Monthly Archive for December, 2006

Antiquarian Books for Beachcombers

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Jason
on December 21, 2006
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Link to Amazon [150x200, 12K]A couple months ago, I picked up a reprint of The Whale Book by Adriaen Coenen (1585) at my local indie bookstore.

In the late 16th century, Dutch beachcomber Adriaen Coenen scanned the beaches of Holland for interesting marine material and produced several illustrated manuscripts of his findings, covering anything from the commonplace herring to the exotic moonfish. Coenen’s work contains the earliest European pictures of whales, naïve but easily identifiable, which makes it a rare visual and textual source for the natural world of his day.

Link to Koninklijke Bibliotheek (KB) [150x200, 12K]

You can thumb through a detailed, Flash-based facsimile over at the Koninklijke Bibliotheek (click on Blader in het Visboek). Reading the commentary in the reprint, it’s interesting seeing the transition from medieval murk to rational enlightenment. Today technology makes the oceans less opaque to exploration, but back then most knowledge came from whatever rot washed up on the shore. Consequently, it was easy to get a distorted vision of what many sea creatures really looked like.

Link to National Diet Library [200x150, 12K]
It is also interesting to compare the European naturalist’s depictions to those from Japan. Over at Pink Tentacle, they link to the works of Kurimoto Tanshuu (1756 - 1834), who sketched wildlife during the Edo period. Japan’s National Diet Library makes hi-res scans available of these original works.

Coenen and Tanshuu worked some 200 hundred years apart and both seemed to take some liberty with their depictions. But Tanshuu’s skill and level of detail is compelling. Be sure to check out the comments on Metafilter for some translations of the Diet website.

“Podcast” Aquatic: SeaTalk

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Jason
on December 20, 2006
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The Delaware SeaGrant program produces short radio announcements on ocean topics called SeaTalk. They have material going back to 1998 in wav and mp3 formats. Wouldn’t take much to syndicate this stuff and turn it into podcasts. How about it Delaware? Don’t keep your content bottled up. Let me know if you need help. :)

As a public service in conjunction with more than 35 area radio stations, Delaware Sea Grant produces SeaTalk, a bimonthly series of 30- and 60-second radio announcements on subjects ranging from sharks to sand dunes to current marine science research. The series has been in production at the University of Delaware for more than 30 years.

SeaTalk Sampler

Laughing Squid Explained by Scott Beale

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Jason
on December 17, 2006
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Via Ryan is Hungry

The Cephalopodcast is hosted on the Laughing Squid servers. I don’t have any direct affiliation with them other than as a satisfied customer. It just seemed like a natural enough choice selecting their services when it came time to look for hosting. Indeed, Laughing Squid was a bit of an enigma to me at first, since they seemed to be more about art than science. But I just came across a video interview with the Laughing Squid founder, Scott Beale, that inked in some of the details:

Scott is an instigator, an experimenter, a businessman and guy with a lot of great t-shirts. Check out this interview where every story Scott tells leads to 5 more stories. This short interview doesn’t do him justice, but it’s a start.

Read the rest and see the video here.

Podcast Aquatic: Science and the Sea™

Published
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Jason
on December 17, 2006
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The University of Texas Marine Science Institute produces a short format podcast called Science and the Sea™:

The goal of Science and the Sea™ is to convey this understanding of the sea and its myriad life forms to everyone, so that they, too, can fully appreciate this amazing resource. We do this through magazine articles, a radio program, and activities on our website. In all of these, we provide entertaining stories and activities that teach about the marine world and even convey how scientists approach, and ultimately solve, some of the oceans’ mysteries.

Tip of the tentacle to my Dad for the link!

Smells like whale ichor

Published
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Jason
on December 17, 2006
in Uncategorized
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Students in Florida must now selected a career path in the 8th grade, choosing from a list of 440 occupations. Oceanographer does not appear to be one of them nor does marine biologist. (Granted that some argue that there is no such thing.) But if there were a listing perhaps the selection could include some of the images recently posted by Dr. Steve O’Shea over at TONMO.com (WARNING: bloody whale carcass vs. backhoe). It might also include this quote to describe the day-in-the-life of such a researcher:

We flew down, rented a car, got covered in blood, rented a motel unit to wash up, and then had to fly back up again that evening….

Scientist can learn a lot from a dead whale. Some of what we know of giant squid has come from the stomachs of their predators, the sperm whale. The sucker scars on the whales have also given us clues. But disposing of 60+ tons of animal is no small task. Officials in Scotland are currently faced with a such quandry. Some have infamously tried to blow them up. Others have towed them out to see and sunk them in an effort to better understand the recently discovered whale fall communities:

Scientists studying a whale carcass in Monterey Canyon recently announced the discovery of two new species of unique worms that feed on the bones of dead whales. In the July 30 issue of Science, the researchers describe these worms, whose bodies and feeding strategies differ from those of any other known animal. The worms have no eyes, legs, mouths, or stomachs, but they do have colorful feathery plumes and green “roots.” They use the roots to infiltrate the bones of dead whales, digesting the fats and oils inside with the help of symbiotic bacteria.

In the U.S., if you come across a dead marine mammal of any kind, it’s probably best to contact your local wildlife officials. Or you can try the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which has ultimate jurisdiction over protected marine mammal species.

Sharing Urban Wildlife Tales with Faunapolis and Flickr

Published
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Jason
on December 16, 2006
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Alligator snapping turtle in a ditch [200x150, 12K]Judging by the submissions to the website, I’d reckon that the admin over at Faunapolis lives in the Tampa Bay area.

Faunapolis is a place where you can share interesting photos and stories about animals that live in this new kind of jungle we call town, city, or even backyard. If you have a photo of an animal and need to find its species, this is the place to post that picture and get help. These creatures are learning to live with us, and new symbiotic relations between them and us are creating an entirely different ecosystem. Will we ever be able to coexist?

The site is run using Drupal and uses the Google API for adding geo-location info on animal sightings. Unfortunately, it does not include Creative Commons info for submitted pictures. Still, it wouldn’t take much more to turn this into an effective crowd sourcing effort for tracking the introduction and spread of exotic and invasive species.

There is also an unrelated Flickr group to share pics of urban wildlife.

Wildlife that lives in our cities or in our homes: pigeons, foxes, squirrels, rats, insects, spiders, seagulls, etc.

Many are dismissed as pests; most are ignored or unappreciated. Yet they manage to coexist with us despite (or in many cases, because of) increasing urbanisation.

There is definitely a vertebrate bias in the submission, with chubby squirrels and mallards well represented.

Finally, the Environmental Literacy Council has a few links to lesson plans on urban wildlife. Scroll all the way to the bottom.

Better technique for wrapping your MacBook Pro power adapter cord

Published
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Jason
on December 14, 2006
in Meta
. 6 Comments

As mentioned on a previous post, I ran into trouble with the power adapter on my Powerbook G4. This adapter design gets a lot of criticism, and there are many dissatisfied reviews on the Apple store. This has been ameliorated somewhat with the introduction of the magsafe connector on the new generation of MacBook Pros. However, they still look susceptible to the same kind of fatigue from regular bending.

So I have this bit of advice, which I hope helps other Mac users. I picked this trick up from one of the Apple Store Geniuses. As an aside, since he showed me this technique and confessed that all the other employees use it too, it seems pretty clear that Apple knows the design is flawed.

So the technique can be seen in the picture (click for larger image). The idea is to give the cord a wide, slack first loop before wrapping and then continue to wind it around the brick loosely, giving the cord a half twist each time. It should be just like winding rope.

Seems simple enough. But if you wrap it tightly like in the picture shown in the product promos and on the Apple website, you are likely to wear out your cord and get the same cracks that I had with my Powerbook. We will see if this techniques helps my new brick last longer. Also, I added some white Gaffer tape to the end points too, as reinforcement.

Harmless Algal Blooms

Published
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Jason
on December 6, 2006
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It seems that the fine folks at GIANTMicrobes.com have branched out from selling plush microbes of human maladies and have added an Aquatics section.

I am especially smitten by Alexandrium tamarense, the harmful algae species known to cause Red Tide in the Gulf of Maine. Too bad they don’t have a version of the Florida dinoflagellate. In addition to this harmless algal plush, there are these other planktonic beasties:

Even more delightful than stuffed microbes is my discovery of the MicrobeWiki, edited by students and monitored by microbiologists at Kenyon College. You can read more about Alexandrium tamarense there.

Tip of the tentacle to Kasey for the lead.

NOAA in Second Life redux

Published
by
Jason
on December 4, 2006
in Events and Second Science
. 1 Comment

Back in May 2006 I came across Hackshaven Harford and the early efforts to bring NOAA/ESRL into Second Life. Since then, NOAA has purchased its own Second Life island and it’s almost ready for the public. Exhibits on the sim were developed by Aimee Weber Studios and include a demonstration of tsunamis, glaciers and undersea life.

If you are wondering why NOAA is in Second Life, you can find the FAQ here:

Second Life (SL) provides a unique ability to create an immersive simulated learning experience. It is a cost effective way of reaching large numbers of people that otherwise would not have access to the wealth of knowledge that NOAA and ESRL possess. Currently, NOAA/ESRL are exploring SL as a way of visualizing the vast amouts of educational material and data at their disposal.

The Science Center in Second Life will get a sneak peek at NOAA/ESRL’s Meteroa Sim. The beta-test tour will be on Wednesday, Decemeber 6, at 8:00 AM PST. You must be part of the Science Center to take part.

UPDATE: The tour was great. I got to ride a weather balloon. Hacks says the sim will be open to the public “soon.”

Happy Cepha-versary

Published
by
Jason
on December 1, 2006
in Blog and Meta
. 0 Comments

Well, the Cephalopodcast is one year old today. It was actually back in July/August 2005 that I woke up with the name “cephalopodcast” rolling around in my brain. Fortunately, podcasting was still new enough that no one else had registered the domain yet. I was also thinking of calling it the SquinkLink, but fortunately my wife nixed that idea.

I suppose it’s close enough to the New Year for me to make some predictions too. I am finally starting to read up on how to roll my own Wordpress templates. Expect more customization and design of the Cephalopodcast blog in the coming year. I am also playing around with Drupal and might switch over to that CMS in the future.

I started this blog/podcast mostly as a learning exercise. Now that the curve has leveled off, expect more actual content next year (certainly more than four podcasts, geesh!). There are a number of local and national marine science figures and organizations I hope to communicate with soon. And now that I have the TuneTalk, I can be a bit more spontaneous and mobile with recoding as well. Plus my buddy Stephen will be back in town. If that doesn’t lead to some improvement in production, I don’t know what will. The dude’s clever like that (nudge, nudge). Assuming he makes it safely back from San Francisco via the Panama Canal.

I have been experimenting with live productions with the help of these fine folks. I expect that will continue in the future. I hope to add some video to the mix too.

There is the TONMOCON II in June to look forward to. Lots of cephalopody goodness there.

In the bigger picture, I agree with some sentiments voiced by Leo Laporte. The shine is off podcasting. All the early adopters have adopted. All the secondary adopters have contracted with the early adopters for support and services. If there is any rush at all in the coming year, it will be when Microsoft finally adds podcast support to Windows Media Player.

So if you have any predictions for the next year, or ideas for future podcasts, let me know. Email pulpodcast [at] gmail [dot] com or leave a comment. Thanks!