Categories
Photos

Bad ass taxidermy

Carl Akeley, considered the father of modern taxidermy, was attacked by this leopard he poses with.

The leopard latched on to Akeley’s left hand, chomping down with all its might, and kicking at him with its back legs like a rabid 80-pound feral housecat intent on brutally mutilating him beyond recognition and burying his body in the back yard. When his attempts to pull his hand out of the leopards’ jaws only made the creature bite down harder, Akeley, locked in a life or death fistfight with one of the most perfect predators nature ever created, did one of the most insane things ever – he punched his fist further into the leopard’s mouth.

Yes, you are reading that correctly. Carl Akeley, noted philanthropist and respected wildlife conservationist, punched a fucking leopard in the esophagus from the inside. The leopard gagged, Akeley pulled his hand out, and then he took the thing, bodyslammed it to the ground, and jumped on it with both knees, crushing it to death. Akeley, bleeding profusely from horrific wounds on both hands, clawed to shit, still recovering from a recent battle with malaria, and barely able to stand, then picked up the leopard (despite a shattered hand), threw it over his shoulder, walked back to camp with it, and taxidermized it for a museum exhibit

From here: http://www.badassoftheweek.com/akeley.html

Categories
Art Photos Uncategorized

Topography of US and Europe by sunset shadows

US

Europe

From here:
http://imgur.com/a/klLBZ

Categories
BSD/Linux Tech

Duplicity restore

As a part of restoring all the posts from the old Drupal server I finally had to use Duplicity to restore a backup. Always wondered how it’d actually work. Twas easy! This restores a backup from 9/1/2014 to /tmp/restore.

duplicity restore –time 2014-09-01 s3+http://rack_deb/drupal /tmp/restore2

Categories
BSD/Linux Tech

ZFS notes

Ignore this post if you have no idea what ZFS is.

ZFS related notes for posterity. I’ve got it up and running as well as BTRFS. ZFS seems better. So that’s settled.

Categories
Uncategorized

Lyudmila Pavlichenko

Soviet sniper in 1942 trying convince a sexist US to assist in fighting Germany:

“Gentlemen,” she said, “I am 25 years old and I have killed 309 fascist invaders by now. Don’t you think, gentlemen, that you have been hiding behind my back for too long?”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyudmila_Pavlichenko

Categories
Art Photos

Spooky gifs

Bill Domonkos has some pretty awesome gifs here.

Categories
Photos

Don’t take things for granted

Things can change rapidly. A photo of the model platform from the 1984 Sarajevo Olympics. Later in 1996 it was used as a platform for execution during the Siege of Sarajevo.

Categories
Uncategorized

Hello world!

This is my first post. That’s a picture of Portugal!

Categories
DrupalRecover Tech

The Arduino is really quite handy to have around. Right now we’ve got one reporting the temperature and humidity of a chicken incubater. It could also control the temperature, humidity, and egg rotation but we haven’t gone there yet. Even so it’s nice to get the measurements with the audible warning. Then you can always repurpose all this stuff to do something else once you are done incubating.

You just need (unvalidated list):

Add in a stepper motor, voltage switch, and some sort of fluid controller and you could do it all. Unglorious image of this – the OLED is very nice:

Here’s the relevant code – it of course plays the 1st 4 notes of Beethoven’s 5th as a warning (or at least an attempt at that not having found the true notes):

#include <Wire.h>
#include "Adafruit_GFX.h"
#include "Adafruit_SSD1306.h"
#include <Adafruit_Sensor.h>
#include "DHT.h"
#define OLED_DC 11
#define OLED_CS 12
#define OLED_CLK 10
#define OLED_MOSI 9
#define OLED_RESET 13
Adafruit_SSD1306 display(OLED_MOSI, OLED_CLK, OLED_DC, OLED_RESET, OLED_CS);

#define DHTTYPE DHT22   // DHT 22  (AM2302)
#define DHTPIN 2     // what pin we're connected to
DHT dht(DHTPIN, DHTTYPE);

#define speakerPin 4

// TONES  ==========================================
// Start by defining the relationship between 
//       note, period, &  frequency. 
#define  c     3830    // 261 Hz 
#define  d     3400    // 294 Hz 
#define  e     3038    // 329 Hz 
#define  f     2864    // 349 Hz 
#define  g     2550    // 392 Hz 
#define  a     2272    // 440 Hz 
#define  b     2028    // 493 Hz 
#define  C     1912    // 523 Hz 

//TH 
//thermometer - humidity

float temp;
float humidity;

void setup() {
  Serial.begin(9600);
  display.begin(SSD1306_SWITCHCAPVCC);
  display.setTextSize(1);
  display.setTextColor(WHITE); 

  Serial.println("Startup!");
}

void loop() {
  display.clearDisplay();   // clears the screen and buffer
  getWeather();
}

void getWeather() {
  //-----------
  //read DHT
  float humidity = dht.readHumidity();
  float t = dht.readTemperature();
  t = t * 9.0 / 5.0 + 32.0;
  // check if returns are valid, if they are NaN (not a number) then something went wrong!
  if (isnan(t) || isnan(humidity)) {
    Serial.println("Failed to read from DHT");
  } 
  else {
    Serial.print("Humidity: "); 
    Serial.print(humidity);
    Serial.print(" %\t");
    Serial.print("Temperature: "); 
    Serial.print(t);
    Serial.println(" *C");
  }

  updateDisplay(humidity,t);

  delay(10000);   //10 seconds seems often enough
}

void updateDisplay(float h, float t) {
  display.setCursor(0,0);
  display.print("Temp:  ");
  display.print(t);
  display.println(" F");
  display.println(" ");
  display.print("Humidity:  ");
  display.println(h);
  display.println(" ");

  // warnings
  if (t < 98.8 || t > 100) {
    display.println("CHECK TEMP!!!");
    display.println(" ");
    playWarning();
  }

  if (h < 50 || h > 70) {
    display.println("CHECK HUMIDITY!!!");
    playWarning();
  }
  display.display();
}

void playWarning() {
  tone(speakerPin, g);
  delay(200);
  noTone(4);
  delay(200);
  tone(speakerPin, g);
  delay(200);
  noTone(4);
  delay(200);
  tone(speakerPin, g);
  delay(200);
  noTone(4);
  delay(200);
  tone(speakerPin, C);
  delay(400);
  noTone(4);
}
Categories
DrupalRecover Uncategorized

Bird in flight