Mushroom time lapse

The box had to sit in the dark for three months for the mycelium to form inside the black plastic, but once released, the mushrooms grew to edible size in just over a week!

Here's what they looked like just before harvest:

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(You may have to click the top image through to Flickr to view the time lapse video. For some reason the YouTube version uploaded as a short and I can't work out how to get to the embed code.)
nanila: (kusanagi: amused)
( Mar. 11th, 2025 09:40 am)
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This photo of Comet on the bookshelves in my office made me laugh when I ran across it today, so I'm sharing.
1. Do you celebrate or observe Halloween? How?

Carving pumpkins. Roasting pumpkin seeds. Helping the kids pick out costumes and taking them trick-or-treating.

2. What is your favorite Halloween candy?

I love mini Butterfingers, but of course you don’t get those in the UK, so I’ll settle for mini packets of Haribo.

3. Do you get trick-or-treaters on Halloween?

We live in the sticks, so no. We take the children into the nearby town to go trick-or-treating with friends.

4. Do you enjoy dressing up in costumes?

I used to. I’m too tired to do so around Halloween these days as it falls in the middle of the university teaching term. But I used to go mad for it.

5. What is your favorite Halloween memory?

I don’t have a favourite memory, but I do have a favourite costume, which was the time I dressed up as the Annihilation Operator or Â, a superhero of my own invention. I had a spandex outfit, an awesome pair of Transmuter boots, a homemade logo, and a ray gun. What else do you need to go out killing particles?

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(My description from 2003, OH LOR how this is 21 years ago?!) I am the Annihilation Operator! The dreaded A-hat! I have the power to destroy electrons on sight. My mortal enemy is my transpose, the Creation Operator. Without him, though, I cannot build a Hamiltonian or see my true love, the Kroneker delta, the only one who doesn't go to zero at the sight of me.
nanila: fulla starz (lolcat: science)
( Jan. 9th, 2024 10:51 pm)
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Astro and Comet are 1 year old today. They're now asleep on their favourite human's bed (Humuhumu).
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Sorry, little buddy, not just yet.

He's healing well. Four more days' worth of antibiotics tablets to administer. His next check-up is tomorrow.
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Astro snagged himself on something sharp on Sunday evening and had to go to the vet yesterday for minor surgery. He now has a shaved flank and six stitches in his right leg. But the biggest indignity is, of course, the "Elizabethan collar", better known as the Cone of Shame, which he has to wear for the next 10-14 days.

We reckon this takes his life tally to seven, after the attempt to take up residence inside the Yaris.

He is grumpy about the cone but otherwise fine.
I went to Kenya!

My first (and only) trip to Kenya was in 2010, so I was glued to the window of the taxi for the entire journey from the airport to Kenyatta University campus. The amount of development that's taken place in those 13 years is astonishing. A forest of tall modern buildings sprouted downtown. The roads (thank goodness) now have central reservations, pavements, and pedestrian bridges so there were no repeats of the tragic accidents we witnessed on the roads during the previous trip. I was dreading those in the days preceding the trip, as I had lingering nightmares about them after returning home in 2010. There are safe, wide-laned elevated highways (toll roads) crossing the city, which afford fast passage through congested areas and excellent views of said development.

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[Leaving Dubai]

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[First glimpses of downtown Nairobi]

The campus was new to both the bloke and me. He has been to Nairobi on numerous occasions for his work on East African air quality, but usually goes to Nairobi University. The conference centre, which included our accommodation block, was located at the edge of the campus' vast acreage. Other than the distant roar of traffic, it didn't feel as if it were in the city. Around 70,000 students attend each year. Most live on campus. Since it was still the summer break and the students weren't there, it felt even more remote. We could see the marabou storks roosting atop the acacia trees outside our windows, and were awakened by the dawn chorus of weaverbirds and flycatchers.

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[Marabou storks roosting]

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[Yellow flycatchers and their nests]

We arrived in time to catch the last session of the first day of the training workshop we were there to help deliver. Afterwards we went to dinner with the organisers. The dining area was all of about 20 metres from the conference hall. We noshed on tasty Kenyan fare (for me, ugali, lentils and spinach), washed down with, successively, sugary tea, Tusker (Kenyan lager) and Jack Daniels gold label whisky that the main American organiser had procured from duty free (whattaguy).

I was a little stressed about delivering my session on space-based datasets since it was at 8 AM the next morning so partook only lightly of the booze. Thankfully I needn't have worried too much as it went well and I got good engagement in the room and online. It segued nicely into the bloke's and Robin's sessions. They brought things back to the ground (fnarr) and into the room, as Robin did a demo of his awesome light painting technique, which visualises the particulate matter in the room (PM2.5). I later got to help him make some paintings at dusk, with the storks in the background.

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[Light painting prep]

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[Livestream of light painting from the conference room]

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[Light painting at dusk]

Demob happy, we enjoyed the afternoon session and a rerun of the Kenyan food, Tusker and whisky. Having sleep very little the previous two nights due to flying and then anxiety, I turned in hours before the lads did. Unfortunately, most of them were struck down by food poisoning the next day. I congratulated myself on avoiding it, having eschewed all meat and dairy since arriving. This would later turn out to be hubristic.

After Wednesday morning's sessions, those of us from US and UK universities were swept onto a bus and carted to the Administration Complex to have a formal meeting, and tea, with members of the University executive board. We caught the tail end of the afternoon sessions, and turned in early after a quiet meal.

Thursday was our final day. Unfortunately for me, it was also A-level results day, and as I am still nominally the admissions tutor for my department, my attention was divided between C&C activities and the workshop. Nevertheless I enjoyed the pre-lunch sessions, which were to be our last at the workshop.

Word had got round that we were leaving that evening, so the bloke and I had a very busy networking lunch while everyone got a last word in with us. Once that was finished, we hopped in a Uber with Robin to visit the giraffe sanctuary. Unfortunately we managed to get the slowest driver in the world. He was in a battered Nissan leaf and clearly trying to eke the last bit of life out of the thing. A journey that should have been a little over an hour was dragged out into almost two, not least because he got lost. That left us about 40 minutes to feed the giraffes. We opted to skip all the informative plaques and videos and go straight to them. It was worth it.

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[Beware giraffe headbutts]

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[Giraffes loitering]

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[Snooty giraffe was my favourite]


The bloke and I hopped into what turned out to be a much newer Uber piloted by a satisfyingly kamikaze driver who got us back to campus far more efficiently, despite the traffic and missing the exit first time round.

We showered, packed, and checked out. Our third Uber driver arrived to cart us to the airport, which happily transpired without incident or deviation. At the airport, I made my fatal mistake and ate a non vegetarian samosa, thus ensuring a very uncomfortable journey home, from which I have now recovered. Huzzah. Also, the end.

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[I’m standing at a lectern, woo]
nanila: big black boots (stompy)
( Jun. 22nd, 2023 08:20 pm)
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Comet has discovered his inner goth.



The bats have left the bell tower

The victims have been bled

Red velvet lines the black box

Bela Lugosi's dead
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[Image: kitten inside the engine block of an old Yaris.]



Our Saturday morning started rather more stressfully than we would have liked. After waking me up at 5:30 AM with the usual assault on my toes, one of the kittens vanished before I could blearily rouse myself and head downstairs for the gooshy food distribution.



We tried not to panic, searching every room methodically with torches and opening all the cupboards, boxes and drawers, but it soon became evident that Astro was no longer in the house. Cue a flurry of activity: adults flinging on clothes and trying to calm the distraught Humuhumu so she could join the search outside, Keiki channeling his anxiety into mass producing "help, lost black kitten" posters with many enthusiastic but questionably accurate renderings of Astro.



After an hour or so of walking up and down and around the house shaking a packet of Dreamies, and its environs, enlisting the help of most of our neighbours, who are all early risers and / or dog walkers, I heard an angry mewing quite close to the house. At first I thought it came from the hedgerow. Cue a furious battle with wildflowers and stinging nettles, to no avail. I was certain the irregular mewing was coming from inside the car, a suspicion finally confirmed the second time the bonnet was lifted and a pair of yellow eyes stared at us from the beneath a tangle of pipes.



The next hour was spent trying to convince him to either pop enough of himself out through the pipes to be grabbed, or make his way out the opening underneath the car which he'd obviously used to get there in the first place. Efforts failed until suddenly the bloke remembered the magic power of tuna. The kittens had never had tuna (or Dreamies, for that matter) so we weren't certain it would work. But I ran in and opened a tin, spooned some into a bowl and placed it strategically offset from where we thought the secret entrance was.



It worked. The little darling trotted to the back of the engine block and squeezed out. He was caught before he could eat any tuna, which probably didn't improve his mood. He forgot all about his grump and his misadventure once he was safely back indoors and the tuna reappeared. The same could not be said for his humans, whose nerves continued to jangle for several hours afterwards.



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Butter wouldn't melt.
.