Garden Orb Weaver Spider

We sure have some fat Araneus diadematus hanging around Travelmarx headquarters these days. The common name for this spider is the European garden spider or cross orb-weaver. They are plumping up and getting ready to leave behind an egg sac for the next season. The spiders photographed will most likely die as they live typically one season. The two spiders shown here show some of the color variation the garden orb-weaver is known for. These are both females due to the presence of an epigynum on their undersides. (I'm guessing that the males of this species must make a web in order to catch food?)

These spiders hang head down in their webs waiting for prey. These and other spiders start their webs using a technique called “kiting” where a thread of silk is left to blow in the wind until it contacts an object like a branch.

Some other tidbits about the European garden spiders.  The specific epithet (diadematus) means crowned; wearing a diadem; adorned. And, this spider has had it's own movie, a short documentary called Epeira diadema (1952) by Italian director Alberto Ancilotto (1903 - 1971). 

For more pictures of A. diadematus and other spiders in this genus, see European orb-weavers at Spiders of NW-Europe.

(Note: For quite some time, I misidentified this as Eriophora transmarina until an astute reader corrected me.)

Thank you diadematus for your service this year and hope to see your young ones next year.

Update: 2010’s Spider

Vegas: What Happens in Vegas Can Stay There

 

I can't put it any other way: Vegas is fairly ugly and contains frumpy people. I will grant you that many of the frumpy people seem to be travelling there for vacation. (For the record this was not a Travelmarx vacation. This trip was about visiting family on the outskirts. We had a good time.) 

People in Vegas are misshapen, dressed in all sorts of wacky outfits, and are wrinkled in the hard-knocks-kind-of-way, not in the sagely-nice-kind-of-way. Furthermore, people who travel there seem to throw any decorum to the wind and behave like idiots. Have you ever been on a plane bound for Vegas where the rowdiness started before even leaving your starting point? I rest my case.

As if frumpy, misshapen people are not enough, they arrange themselves in front of video machines, pulling a lever with one hand with a big drink of some kind in the other and all the while wearing a vacant and vaguely dissatisfied look on their faces, all while losing money. Oh humanity and the misunderstanding of probability theory. 

Traveling around Vegas proper is all endless concrete highway and pavement, crushed stone, cookie cutter residential condo units with names like they want you to believe you are somewhere else (Italy?): the Tuscany, Tremezzo or Bella Fiore (should be bel fiore technically ?). There are the more honest and descriptive complexes with names like Ridge View or Whitney Ranch but they are still cookie-cutters. 

Driving around Las Vegas leave you with a feeling of isolation. Outside of the strip and downtown, we hardly see people using sidewalks or engaged with the community. It’s all built to be best experienced from the privacy and comfort of your car at 50 mph. You learn quickly which parking lots connect to each other so you can avoid an eight lane road here or a divided highway there that you can’t easily get across. There is endless retail: lots of dentistry, video poker and bad food.

Music Recommendation: Emiliana Torrini

We just got our hands on the now one-year old album from the fabulous Emiliana Torrini called Me and Armini. From start to finish, we can’t find anything bad to say about it. Some videos from the album: Jungle Drum, Big Jumps, Me and Armini. Torrini’s album before this, Fisherman’s Women (2005), was very good as well. Torrini was the voice on Gollum’s Song (video) from the Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers soundtrack.

De Long’s Grape Varietal Table, But For Software Technology?

Whenever we go to pick up the latest arrival at Garagiste, I can’t help but sneak a peek at their De Long’s Wine Varietal Table. The De Long’s Web site calls it a “reference disguised as a fine art print” – but the average person on the street would probably say “poster”. Nonetheless I love the attempt at presenting the information graphically and textually in an appealing way. I have no idea if it is considered useful or fluff by those in the know.

After looking at the wine varietal table I started to wonder if technology – and I’m talking here software-related technology but it probably could be more generalized – could be arranged in a similar graphical way. So you could see quickly how C++ is related to C#, C# is related to F#, and F# is related to Python. Or how WCF is related to REST, REST related to SOA, and SOA related to Web 2.0.

Departures: Flying – Does It Feel Like This To You?

Our 'favorite' magazine, Departures, arrived today. I can’t flip through it without finding something that stands out to me. In this case it was this ad from Cathay Pacific. An awkwardly skinny woman passenger is handed what looks like are pajamas in a deserted cabin with very spacious berths. Where is everyone? Why doesn’t flying ever feel this (wonderfully) desolate to me? There is always a child kicking the back of my seat, someone in front of me that goes to full recline mode, and a mouth breather next to me. The text reads “What I loved were the little touches that made me feel so cared for.” Well if you are the only passenger and that flight attendant is feeling lonely too on that deserted plane, of course you’ll bond.

The Counter Burger – More Choice is Not Necessarily Better

Oh, how far we have fallen. At one time we would be able to write something about a restaurant in Florence and now it’s just The Counter in Ballard - a new eatery at the Ballard Blocks. We thought we’d try it after a light workout at LA Fitness just next door. Without knowing anything about it we walked in with no biases. Upon stepping in you are given a clipboard by one of the 200 (I’m kidding but there were a lot) of the wait staff. With the clipboard and a pencil you pick from dozens of items in a few different categories to build your own customized burger. They claim over 312,120+ combinations are possible. (We are not sure how they arrived at that number; we tried different ways to calculate it. Here’s the menu. Give it a try.) Anyhow, we ordered – nothing too crazy – had some fries and were not overly impressed. Quality-wise it was okay, not great. More choice is not necessarily better. The burgers were too big to even get into our mouths. (You can get a burger on a bed of lettuce which might be better.) The meat they said was going to be pink inside was gray instead.

Hands down, we would recommend Blue Moon Burgers or Red Mill Burgers instead of The Counter.

When we got back to our car we found the flyers shown here plastered to the windshield. If we’d had known it was chain, we probably would not have gone. If we’d had known it was endorsed by those stalwarts of common sense GQ Magazine and the Oprah Winfrey show, we definitely would not have gone.