Thinking meat based analogue communication

So...

We used to have this bird named "Spork".

Sometimes he was named "Pogo" because he didnt have enough legs. (he always didnt have enough legs, he just wasnt always called pogo (that sounds suspiciously like something Clevinger (Catch 22) might say)) (and whats with all the nested parenthesis?)))

Anyway...

Spork lived in a sectioned off bit of the house near my desk where I spent most of the day, so we got pretty close. As close as a human that really likes magpies can get to a magpie that almost always hates humans. I say "almost", because if you turned him on his back with his one leg in the air, he would relax so much you could push him around on the floor like a kid playing with a matchbox car. If you tried that when he was upright, hed peck your eyes out in a heartbeat. One of his fast bird heartbeats as well, not some dopey slow human heartbeat. Except Shaan when she offered Spork her (maybe smurf) keyring. Sporked liked Shaan and her keyring.

Anyway... I would whistle "Doo, du do du, and he would instantly reply "Do du do, du dooo do". It was almost as if he could help himself. He had to finish the tune. (I originally taught him the entire tune, but it took the first few notes for him to realise that it was time to sing)

We had to give him up when we had to move back to the flat lands from Cudlee Creek. We also miss all the other creatures we shared our lives with (a goat, an emu, a pig, three sheep, an owl, and various chickens) all still missed terribly.

Anyway... Some nice bird rescue people took in Spork to live with all their other magpies, a magpie loving dog that protected them all from foxes, and a parrot that nobody could understand because it spoke too fast. I suggested it was horse race calling as a result of being pre-owned by a gambler with a radio, and there was a general agreement that that might just be the case.

Really odd sulphur crested cockatoo.

But... it occurred to me that Spork now lived only 30 km away as the crow flies.

Thats only 5 magpie families or so. The other night I found myself trying to teach my local magpies the first (my) half of the tune so they might in turn teach the next groups radiating out from them. I managed to add one extra note to the current call of my local group, but interestingly I managed to get a complete (my half) call from a group further in the distance.

So, so far so good. So, so. You dont see the word "so" followed by the word "so" that much.

And... once I teach the local magpies the first half of the tune and get them to teach the next closets magpies( and so on, and so on), in 5-30 years or so, I hope to hear the second half of the tune (Sporks half) in reply.

Bam!

If so, I expect a Nobel prize for developing very slow, organic, analogue communication, and creating the first "bird meat" based communication protocol that doesnt require tying things to their feet.

120 things in 20 years - So... thats where my life is at.

Like

Read More..

Epic adventurer New solar panels

Bullwinkle III is about to be born.

Bullwinkle was the first incarnation of my little boat. It was originally a SunDance 4.3m one man racing catamaran.

I went halves in it with a friend.

It was old and slow but built solidly.

We broke it.

We fixed it up, but it wasnt strong enough to put it under the kind of strain that a boat sees when its under sail, so the sail had to go.

I put a 1.8m square of marine grade plywood on it and turned it into a fishing barge. I added a large deep cycle battery and an electric trolling motor. This gave me a range of around 6km which is surprisingly enough to catch lots of fish and more importantly, lots of blue swimmer crabs. This incarnation was Bullwinkle II. With the aid of some rope, and some plastic hand reels as pulleys, two empty milk crates as seats, and a pram wheel as a steering wheel, it was quite comfortable. the only downside was that people kept boating up to us to see if we needed help because we looked like a sinking dingy. A sinking dingy with two people standing on it fishing.

Then came Bullwinkle II.V which was essentially the same as Bullwinkle II but it also had a 3hp two stroke motor, but that was just annoying.

So today I spent the money Ive received from you nice people clicking my blogs ads on two new 180w solar panels. They have apparently been built, and are now being put on a ship in China.

Thanks clickers.

Thanks China.

Thanks boats.

So now I can finally build Bullwinkle III.

I have the hulls, the decking, a motor, the frame of my 1.8m grow house (the one that let the sun dissolve its cover), and an office chair.

That should be plenty enough junk to solar boat the length of the mighty River Murray.


120 Things in 20 years just remembered that I hadnt ever gone camping alone, so the night before last I drove to the river with my swag, and tried it. Nothing bad happened.

Read More..