Lots of things!
10 November 2005 22:10![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
enismirdalHappy Birthday to two wonderful people:
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erestor and ilyusha_a!!
I hope you've had a fantastic time!! *sends Elves with party poppers and balloons* Whee!!
Me stuff...
Well, I ended up seeing The Brothers Grimm last night, which was fun. Eluréd and Elurín now offically both have a crush on Angelika. *pets them*
This morning my lie in was rudely stolen from me by the Porters, having a fire drill at 8:05am. Still, I function.
We overfed them the day before yesterday (because they hadn't had much to eat over the weekend, so we gave them extra that evening to compensate), so they were all sluggish yesterday. So last night we left them to use up their food stores, and therefore they were rather keener to forage today.
Unfortunately, Amazing Bee Orange Paint (Ursula) died overnight, which was a pity. But she'd already given us a full set of data (at least till we called a stop to things in the last trial, as she was developing a side preference1, so it wasn't soooo bad. Still, we were thinking of doing some more trials with her, looking at the very limits of bees' visual acuity.
Tipex Bee, who was lovely yesterday until she got bored and just stopped playing, was very dopey and weird today, so we gave up on her and started a new bee today: Bee Orange Paint the Second.
I marked her myself (and messed up, as usual). Marking bees with paint is less fiddly than supergluing disks on them, but still a pain. See, when a bee feels something wet and tacky on its thorax, its reaction is to try and wipe it off from back to front. If the stuff is paint, this means it manages to smear orange/green/yellow over its eyes. Very clever, yes... So there I was, thinking I'd blinded the poor bee, but she she had other ideas, and gave us a lovely data set. Except she was SO faffy about coming back to the nest. Some of them fill up on the flower and then zoom, straight back home. This one...no such luck. She flew back and forth, back and forth, seemingly trying to memorise the flower's location (which doesn't work, cos half the time it moves between trials), before finally going home. It was almost like a personal ritual.
More bees tomorrow. Might be going to London next week to meet with supervisor's colleague in London, moderately famous German bee scientist guy. Sounds really fun and I'd love to see the experimental setup.
1This is remarkably common in bees. Not just Bee Green 78, it seems, but about 25% of the ones we are testing show some kind of preference. I personally have a suspicion it may be physiological rather than neurological, but I haven't tested it yet.
Over 3 months after ordering it, my Seraphim CD finally arrived. This may imply the Porters are not quite as incompetent as I assumed and the fault is, in fact, with Caiman. Alas, the 90 day Feedback period on Amazon has expired, otherwise I'd give them a nice low rating and explain that taking 3 months to dispatch a CD that's meant to take 3 days is not on. Aah, well, I have the CD now - that's the main bit...
erestor and ilyusha_a!!I hope you've had a fantastic time!! *sends Elves with party poppers and balloons* Whee!!
Me stuff...
Well, I ended up seeing The Brothers Grimm last night, which was fun. Eluréd and Elurín now offically both have a crush on Angelika. *pets them*
This morning my lie in was rudely stolen from me by the Porters, having a fire drill at 8:05am. Still, I function.
We overfed them the day before yesterday (because they hadn't had much to eat over the weekend, so we gave them extra that evening to compensate), so they were all sluggish yesterday. So last night we left them to use up their food stores, and therefore they were rather keener to forage today.
Unfortunately, Amazing Bee Orange Paint (Ursula) died overnight, which was a pity. But she'd already given us a full set of data (at least till we called a stop to things in the last trial, as she was developing a side preference1, so it wasn't soooo bad. Still, we were thinking of doing some more trials with her, looking at the very limits of bees' visual acuity.
Tipex Bee, who was lovely yesterday until she got bored and just stopped playing, was very dopey and weird today, so we gave up on her and started a new bee today: Bee Orange Paint the Second.
I marked her myself (and messed up, as usual). Marking bees with paint is less fiddly than supergluing disks on them, but still a pain. See, when a bee feels something wet and tacky on its thorax, its reaction is to try and wipe it off from back to front. If the stuff is paint, this means it manages to smear orange/green/yellow over its eyes. Very clever, yes... So there I was, thinking I'd blinded the poor bee, but she she had other ideas, and gave us a lovely data set. Except she was SO faffy about coming back to the nest. Some of them fill up on the flower and then zoom, straight back home. This one...no such luck. She flew back and forth, back and forth, seemingly trying to memorise the flower's location (which doesn't work, cos half the time it moves between trials), before finally going home. It was almost like a personal ritual.
More bees tomorrow. Might be going to London next week to meet with supervisor's colleague in London, moderately famous German bee scientist guy. Sounds really fun and I'd love to see the experimental setup.
1This is remarkably common in bees. Not just Bee Green 78, it seems, but about 25% of the ones we are testing show some kind of preference. I personally have a suspicion it may be physiological rather than neurological, but I haven't tested it yet.
Over 3 months after ordering it, my Seraphim CD finally arrived. This may imply the Porters are not quite as incompetent as I assumed and the fault is, in fact, with Caiman. Alas, the 90 day Feedback period on Amazon has expired, otherwise I'd give them a nice low rating and explain that taking 3 months to dispatch a CD that's meant to take 3 days is not on. Aah, well, I have the CD now - that's the main bit...
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no subject
Date: 11 Nov 2005 08:33 (UTC)no subject
Date: 11 Nov 2005 09:08 (UTC)Abner
no subject
Date: 11 Nov 2005 10:02 (UTC)no subject
Date: 11 Nov 2005 11:13 (UTC)9am is not all that bad really. I had 6x 9am lectures in first year, 3x in second year, 5x last and this years. I am still alive.