The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning
Ed Nisley's Blog: Shop notes, electronics, firmware, machinery, 3D printing, laser cuttery, and curiosities. Contents: 100% human thinking, 0% AI slop.
Who’d’a thunk it?
These appeared while I was extricating the 3-axis positioner from an old project:
I’m reasonably sure those labels started with blue ink from my all-time favorite Ultra-Fine-Point Sharpie markers on address labels covered with ordinary matte tape. Fourteen years on, the X, Y, and Drive legends are pretty much indistinguishable.
Nothing lasts …
The Praying Mantis in the Butterfly Bush is definitely female:
I’d noticed her distended abdomen a day or two earlier, when it was highlighted in the sun and pulsing slowly. The indentations under the male’s legs shows the surface is definitely softer than the hard chitin of most insect armor:
The tip of the male’s abdomen twisted around to make contact, but I have no idea what all the little doodads common to both of them back there were doing.
The whole process started in mid-afternoon, they were still locked together six hours later, and the male was gone in the morning. The stories about female mantises eating the males seem greatly exaggerated, but she did manage to catch and eat a moth while otherwise engaged.
We’ll keep watch for ootheca on the tall grasses again, although we’ll never know the rest of their story.
Even though cicadas are completely harmless, Mary was quite startled to discover one crawling up the back of her garden pants:
It seems the cicada mistook her for a tree.
They’re handsome creatures:
They’re very conspicuous on fabric:
I teleported it to a maple tree, where it was better camouflaged:
When last seen, it was headed upward at a pretty good pace. We wished it well on its adventures …
Mary found this gadget gnawing holes in a bean:
The lump on the right is frass, not a mini-me tagging along behind.
We had no clue what it might be when it grew up, but Google Lens suggested a Striped Hairstreak Butterfly caterpillar and, later that day (and for the first time ever!), we saw an adult Hairstreak fluttering on a goldenrod in the corner of the garden.
As with all caterpillars, you’d never imagine the adult butterfly. It seems they move their hind wings to make predators aim at the south end of a northbound butterfly …
The toad population has apparently been spending more time near the Mighty Wappinger Creek, rather than around the house, during this very dry summer, so this small toad at the garage door came as a surprise:
A few days later, Mary spotted a larger toad tucked into the spice garden:
Small tree frogs sound off in the darkness around the house, but we’ve never seen any of them.
We wish them great success in their future bug hunts!
For whatever reason, a two-outlet junction box stands outside the Credit Union:
The slanted conduit certainly looks in need of an elbow to line it up, doesn’t it?
It seems whoever installed it, many years ago, simply forced the conduit to line up, no matter the consequences:
The threaded entries on the die-cast outlet box were never intended to cope with that much misalignment; half the bottom has vanished. I think the round box on the top originally held a floodlight to wash the (uninspired) building facade at night, but those days are long gone.
If the conduit has horizontal underground runs, both are certainly full of water by now. The white(-ish) “Romex” cable insulation looks like ordinary indoor wiring, not the grayish direct-burial sheath, but it may be sun-bleached after years of exposure.
Surely there’s a tripped GFI on that circuit …
We exchanged waves as he rode by Vassar Farms:
Although I can rarely hang with real roadies, I can put the fear in ’em for a while, so the chase is on.
About 25 seconds later, I’m southbound on Rt 376, accelerating past 20 mph = 30 feet/s. The overtaking pickup, which I haven’t noticed yet, is signaling a right turn at Zach’s Way, 350 feet ahead:
The pickup enters my field of view, but I can’t see the turn signals:
Two seconds later, the driver is braking:
During the next three seconds, the driver realizes I’m going much much faster than your usual cyclist and is braking hard:
My startled shout (“Don’t even think about it!“) may be misinterpreted, but I try to be friendly,
Alas, the cyclist turned into Boardman Road and all that adrenaline went to waste.
Elapsed time since the fender appeared: six seconds.
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 