
On the Hunt
Well it's time. Time to leave the nest and find a place of my very own. Rita and I have begun the long and grueling search for our first house. We have looked at quite a few already, but found nothing that screams home.
Towns we are checking out include, Little Falls, Wayne, Cedar Grove, North Haledon, Franklin Lakes, and Wanaque. Now we both would like to live close to work, so the first four towns listed would be the most ideal. I also hate to drive and pretty much every major chain is located within a few minutes of those areas. Only problem is you are paying around $400,000 for a small house. Hence Wanaque, its about a 30 minute drive to work, but you get a larger house for about $100,000 cheaper. Is it worth it? Well the house has to be perfect if we are going to move out that way. We shall see, got the whole summer to look and hopefully we find something by the end of it.
Towns we are checking out include, Little Falls, Wayne, Cedar Grove, North Haledon, Franklin Lakes, and Wanaque. Now we both would like to live close to work, so the first four towns listed would be the most ideal. I also hate to drive and pretty much every major chain is located within a few minutes of those areas. Only problem is you are paying around $400,000 for a small house. Hence Wanaque, its about a 30 minute drive to work, but you get a larger house for about $100,000 cheaper. Is it worth it? Well the house has to be perfect if we are going to move out that way. We shall see, got the whole summer to look and hopefully we find something by the end of it.
Friday, May 1, 2009
Addicted to Facebook.
Love it so much I am going to delete my myspace.com account soon. Hell it's even better than this blog on many levels in that my friends actually read the stuff I write....lol. Who the hell reads this blog anyway? I know you do Greg on occasion but I mine as well just e-mail you instead...lol.
Anyway no progress on any of my projects, just waiting for summer to get here. Work is tiresome and I can't wait to get two months off, I desperately need it.
As far as new gadgets, nothing really spectacular. I picked up a neat little handled that plays NES, SNES, Sega Master System, GB, Neo Geo, and Capcom Arcade roms. Most of the games work pretty well, however the emulators definitely need work. There is a growing community for the device and some are working on new software to run the games better. So with a bit of luck it will turn into a pretty bad ass little device.
Also picked up a new lens for my camera, Canon EF 50mm f1.4 USM. I wanted a decent portrait lens and with the praise that the Canon EF 50mm f1.8 II lens gets, figured I would splurge a bit and get the better metal mount. I had some amazon gift cards anyway. It should be arriving in a week or so, looking forward to playing around with it.
Other than that the wait for summer continues...
Anyway no progress on any of my projects, just waiting for summer to get here. Work is tiresome and I can't wait to get two months off, I desperately need it.
As far as new gadgets, nothing really spectacular. I picked up a neat little handled that plays NES, SNES, Sega Master System, GB, Neo Geo, and Capcom Arcade roms. Most of the games work pretty well, however the emulators definitely need work. There is a growing community for the device and some are working on new software to run the games better. So with a bit of luck it will turn into a pretty bad ass little device.
Also picked up a new lens for my camera, Canon EF 50mm f1.4 USM. I wanted a decent portrait lens and with the praise that the Canon EF 50mm f1.8 II lens gets, figured I would splurge a bit and get the better metal mount. I had some amazon gift cards anyway. It should be arriving in a week or so, looking forward to playing around with it.
Other than that the wait for summer continues...
Saturday, March 21, 2009
What d'ya hear, Starbuck?
Well last night was the series finale of Battlestar Galactica, and what a finale it was. After rescuing Hera, the cylon/human hybrid, Starbuck puts in a set of jump coordinates from her visions and poof...the fleet finds a beautiful blue world, our Earth 150,000 years ago. The interesting part is they technically found the real Earth (the missing 13th colony) in season 4, but it was decimated by a nuclear war between centurions and skinjobs. The cycle of man vs machine played out just as it did on Kobal and Caprica. Adama later says Earth is just a dream they all have been chasing, and they call this new planet Earth as well. It's an Earth where the man vs machine conflict has not happened yet. The philosophical stuff behind all this is intense, I could spend all day discussing it :).
Anyway they land in Africa and find tribal humans on the planet, they have no language and only basic tools. Analysis quickly reveals they are compatible and it will be possible for the fleet to breed with them and continue their existence. However remaining members of the fleet agree to start over and leave all there tech behind, a clean slate. The skinjobs give the centurions the base ship and set them free, hoping to break the cycle of man vs machine that stared on Kobal, repeated itself on Caprica and the first Earth they found. The remaining ships are flown directly into the sun to destroy all evidence of them. Everyone spreads out across the major continents of the planet in order to increase the chances of survival. We find out Starbuck really did die, and was resurrected to lead the fleet to earth....twice. Upon finishing her journey she disappears in front of Apollo's eyes.
Fast forward 150,000 years to present day New York and we see head Gaius and head Six walking the streets. The visions both Gaius and Six were seeing really wasn't a chip in their heads, they were being guided by angels. As head Gaius and Six walk the streets they read in a magazine that scientist have discovered the mitochondrial eve of all humans in Africa, it was Hera! All present day humans are part cylon. However there are still questions remaining.
Will the cycle break this time? What happens when the cycle is finally broken? Will everyone transcend into something beyond death? Is that what Starbuck was? Stuff to think about, all we know is the second Earth, our Earth is yet another chance for humanity and machines to break the cycle, the question is will they? Gaius is convinced the cycle will begin again, while Six is hopeful it will be different this time. She states when a complicated system is repeated over and over your bound to get unexpected and surprising results. Could not have said it better myself Six; and with that one of TVs most brilliant shows fades out and begins showing advances in current robot tech. Just wow, there is so much hidden here that it will be discussed in philosophy classes for decades to come (similar to the Matrix). The show really was a work of art and I already miss it terribly...farewell Battlestar.
What d'ya hear, Starbuck?
Nothin' but the rain.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Go Lie in Traffic David DeWitt
You know not much surprises me these days, the human race is just a bunch of upright walking apes that was flinging poo at each other not to long ago. But this morning in the paper there was a nice big article on a college level creationist class taking a trip to a Museum down in Washington D.C. This whack job of a professor(David DeWitt)was going around giving his alternate version of history.
Let me just highlight some of the stuff here. "God made the first human, Adam, in essentially modern form 6,000-10,000 years ago" Really? I mean really? I can see the religious freaks not giving up on the whole god thing, but modern man was just dropped down on the planet only 6,000-10,000 years ago? So we are just going to throw out allllllll the fossil evidence and genetic drift that we see in the genes of different human races. How about the genetic similarities between related species, like humans and chimps (only differ by 1%). But wait hold on it gets better....
"As a young-Earth Creationist, he asserts that the vast majority of the rocks and fossils were formed during Noah's flood about 4,000 years ago." Hahahah...4,000 years ago. I am sure there was a large flood somewhere, and the pitiful earth monkeys that we were back than didn't realize it was just a local phenomenon and not a global one. There is even some evidence for such large local floods. But come on a global flood? This isn't water world, there is not enough water on the planet for that, I should not even humor you by explaining. This douche bag actually thinks the Grand Canyon was created by the retreating waters of this so called global flood. I don't even know what to say this and the sheer amount of stupidity and delusion it represents. To this guy it makes more sense that retreating flood waters carved the worlds largest canyon system in a mater of days compared to a river system slowly eating away soft sandstone over millions of years. Wow, just wow. There are actually COLLEGE professors teaching this crap?!? Someone should arrest this man.
What gets me the most is that all these creationist take the word written in some ancient text that is the equivalent of today's mother goose! They through out all measurable, MEASURABLE evidence about the natural world and strongly believe in genesis. Fuck I don't even think the catholic church takes genesis seriously. We really need to end this crap, for the sake of humanities future. What is it going to take, the discovery of life on another planet? Nah, they will just come up with some other crazy story like that was just god tinkering before he made Earth. Ugh. Atheist really need to work together and crush this nonsense, we will be better off as a species for it....
Let me just highlight some of the stuff here. "God made the first human, Adam, in essentially modern form 6,000-10,000 years ago" Really? I mean really? I can see the religious freaks not giving up on the whole god thing, but modern man was just dropped down on the planet only 6,000-10,000 years ago? So we are just going to throw out allllllll the fossil evidence and genetic drift that we see in the genes of different human races. How about the genetic similarities between related species, like humans and chimps (only differ by 1%). But wait hold on it gets better....
"As a young-Earth Creationist, he asserts that the vast majority of the rocks and fossils were formed during Noah's flood about 4,000 years ago." Hahahah...4,000 years ago. I am sure there was a large flood somewhere, and the pitiful earth monkeys that we were back than didn't realize it was just a local phenomenon and not a global one. There is even some evidence for such large local floods. But come on a global flood? This isn't water world, there is not enough water on the planet for that, I should not even humor you by explaining. This douche bag actually thinks the Grand Canyon was created by the retreating waters of this so called global flood. I don't even know what to say this and the sheer amount of stupidity and delusion it represents. To this guy it makes more sense that retreating flood waters carved the worlds largest canyon system in a mater of days compared to a river system slowly eating away soft sandstone over millions of years. Wow, just wow. There are actually COLLEGE professors teaching this crap?!? Someone should arrest this man.
What gets me the most is that all these creationist take the word written in some ancient text that is the equivalent of today's mother goose! They through out all measurable, MEASURABLE evidence about the natural world and strongly believe in genesis. Fuck I don't even think the catholic church takes genesis seriously. We really need to end this crap, for the sake of humanities future. What is it going to take, the discovery of life on another planet? Nah, they will just come up with some other crazy story like that was just god tinkering before he made Earth. Ugh. Atheist really need to work together and crush this nonsense, we will be better off as a species for it....
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
The Start of Summer Project #1
OKay so I know its a bit early, but got started on my first summer project. Very excited about this one too. I plan on building a MAME cabinet. WTF is that you say? Well MAME stands for multiple arcade machine emulator.
If you are into playing games on your PC, you might have run across emulation, you know playing old Nintendo games on your PC via ROM files. Well they ROMS for all the old arcade games too, and they have LOTS. About two weeks I downloaded over 7,000 of them. Yup that's right. Think of your favorite game you played as a kid, I mostly likely have it. There is a crazy community for it too, you would not believe the shit they got, everything from the manuals to icons for these games. I have a file over 100GB that contains all of it on my computer. Good stuff.
Anyway as of now I am using my old computer that my i7 rig replaced. MAME can easily run on computers designed for Windows 98, so my old rig is not going to even break a sweat. As of right now I have Windows 7 Beta installed on it along with all the MAMEUI32, a version of MAME that has a GUI. However while its easier to you, you don't want to be browsing around in it with a joystick and using a mouse will just ruin the whole arcade feeling. Good thing they make front ends for MAME!
A front end is a piece of software that runs over MAME, spicing it up a bit, well really a lot. There are a few of them out there, I am using one of the more popular ones, GameEX. Kind of looks like windows MCE, but a little slicker. Basically its all the ROMS graphically organized by categories. The titles are listed by name and represented by their own icons. When you select a title, another screen appears and provides a brief summary, screen shots, cabinet shots, video of the game playing, and of course an option to start it up. When you select start the loading screen pops up and it shows the controls corresponding to that game. Its really nifty. One of the kewler features includes the screen saver mode, it will randomly load up the ROMS and play them in attract mode. Which is basically clips of random games playing, high scores, etc.
Of course playing anything was a bitch with the keyboard and it was hard to test stuff out, so I went ahead and ordered a dual joystick setup. I could have made mine own, but there was a lot more involved and it would have been more expensive. So I said screw it and purchased a pre-made one from a company called X-Arcade. The sticks are great, built like a tank as the sight says. Only draw back is the big bright X logo on them. Wonder if I can paint over it...hmmm.
So yah check out the pictures. This is going to be a long term project, obviously since the summer did not start yet. Right now I am really just testing the software out. Once school is out its cabinet building time. Also need to look for a 20" 4:3 LCD monitor in the meantime, that widescreen is just not going to work. Till next time....
If you are into playing games on your PC, you might have run across emulation, you know playing old Nintendo games on your PC via ROM files. Well they ROMS for all the old arcade games too, and they have LOTS. About two weeks I downloaded over 7,000 of them. Yup that's right. Think of your favorite game you played as a kid, I mostly likely have it. There is a crazy community for it too, you would not believe the shit they got, everything from the manuals to icons for these games. I have a file over 100GB that contains all of it on my computer. Good stuff.
Anyway as of now I am using my old computer that my i7 rig replaced. MAME can easily run on computers designed for Windows 98, so my old rig is not going to even break a sweat. As of right now I have Windows 7 Beta installed on it along with all the MAMEUI32, a version of MAME that has a GUI. However while its easier to you, you don't want to be browsing around in it with a joystick and using a mouse will just ruin the whole arcade feeling. Good thing they make front ends for MAME!
A front end is a piece of software that runs over MAME, spicing it up a bit, well really a lot. There are a few of them out there, I am using one of the more popular ones, GameEX. Kind of looks like windows MCE, but a little slicker. Basically its all the ROMS graphically organized by categories. The titles are listed by name and represented by their own icons. When you select a title, another screen appears and provides a brief summary, screen shots, cabinet shots, video of the game playing, and of course an option to start it up. When you select start the loading screen pops up and it shows the controls corresponding to that game. Its really nifty. One of the kewler features includes the screen saver mode, it will randomly load up the ROMS and play them in attract mode. Which is basically clips of random games playing, high scores, etc.
Of course playing anything was a bitch with the keyboard and it was hard to test stuff out, so I went ahead and ordered a dual joystick setup. I could have made mine own, but there was a lot more involved and it would have been more expensive. So I said screw it and purchased a pre-made one from a company called X-Arcade. The sticks are great, built like a tank as the sight says. Only draw back is the big bright X logo on them. Wonder if I can paint over it...hmmm.
So yah check out the pictures. This is going to be a long term project, obviously since the summer did not start yet. Right now I am really just testing the software out. Once school is out its cabinet building time. Also need to look for a 20" 4:3 LCD monitor in the meantime, that widescreen is just not going to work. Till next time....
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