Category: Insects

Categories
Insects Just Shelley

One brief shining moment

Tonight I walked longer than I normally do and ended up going to my library at a later time. Driving back, the neighborhoods were getting dark and I could see the fireflies out and about in the bushes.

Just past the odd house with the stone fence, but before the miniature castle, one of the fireflies headed into my car from the front and I hit him. Normally hitting bugs is not something I worry about, unless it’s a butterfly or moth; but fireflies seem such gentle creatures, and provide so much enjoyment. I’ve always appreciated how they hover about you as you stand near them, as if they’re curious, but unafraid, of this big monstrosity.

Another block, and more fireflies appeared in front of me. I couldn’t avoid them; only catching a brief glimpse of their bright neon-green light before they’re smashed against the metal (well, plastic) of my car.

The next block and it seemed as if I had a stream of fireflies heading towards my car; I can only guess they were attracted, or confused by, the lights. Each bravely flickered its butt in one last exaltation of light before throwing itself in a frenzy of hopeful lust to a very quick, and very sure, death.

When I got home, I contemplated the orgasmic remains of the tiny, now dark creatures on my bumper and thought that all things being equal, it wasn’t a bad way to go.

Categories
Insects Photography

Madam Butterfly

The next month, from the middle of September until the middle of October, is the most beautiful time of the year in Missouri. The weather has cooled and the humidity dropped, and a slight breeze blows most days to keep the sky clean, and clear. The trees are in their richest green, their end of summer finery; next week they’ll become tipped with golds and oranges and scarlet as Fall begins.

Today there was a huge hot air balloon race at Forest Park, which I had planned on attending to continue my quest to find perfect photos for a perfect portfolio. However, this morning I looked out my window at a perfect day and had no interest in fighting a crowd of tens of thousands for glimpses of bright material reflected in the sun. I headed to the Shaw Arboretum, instead, bad girl that I am.

At the lake where I normally park, there were two wedding parties wondering about – fluffs of white dress and colorful satin and chiffon, with men in black tuxes or well ironed khaki. One group was in the midst of a 3:00 wedding, and the other group in a pre-wedding photo shoot. Both ceremonies were unpretentious, with guests sitting in plain folding white chairs and a simple stand acting as alter. No need for ribbons and bows and hot house flowers when you stand under a canopy of Cypress, backed by sapphire blue waters. For a magical touch, I could see several butterflies fluttering about during the earlier wedding. No amount of prestige, of cut stone and stained glass, can beat butterflies circling about as you exchange vows with someone you love.

I hadn’t been out to Shaw for sometime and was amazed at the height of the grasses and flowers in the wild flower garden. The air was filled with butterflies and bees and other insects and as I walked between two fields filled with flowers I could hear a constant hum and buzz, as if I were a late arrival at church and the congregation made note of my tardiness.

I had both my digital and my film camera and I had forgotten how satisfying is the feel my old Nikon, the heaviness of it and its fit within my hand, as well as the quality of the lens. Since the butterflies were kind enough to stop and pose strategically, the little vixens, I spent some time taking photos of them with my film camera, and then switching to digital for one or two for the weblog.

The late sun is that unique green-gold of this area, and it highlighted the purple and yellow flowers, green grasses, and blue skies – with bright orange butterflies, Monarch and otherwise. There was considerable activity around one bunch of yellow flowers, and as I focused in with my telephoto lens, I could see a swarm of honey bees vying with the butterflies for nectar. Normally I’m cautious around bees, but today I knew without hesitation that I was at no risk for being stung.

busyflower.jpg

Later by the lake I met up with an older man and several young girls, all with butterfly nets. Chatting with the friendly bunch, I found that they were part of Monarch Watch, a group that tags Monarch butterflies in order to track the creatures migratory patterns.

The young ladies were wonderfully gentle with the creatures and when I asked questions they gathered around, smiles as warm as the sun, as each tried to answer my questions in a rush. They let me hold one of the butterflies, and showed me the tiny tags, and between them and their escort, the enthusiast father of one of the budding scientists, I learned all about the program, as well as Monarchs. Five generations of Monarchs have been tracked and tagged from this area to Mexico I was proudly told.

As I reluctantly moved on to the lake to take some final photos, I could hear the group finishing up their work; laughing, gentle boasts of number of butterflies tagged, excitement in their voices as they wondered if any of theirs will be found in the select stand of trees on that small bit of land in Mexico that is the ultimate destination of the colorful gossamer wings.

youngscientists.jpg

Categories
Insects Photography Places

Madame Butterfly

The next month, from the middle of September until the middle of October, is the most beautiful time of the year in Missouri. The weather has cooled and the humidity dropped, and a slight breeze blows most days to keep the sky clean, and clear. The trees are in their richest green, their end of summer finery; next week they’ll become tipped with golds and oranges and scarlet as Fall begins.

Today there was a huge hot air balloon race at Forest Park, which I had planned on attending to continue my quest to find perfect photos for a perfect portfolia. However, this morning I looked out my window at a perfect day and had no interest in fighting a crowd of tens of thousands for glimpses of bright material reflected in the sun. I headed to the Shaw Arboretum, instead, bad girl that I am.

At the lake where I normally park, there were two wedding parties wondering about — fluffs of white dress and colorful satin and chiffon, with men in black tuxes or well ironed khaki. One group was in the midst of a 3:00 wedding, and the other group in a pre-wedding photo shoot. Both ceremonies were unpretentious, with guests sitting in plain folding white chairs and a simple stand acting as alter. No need for ribbons and bows and hot house flowers when you stand under a canopy of Cypress, backed by saphire blue waters. For a magical touch, I could see several butterflies fluttering about during the earlier wedding. No amount of prestige, of cut stone and stained glass, can beat butterflies circling about as you exchange vows with someone you love.

I hadn’t been out to Shaw for sometime and was amazed at the height of the grasses and flowers in the wild flower garden. The air was filled with butterflies and bees and other insects and as I walked between two fields filled with flowers I could hear a constant hum and buzz, as if I were a late arrival at church and the congregation made note of my tardiness.

I had both my digital and my film camera and I had forgotten how satisfying is the feel my old Nikon, the heaviness of it and its fit within my hand, as well as the quality of the lens. Since the butterflies were kind enough to stop and pose strategically, the little vixens, I spent some time taking photos of them with my film camera, and then switching to digital for one or two for the weblog.

The late sun is that unique green-gold of this area, and it highlighted the purple and yellow flowers, green grasses, and blue skies — with bright orange butterflies, Monarch and otherwise. There was considerable activity around one bunch of yellow flowers, and as I focused in with my telephoto lens, I could see a swarm of honey bees vying with the butterflies for nector. Normally I’m cautious around bees, but today I knew without hesitation that I was at no risk for being stung.

busyflower.jpg

Later by the lake I met up with an older man and several young girls, all with butterfly nets. Chatting with the friendly bunch, I found that they were part of Monarch Watch, a group that tags Monarch butterflies in order to track the creatures migratory patterns.

The young ladies were wonderfully gentle with the creatures and when I asked questions they gathered around, smiles as warm as the sun, as each tried to answer my questions in a rush. They let me hold one of the butterflies, and showed me the tiny tags, and between them and their escort, the enthusiast father of one of the budding scientists, I learned all about the program, as well as Monarchs. Five generations of Monarchs have been tracked and tagged from this area to Mexico I was proudly told.

As I reluctantly moved on to the lake to take some final photos, I could hear the group finishing up their work; laughing, gentle boasts of number of butterflies tagged, excitement in their voices as they wondered if any of theirs will be found in the select stand of trees on that small bit of land in Mexico that is the ultimate destination of the colorful gossamer wings.

youngscientists.jpg

Categories
Connecting Insects RDF Technology

What didn’t work

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

The RDF Poetry Finder was more than a personal interest of mine — it was an attempt to see if a project could go from idea stage to implementation through the efforts of people who participated purely on interest — no formal group formation whatsoever. Additionally, it was a project that would, I hope, bring together members from both the technical and humanities communities, in such a way that each would contribute equal expertise to the project. The type of project would force this because it really did require a deep understanding of the mechanics of technology and poetry.

The latter combination of the technologists with the community was the real interest to me. I didn’t do the Poetry Finder because I needed practice with technology — I have close to 20 years of practice, I think I get it.

Along the way, though, I made several significant mistakes. Since we learn from our mistakes, I thought I would share these:

1. Antagonizing the Tech community

I started this project out by doing a deliberate pushback against RSS and FOAF, mainly RSS. By doing this, I had hoped I could attract the attention of the people who work with RSS, particularly the RDF/RSS people, but without tying RSS into the project. In addition, I hoped I could break through a growing belief that RSS 1.0 is representative of all RDF semantic web efforts.

What I did do was antagonize the RSS 1.0 fans, and they are nothing if not loyal. This ended up losing me key technology people, as well as spinning off a lot of energy back into the RSS vortex. Not just the RSS vortex, but the ongoing personality differences that have plagued RSS for too long.

2. Not providing the right hooks for the poetry enthusiasts

I think I did better attracting people from the poetry community. However, I didn’t give them the necessary hooks in how to participate in this project.

We’ve trained the ‘user’ in the weblog community and elsewhere to be passive — the technologists will generate the idea, develop the specs, write the implementation, and help you use the technology. If you don’t implement their new technology quick enough, you’ll hear about it. If the techs aren’t moving fast enough, there’s the LazyWeb.

Well, this is good. No, I take that back. This is not good.

We’ve made the ‘user’ in our community, the weblogger or other web site owner who doesn’t have a strong technical background, into a spectator; and we’ve turned much of our technical activity into spectator sport.

Scenario: Roman arena. Two participants. The issue is RSS. Get the picture?

This was a mistake. It was one I tried to rectify with Poetry Finder, but wasn’t as effective as I needed to be. I’m not quite sure how to do this better.

3. Tied project into RDF/XML from the start

Of course, this is a technology and a specification that I’m comfortable with so it’s not surprising I would focus the project on RDF/XML. However, this triggered much of the same glazing of eyes phenomena that always occurs with RDF/XML. I did expect a little of this and hoped that not jumping into the technology right away would work around this. It did, somewhat. However by not focusing on technology from the start, I lost more of the techies.

Additionally, focusing on the use of RDF as the underlying technology from the start also brought in contention from those enthusiastic about competitive technologies, which I wasn’t expecting.

4. Not starting effort out with a prototype

I had hoped to take this project from idea to implementation in the public eye, based on public participation, but I think that the idea of a “poetry finder” is too nebulous for a unstructured group of participants. I should have started with something, no matter how light and unscalable, rather than just, “I have an idea”.

It’s too easy to shoot down “just an idea”, and too difficult to engage people behind “just an idea”. I didn’t have to provide David, but I at least needed to provide the marble.

5. Fragmented discussions

I used more than one technology to encourage group participation in Poetry Finder. Originally the technologies included this weblog and a Yahoo Discussion group, Bloggers Unlimited. There was then bleed through to emails, other discussion groups, and other weblogs.

The Bloggers Unlimited discussion descended quickly into exchanges based on RSS and FOAF, and other pure technology issues. I pulled back, trying another group, Renaissance Web, and this group has been extremely good at keeping the focus at a higher level, and avoiding too much detailed technical conversation.

A challenge with all of this communication: the discussions in the Yahoo groups, and in weblog postings and comments are good, but there is no way of tying them all together other than linking to specific messages, and through the use of Trackback. Of course, if we had something like Threadneedle, or ThreadsML, this problem would be solved because the technology would link everything together. Right?

I used to think so but after this experience, I’m not so sure. I’m finding that the connectivity between the discussion threads is not as much of a factor as the format of the threads, themselves.

For instance, I don’t think I’m the only person that got overwhelmed by trying to follow the discussions at the Yahoo group, Renaissance Web, excellent as they are. Even when sorted by thread, not date. I had a very hard time finding who said what at any given point, especially with all the embedded quoting and nesting and so on.

Trying to connect the Yahoo group discussions into the weblog was difficult because the discussion group entries have such a different style and emphasis compared to weblog posts. Weblog postings, even when focused on responding to other people, have a more persistent quality to them than discussion threads. There is a different feel to each type of discussion; trying to blend them all together in a meaningful way would be like trying to make orange juice by squeezing together six oranges and two apples. And a banana.

At least, it felt this way to me. Maybe I’m weird.

Then there is the problem of censorship in the Yahoo groups. The one and only time I deleted a message in Blogging Unlimited was a mistaken email that was sent to the group. The only time in Renaissance Web was one of my responses. However, during this time I was censored in another group — and the group was not informed that I was censored, or that this type of censorship had occured. This wasn’t directly related to the Poetry Finder, but it is a problem with Yahoo groups and even weblog comments.

Still, I liked the forum/email/discussion group because there is no ‘ownership’ of the topics, anyone could add new topics, and there was a great deal of good commentary, especially in Renaissance Web. Much more in this format than the weblogs.

However, rather than having a conversation about Poetry Finder in just my weblog, I was now having conversations in many places. This meant that I had to respond in multiple places, to multiple threads, some of which may have started out on the Poetry Finder but morphed into something else.

And how to bring all this together? How do I get the Yahoo Groups people to read my weblog entries on Poetry Finder? A link won’t necessarily do it. How do I get my weblog readers to follow the many discussion threads at Yahoo? Some people are more comfortable with email lists, some more with weblogs. How do we establish a communication across the different venues? Sure we can hack together threads between IM (Instance Messaging) and weblog and Yahoo group — but goodness, it would be like trying to hold a church service during half-time at a baseball stadium, simultaneously using a semaphore to signal the service to the blimp passing overhead, while there’s a flock of geese in the way.

And some of the geese don’t like each other.

Gah!

Within all of the many threads, I had to work at generating enthusiasm for this crazy idea in order to attract the group participation the project needed, in multiple venues. Tthis was getting exhausting, particularly in light of the pushback — not the direct pushback, which I was expecting; but the indirect pushback, the subtle and not so subtle putdowns, which I’ve not particularly adept at dealing with. The honest, intelligent, and concerned opinions from people that I’m spinning my wheels, and that his baby just ain’t gonna fly. Something else I’m not particularly adept at dealing with.

I wish I was Audrey Hepburn. She’d know what to do. And probably look good while doing it, too.

It’s not particularly easy to continue a ‘crazy, impossible, half-baked’ idea when you have a feeling that some people think you’re blowing smoke out your ass. In multiple venues.

Summary

What next.

Well, I have a tick bite, which isn’t healing. The housing complex pest specialist says the head is still in, but the infection should clear eventually. Creeps me out a bit, though — I have tiny insect chompers in my ankle. Had another thunderstorm this morning, and now it’s getting humid. My cat likes my Titanium PowerBook because she can use it for a head rest. I need to do laundry, but I’d rather take another walk. Somewhere covered in asphalt. I have some web pages and PHP I need to do for a friend. I think I’ll make chicken for dinner tonight. Better yet — BLT pizza. With beer.

Yeah: Huh?

I don’t want to abandon Poetry Finder, not the least because I don’t like people thinking that I’m ‘giving up’. Dammit, and I also think the idea has merit. But I do need to figure out how to correct my mistakes, and how to get this moving again in a constructive manner. Or, more likely, just let it die, another smoke filled idea.

In the meantime, weblogging as usual. Pics, writing, cat.

zoelovetibook.jpg

Categories
Connecting Insects RDF Technology

What didn’t work

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

The RDF Poetry Finder was more than a personal interest of mine — it was an attempt to see if a project could go from idea stage to implementation through the efforts of people who participated purely on interest — no formal group formation whatsoever. Additionally, it was a project that would, I hope, bring together members from both the technical and humanities communities, in such a way that each would contribute equal expertise to the project. The type of project would force this because it really did require a deep understanding of the mechanics of technology and poetry.

The latter combination of the technologists with the community was the real interest to me. I didn’t do the Poetry Finder because I needed practice with technology — I have close to 20 years of practice, I think I get it.

Along the way, though, I made several significant mistakes. Since we learn from our mistakes, I thought I would share these:

1. Antagonizing the Tech community

I started this project out by doing a deliberate pushback against RSS and FOAF, mainly RSS. By doing this, I had hoped I could attract the attention of the people who work with RSS, particularly the RDF/RSS people, but without tying RSS into the project. In addition, I hoped I could break through a growing belief that RSS 1.0 is representative of all RDF semantic web efforts.

What I did do was antagonize the RSS 1.0 fans, and they are nothing if not loyal. This ended up losing me key technology people, as well as spinning off a lot of energy back into the RSS vortex. Not just the RSS vortex, but the ongoing personality differences that have plagued RSS for too long.

2. Not providing the right hooks for the poetry enthusiasts

I think I did better attracting people from the poetry community. However, I didn’t give them the necessary hooks in how to participate in this project.

We’ve trained the ‘user’ in the weblog community and elsewhere to be passive — the technologists will generate the idea, develop the specs, write the implementation, and help you use the technology. If you don’t implement their new technology quick enough, you’ll hear about it. If the techs aren’t moving fast enough, there’s the LazyWeb.

Well, this is good. No, I take that back. This is not good.

We’ve made the ‘user’ in our community, the weblogger or other web site owner who doesn’t have a strong technical background, into a spectator; and we’ve turned much of our technical activity into spectator sport.

Scenario: Roman arena. Two participants. The issue is RSS. Get the picture?

This was a mistake. It was one I tried to rectify with Poetry Finder, but wasn’t as effective as I needed to be. I’m not quite sure how to do this better.

3. Tied project into RDF/XML from the start

Of course, this is a technology and a specification that I’m comfortable with so it’s not surprising I would focus the project on RDF/XML. However, this triggered much of the same glazing of eyes phenomena that always occurs with RDF/XML. I did expect a little of this and hoped that not jumping into the technology right away would work around this. It did, somewhat. However by not focusing on technology from the start, I lost more of the techies.

Additionally, focusing on the use of RDF as the underlying technology from the start also brought in contention from those enthusiastic about competitive technologies, which I wasn’t expecting.

4. Not starting effort out with a prototype

I had hoped to take this project from idea to implementation in the public eye, based on public participation, but I think that the idea of a “poetry finder” is too nebulous for a unstructured group of participants. I should have started with something, no matter how light and unscalable, rather than just, “I have an idea”.

It’s too easy to shoot down “just an idea”, and too difficult to engage people behind “just an idea”. I didn’t have to provide David, but I at least needed to provide the marble.

5. Fragmented discussions

I used more than one technology to encourage group participation in Poetry Finder. Originally the technologies included this weblog and a Yahoo Discussion group, Bloggers Unlimited. There was then bleed through to emails, other discussion groups, and other weblogs.

The Bloggers Unlimited discussion descended quickly into exchanges based on RSS and FOAF, and other pure technology issues. I pulled back, trying another group, Renaissance Web, and this group has been extremely good at keeping the focus at a higher level, and avoiding too much detailed technical conversation.

A challenge with all of this communication: the discussions in the Yahoo groups, and in weblog postings and comments are good, but there is no way of tying them all together other than linking to specific messages, and through the use of Trackback. Of course, if we had something like Threadneedle, or ThreadsML, this problem would be solved because the technology would link everything together. Right?

I used to think so but after this experience, I’m not so sure. I’m finding that the connectivity between the discussion threads is not as much of a factor as the format of the threads, themselves.

For instance, I don’t think I’m the only person that got overwhelmed by trying to follow the discussions at the Yahoo group, Renaissance Web, excellent as they are. Even when sorted by thread, not date. I had a very hard time finding who said what at any given point, especially with all the embedded quoting and nesting and so on.

Trying to connect the Yahoo group discussions into the weblog was difficult because the discussion group entries have such a different style and emphasis compared to weblog posts. Weblog postings, even when focused on responding to other people, have a more persistent quality to them than discussion threads. There is a different feel to each type of discussion; trying to blend them all together in a meaningful way would be like trying to make orange juice by squeezing together six oranges and two apples. And a banana.

At least, it felt this way to me. Maybe I’m weird.

Then there is the problem of censorship in the Yahoo groups. The one and only time I deleted a message in Blogging Unlimited was a mistaken email that was sent to the group. The only time in Renaissance Web was one of my responses. However, during this time I was censored in another group — and the group was not informed that I was censored, or that this type of censorship had occured. This wasn’t directly related to the Poetry Finder, but it is a problem with Yahoo groups and even weblog comments.

Still, I liked the forum/email/discussion group because there is no ‘ownership’ of the topics, anyone could add new topics, and there was a great deal of good commentary, especially in Renaissance Web. Much more in this format than the weblogs.

However, rather than having a conversation about Poetry Finder in just my weblog, I was now having conversations in many places. This meant that I had to respond in multiple places, to multiple threads, some of which may have started out on the Poetry Finder but morphed into something else.

And how to bring all this together? How do I get the Yahoo Groups people to read my weblog entries on Poetry Finder? A link won’t necessarily do it. How do I get my weblog readers to follow the many discussion threads at Yahoo? Some people are more comfortable with email lists, some more with weblogs. How do we establish a communication across the different venues? Sure we can hack together threads between IM (Instance Messaging) and weblog and Yahoo group — but goodness, it would be like trying to hold a church service during half-time at a baseball stadium, simultaneously using a semaphore to signal the service to the blimp passing overhead, while there’s a flock of geese in the way.

And some of the geese don’t like each other.

Gah!

Within all of the many threads, I had to work at generating enthusiasm for this crazy idea in order to attract the group participation the project needed, in multiple venues. Tthis was getting exhausting, particularly in light of the pushback — not the direct pushback, which I was expecting; but the indirect pushback, the subtle and not so subtle putdowns, which I’ve not particularly adept at dealing with. The honest, intelligent, and concerned opinions from people that I’m spinning my wheels, and that his baby just ain’t gonna fly. Something else I’m not particularly adept at dealing with.

I wish I was Audrey Hepburn. She’d know what to do. And probably look good while doing it, too.

It’s not particularly easy to continue a ‘crazy, impossible, half-baked’ idea when you have a feeling that some people think you’re blowing smoke out your ass. In multiple venues.

Summary

What next.

Well, I have a tick bite, which isn’t healing. The housing complex pest specialist says the head is still in, but the infection should clear eventually. Creeps me out a bit, though — I have tiny insect chompers in my ankle. Had another thunderstorm this morning, and now it’s getting humid. My cat likes my Titanium PowerBook because she can use it for a head rest. I need to do laundry, but I’d rather take another walk. Somewhere covered in asphalt. I have some web pages and PHP I need to do for a friend. I think I’ll make chicken for dinner tonight. Better yet — BLT pizza. With beer.

Yeah: Huh?

I don’t want to abandon Poetry Finder, not the least because I don’t like people thinking that I’m ‘giving up’. Dammit, and I also think the idea has merit. But I do need to figure out how to correct my mistakes, and how to get this moving again in a constructive manner. Or, more likely, just let it die, another smoke filled idea.

In the meantime, weblogging as usual. Pics, writing, cat.

zoelovetibook.jpg