The wild budgies of Billabong.

[StevOz]

Came across this the other day and I thought hey ol' Nic has been around a bit and might get a kick out of seeing it..

http://open.abc.net.au/posts/the-wild-budgies-of-billabong-94vq5pe?WT.svl=open0

That's a lot of birds!

 

[Isaac Sauvage]

thanks, steve. beautiful.

they look a heck of a lot more interesting flying across the sky than they do sitting on perches in parakeet cages.

back in cleveland i'm in the middle of a winter storm. dunno how the birds make it through these freezing days with the icy winds. not budgies, mind you, but birds in general. like crows, sparrows, goldfinches, etc.

 

[StevOz]

Yeah not a fan of caged or clipped birds myself.

On that note here's a blue wren in our backyard, spent sometime to get this shot, it's not the best as I had to shoot it at 10x zoom, still it makes a great wallpaper.

 

[LeeVanCleef]

That is some gorgeous footage! On a related note, I watched a PBS special called Kangaroo Mob, all about how the unconquerable human infestation of Canberra is ruining the 'roos natural habitat, and how they're getting creamed by cars on a daily basis. Fucking humans! Although I do like the idea of kangaroos creeping around backyards as soon as the sun goes down. Seems a more pleasant alternative than the packs of coyotes we have to put up with up north.

 

[StevOz]

Ah kangaroos, lots of them around my local golf course, here is one of them. I'll have to get up there with my camera and get some better shots of mobs of them...

 

[Isaac Sauvage]

what's up with the coyotes in kansas? a problem for crops and small herds? isn't kevin costner around to keep them under control?

RE: kangas,
one of my favorite historical stories is still the one about australia losing a major war to kangaroos, somewhere around the 40's, i think. not that any animal ever really 'beats' humans, but you get the idea... pure hilarity.

@steve,
so how are things going, mate?

i've completely lost touch with people in the VP scene, to my shame. anyway, are you still living in the beautiful SW oz coastal town... riding on your moto and maintaining the golf courses, etc?

 

[LeeVanCleef]

Ah kangaroos, lots of them around my local golf course, here is one of them. I'll have to get up there with my camera and get some better shots of mobs of them...

Wow, that's very cool! Do the roos every mess with the balls on the fairway? I remember a PGA tournament... at Sawgrass, maybe?... where a bird swooped down, picked a ball up off the green and dropped it in the water. I wonder if you still get hit with a penalty stroke for that?

@ Nic... the only personal affect coyotes have had on my life (besides the noise!) is having one run out in front of my car while tripping and driving. Thought it might have been an hallucination, but my co-pilot saw it, too. BTW, Kevin Costner dances with wolves. Coyotes are just overgrown rats!

 

[sleepy]

Talk about hallucinatory experiences with animals.
I had been feeding a couple of stray cats outside my apartment door and one morning about 4 A.M. I heard the crunch of kibble and, because one of the cats had been missing in action, I opened the door to take a look, and...

...it was a two foot long Opossum, not including his tail.
He was sitting there in the darkness under the apartment spotlights quietly crunching and munching the cat kibble with a young cat patiently standing nearby and back. I sat down behind the screen door and watched Mr. Opossum quietly crunching and munching the cat kibble about one and a half yards from me.

When he had had enough, he walked away with the young cat.

As for coyotes, I've seen two of those in my life.
The first one was while staying at McCambridge Park after The Northridge Earthquake in '94 while my apartment was being repaired. The park is in Burbank in a highly residential hillside terraced community, and about 1 A.M. I was standing at the front of the park and saw a coyote. He was trotting along across the front yards of the homes on the hillside with tongue hanging out of his mouth and smiling, cheerfully looking for trash *I think*.

The second time was while waiting at the bus stop at Olive View Hospital in the hills of Sylmar, about 11 P.M.
The coyote was trotting along, tongue hanging out of his mouth and he was smiling.
He seemed very friendly and strictly about his business.

 

[LeeVanCleef]

LOL! I used to have the same problem when I fed a neighborhood stray... creepy, filthy possums eating the catfood. One time, I had enough! I opened the door and did by best cat hisssss at the possum. I'll be damned if it didn't square its paws, bare its teeth and hiss right back. I quickly slammed the door. Opossum: 1 Human: 0

 

[Isaac Sauvage]

my hat's off to opossums, as well as raccoons and foxes... all small-to-medium sized mammals that can manage to thrive in the wasteland of civilisation. there aren't too many in that category, you know? i guess the weasel family would be another, of which skunks are a resilient example.

my favorite cartoon of all time features a possum as the main character:

 

[LeeVanCleef]

I would at least come to the defense of the cute small-to-medium-sized mammals (which would so leave out non-cartoon possums)... but that would include raccoons, who, on the surface, look pretty adorable. That was before I heard this pants-crapping terrifying story about a rabid raccoon.
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/play_full.php?play=319&act=1

 

[Isaac Sauvage]

wow... i don't know how i could live with myself as a health care worker telling that lady she was in the wrong county and had to look elsewhere for the precious rabies shot... after she'd said she was down to her last 24 hours or so. i do understand they're bureaucrats and the shot costs a tonne, but still... what a horrible experience to go through.

and i thought the lady's reaction to 'nature' was pretty telling about the mindset of mankind. how she felt safe and comforted in the woods pre-raccoon, and totally paranoid, afterwards.

good to hear some ira glass. i should add some of those to my playlist. i mainly listen to whaddya know podcasts these days, having sadly neglected the rest of the NPR and PRI spectrum.


EDIT: getting back to the STTNG-watching the last day or two. i'm into the later seasons and better episodes. *phew*
no complaints watching ashley judd in "the game", either.

 

[sleepy]

About rabies, I didn't know there can be two opposite sets of symptoms to the disease.
There is the classic cliche of a mad violent raving creature frothing at the mouth and attacking at random, but the disease can also appear as a complete lack of energy with wasting and lethargy, with very passive, non-violent behavior, though I wouldn't count on an animal not nipping you. My cats nip when they are annoyed, injured or threatened, to communicate the fact, but it is a passive nip. A rabid passive animal might be feeling their pain and may bite harder because of it, to communicate the fact.

 

[LeeVanCleef]

whaddya know

NOT MUCH... YOU? Oh, I just couldn't help myself. Hey, I'm in total alignment on that woman's paranoia. I was walking through my neighborhood on 4th of July and saw a raccoon come slinking out of the Arkansas River. With that story in mind, I did an about-face and went around the block!
That Ashely Judd episode is awful. Ashely Judd in the ST:TNG body-stocking is A-OK!

 

[Isaac Sauvage]

btw, something pretty interesting about rabies from the "milwaukee cure" WP entry--

apparently if you can keep the brain from 'sabotaging' itself, the patient will indeed make antibodies to kill off the rabies virus. so a new type of last-minute cure involves putting the patient into a coma while the immune system fixes the problem all by itself.

 

[sleepy]

But I don't want to kill off the rabies vaccine.
I want to kill my rabies!

 

[Isaac Sauvage]

thanks. fixed.

 

[Isaac Sauvage]

now a random post, because that's what i'm good for, apparently:

i'd wanted to clear up the floor cable situation around my table tennis table, so recently i decided to replace my computer speaker setup with a wireless bluetooth one. because... you know... listening to music while playing sports can lead to increased focus and relaxation. sort of the ginseng effect, if you know what i mean.

first thing i realised was how much more expensive the wireless speakers are compared to the traditional ones. but i bit the bullet and, after some hesitation, decided to pony up for a spracht "aura blunote" speaker:

got it home and tried it, and the sound was pitiful. the so-called "bass boost" and "stereo boost" features were jokes, and overall it sounded not much better than those little metal discs used to produce sound in the 80's handheld games. let's rate it at two little metal discs and be generous.

second thing i realised was how much more efficient a setup is when you split the sound signal in to 2-3 units, i.e. main sound and subwoofer, or main plus woofer and tweeter. i mean, the concept is not rocket science, but with this, it got driven home in a big, big way.

the logitech setup that the spracht replaced probably cost 2/3rd as much, and was a big subwoofer connected to two tiny stereo speakers. but the sound on the logitech was about ten times as nice... plus you could shake the whole room with that thing if you ever really wanted to.

took the spracht back to microcenter, chewed through half a dozen more bullets, and decided to spend three times as much for bose' version of the unit, called the "soundlink":

got it home and felt like a fool for blowing a fortune on the thing. not to mention thinking that a single speaker unit could do the job of a set, which was surely a pipe dream with only a soggy saddam hussein lurking at the bottom. but... set it on the back of my couch, right against the wall, and was promptly blown away. the sound, particularly the bass, was unbelievably rich.

apparently on the back of the unit are some mini bass speakers that thrive when placed next to a wall. in effect, they use the wall as a sounding board the way a subwoofer uses a floor- only they're much tinier.

so in the end, this thing is a nice upgrade over the traditional speaker set, plus it has a rechargable battery built in, and being the size of a medium book, is a great take-along with a cell phone, tablet, laptop etc. instant chamber orchestra or mosh pit. this little sucker manages to fill up a 20' x 20' room capably and doesn't sound overstretched.

listening to "mission control" right now and it sounds great. or this viola trio- they sound heavenly even at low quality.

so, yea... wow. i guess i finally understand the power of high-end speakers. what all those audiophiles go nuts over.

 

[sleepy]

A couple of other tricks for reinforcing the bass, depending on the speaker design.
If the Bose unit is deliberately designed with rear ports for bass reinforcement when placed against a mid wall, then this may not sound too good, but placing a typical woofer in the corner of the room, known as Corner Loading, allows the corner and woofer to behave as a Horn Loaded woofer/system. The bass from the speaker edges also bounce off the adjacent walls which fattens the sound.

You can also take a box with a sealed bottom and no flaps at the top, preferably made of wood though I haven't tried it with a cardboard box, lay it on its lengthside and turn the open end towards the woofer so that the lower 1/3 of the woofer is below the top edge of the box.
The upper 2/3 of the woofer should be above the box.

The portion of bass from the lower third of the woofer will slap the airspace in the box and amplify the sound acoustically.

Angling a woofer straight into the floorboard footspace between the door and the transmission hump in a conventional car will also enforce bass repercussion.

Don't know about bluetooth wireless sound, but I've been curious about the ultrasonic sound system that somebody came up with, though it has a very narrow effective listening area, like the effective viewing angle of a video monitor.
Apparently this system cannot be heard outside of the narrow listening area. The sound is projected on a beam of ultrasonic energy.

 

[StevOz]

@steve,
so how are things going, mate?

i've completely lost touch with people in the VP scene, to my shame. anyway, are you still living in the beautiful SW oz coastal town... riding on your moto and maintaining the golf courses, etc?

Ah same almost, what's this moto? Been on me bike for the last 4 years or so...

Still on the golf course, playing twice a week and last year I won the club companionship and just about every other trophy. :)

Here's my record...

http://www.golflink.com.au/HandicapHistory.aspx?golflink_no=6680700001

 

[StevOz]

Meh.... get some real speakers....

http://www.theloudspeakerkit.com/

At least that's da plan, funds and conditions provided.:)

 

[Isaac Sauvage]

sounds good. just modify it to receive the signal on bluetooth and it would do the job. actually, i'm quite happy with the way things turned out- this little bose is way better for my needs than a full speaker setup.

anyway, wow... congrats on the golf success. fourteen handicap, nice. wish i played so i could ask for advice. all i know is how to go to a driving range and merrily hook and slice the afternoon away. btw, last i remember you rode a moto (motorcycle)... now you've switched to a bike (bicycle)? or probably that's just a misunderstanding and nothing has changed.

@arne,
yea, i noticed a some little devices coming out that used the 'pushing air against the frame of a box' concept. you plug the 1/8" jack end in to your cellphone / MP3 / tablet and the other end suction cups to any old kind of container and you get 'instant big sound'. no idea how it sounds in practice, however.

btw, i'm normally a DIY-kind of guy, but with receding health and a little bit more financial stability lately, i've gotten lazier... been treating myself to an amenity or two the last couple years. the last projects i completed a couple summers ago were a homemade air conditioner and a rolling toolchest, but i do love to browse instructable.com. but most of my spare energy these days goes in to spinning 40mm balls of cellulite over a 6" net.

 

[StevOz]

Ah..ya must of missed this post then.

http://www.pinballnirvana.com/forums/showthread.php?t=7412&highlight=broken

 

[Isaac Sauvage]

Ah..ya must of missed this post then.

http://www.pinballnirvana.com/forums/showthread.php?t=7412&highlight=broken

my, you sound like a bit of the old daredevil. so have you healed up okay?

 

[Isaac Sauvage]

cool... no rabies that time: