Acetarium

Fried green tomatoes are awesome. Our plants are growing happily. We harvested 8 cups of basil last week!

I made basil pesto with the basil I picked on the roof! It was very easy and very tasty. If I get enough over the summer, I’ll freeze some pesto for the winter.

The plants are growing very fast. Some of the tomato flowers are blooming. I’m growing tomato suckers in water and they are starting to grow some roots. If anybody wants to grow their own tomatoes, you should stop by!

Wish there were easier ways of keeping track of each plant’s growth.

* Some catfish were found to use their mates’ whiskers to “floss” their teeth.

* Banjofish are called banjofish because, in old days, people in Hawaii made banjo parts out of their livers.

What a weekend! Surprisingly, much of the extra food we brought home were gone by this morning!

We had a great time hanging out with our old and new friends who came to LibrePlanet this weekend.

The Inkscape session talked about some neat tricks. Unfortunately, whenever I try to use the text box, the application crashes, so I couldn’t follow the whole thing but I made this:

I was also inspired by the animation people to use Blender and to give it another try at Cinelerra but things I can’t simply apt-get always seem intimidating. It’s been a few years since I made any videos, so I would like to get back to video-making, this time using free software.

Another new thing I learn about was French Fries sandwich, a “British delicacy” as described by Deb. It was pretty good when I loaded it with lots of condiments. After all, I grew up eating croquette sandwich, yakisoba sandwich, and takoyaki sandwich, so carb on carb is not a scary concept for me — though I would love it if we could have fresh vegetables and fruits for snacks and juice/water instead of soda at the next conference…

Anyhow, this sure was a great kickoff to the spring series of the acetarium events!

I got a new fish. He is a white and blue half moon better. Adelaida says that he’s like porcelain.

I haven’t decided on his name. So far, the candidates suggested by others are Leila Betta and The Great Betta. The latter is inspired by the punjabi wrestler, The Great Gama.

Any other ideas?

* By poking a snail with a TINY stick when it is in the four->eight-cell transition stage, this researcher was able to change the way it spiraled. If a left-spiral snail was made right-spiral, it still produced left-spiral babies. Link to the article here.

* By placing plants that just sprouted in water full of a chemical called stomagen, a researcher succeeded in increasing the number of pores that suck up CO2. The optimum level of increase is two to threefold. The link to the article here.

* A researcher maintained fly colonies in darkness for over 50 years and discovered that they evolve to have longer antennas for detecting smells. No paper yet but will present at a conference in Japan. Perhaps, I should start growing something in an extreme condition now, so that I can make my point in 50 years. A news article here.

Have you seen this lucha?

Have you seen this man with a Gnu?

Have you seen these pies?

If yes, then we all know where you were last night.

You need another shot of Wild Turkey to fix your hangover problem.

This morning, we both woke up with strange dreams. I was trying to save Mako from a big grizzly bear. I ended up being chased by it and had to cling onto a string hanging from a sky and swing. I called for help but Mako was busy reading. I fell from the string and the bear’s paw became something that resembled a garlic crusher. I woke up with a really hot head.

Mako’s dream involved Bernie sleeping in the hallway.

***
I made stuffing. Making stuffing is like making bread pudding — it’s just a salty version of bread pudding.