Ready for my close up…

Some still images from a photography session with Tagny’s awesome phase microscope. Experimental animation to come…?

Sex tests

After waiting for our summer squash flowers to open for well over a week, came the sudden realization that a) they open so briefly that we might miss pollination and b) the ovaries of the female flowers became less apparent as the flowers matured. Pollination required identification and that necessitated the invasive process of prying [...]

Growing…

Last weekend we finished (?) installing three computers and webcams (named for their donors – Cecilia, Frank and Napoleon). We’ve also named the Kinder/Garden summer squash plants: Magda, Martha, Portia and Patsy and rearranged them into a corner of the space we call “Squash Land.”

Webcam Installation, part 6 – Success!

At last! Successful installation of the first bit of timelapse! Here you can see footage (1 frame/10minutes) of a dying male flower taken from late afternoon Monday, March 15 to early afternoon Thursday, March 18, 2010… Today I have been attempting to put together two more systems (which has required some running about and OS [...]

Surveillance, part 5 – with a little (lotta) help from my friends

Laboratory animals are routinely sacrificed. In Kinder/Garden, the living things get to live and it’s the technology that may not make (fine with me, because I’m really not liking it these days). Anyhow, because the hot, humid and dirty greenhouse is a terrible environment for computers and because wireless technology proved to be an unworkable [...]

Webcam installation, part 4

Actually, this post ought to be called webcam “de-installation”. Yesterday morning, I called X10 and they agreed to take back their system.  I had the system up and running in two different locations (greenhouse and my office in the EV) for five days and here’s an unedited compilation of all the images that were recorded [...]

Webcam installation, part 3

Last week, Thursday, March 4 -moving into the EV In the nursery, it’s hot, humid and getting worse. Midday temperatures are already hovering around 30 degrees with water and dirt all around – on the floor, on the shelves, in the air… Could there be a less hospitable environment for a computer? (Probably, but this [...]

Webcam installation, part 2

Today I did the unthinkable. After visiting the Learning Center to chat with a counsellor about my own students’ problems with Time Management, I went to visit the Greenhouse and ended up skipping my first class ever.

Fetal imaging

When I began “baby shopping” this is the first link that appears when I google “3d baby.” 3D Baby Fetal Imaging Creepy, huh? Living foetuses imaged to imitate virtual models… and like their CG counterparts, all spray-tanned, homogenized, and isolated from their de-humanized, maternal environment. As subjects of surveillance, foetuses gain personhood at the expense [...]

Webcam installation, part 1

It would make for very dull viewing, I know, but just once instead watching tv shows or movies with crazy, fancy marvelous technology, I want to see a near-hysterical character amidst a pile of wires, hardware and laptops, spending hours and hours trying to install software with and without technical phone support. Guess how I [...]