They’re the armour-plated extra-terrestrial six-legged mechanical carnivorous turtles of the insect world.

Here we see Force Commander Tentamushi Aki inspecting some Earth technology. He is unimpressed.

Time’s running out just as fast as it can. Again.

Seems like it only just started being 2010 and suddenly the year is 10% over already. It’s like, blink and you’ll miss it.

What happened to January? Vrooom it’s gone!

Someone should do something about this. There ought to be a study. Time’s going too quickly and we need to put the brakes on this before it gets out of control.

It’s the sounds that are the worst, I think.

I had two wisdom teeth pulled out this morning – top and bottom, right side. It was about 90% pain-free. There were a few moments of pain, not including the needles – they always hurt. Aside from the physical discomfort though, it really is the sounds.

Like a crunching, cracking, crushing sound. I was paying a little more attention, and I’m pretty sure that he twists as he starts to pull. I think the crunching sounds might be when the bond breaks between the tooth and the bone it’s growing out of. Or maybe it’s the tooth getting crushed by the pliers? Either way, the sound is nasty.

Anyhow, that was earlier. Now there’s just an aching sensation.

I know there’s ground beef, and then there’s ground turkey, but do they make ground hog? I don’t know if I’ve ever seen that.

Another thing I don’t know is what ground hogs have to do with February 2nd. I’m curious as to how this whole thing came about. It’s a pagan holiday, of course. Imbolc. One of the major sabbats, one of the crossed quarters, falling between Yule and the Vernal Equinox. A festival of light, bonfires, celebrating the turning point of winter..

But how ground hogs came into play, escapes me.

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Remember when food and drink had expiry dates on them? Neither do I, but I am certain they did, at one time.

I mean, you hear people talk about it, like you have to drink the milk before it expires.

The thing is, if you look close, there’s no expiry date. Instead there is a “Best Before” date.

I understand the difference, and I sort of understand why. If they said the product expired on a fixed date, and the product went bad before that date, you could sue them (if you were so inclined) for false whatevering. And if the product was still viable after the expiry date, I’m sure someone would want to sue them anyways for trying to convince the public to throw out foodstuffs that were still good, in a conspiratorial effort to make you spend more money blah blah blah.

There are certainly concpiracies revolving around these dates – I’ll cover that in another post however.

So by calling it a Best Before date, they are more or less covered. It isn’t going to specifically go bad on that date. It might, but might not. Maybe it’ll still be good for another week – who knows? All the manufacturer is willing to commit to, is that it will be best if you consume it before that date.

My thing is, what if you have lower standards? Or your budget does not permit you the luxury of disposing of food products that are still acceptable, even if they are no longer at their very best?

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About a month ago, my little zebra danio graduated from the nursery tank and moved into the big fish tank with all the grownup fish. It had taken him about 4 months to reach 1-inch long, with most of that time spent in various small tanks and containers, before he went into the magic nursery.

Today, my two baby peppered corydora catfish (Corydoras paleatus) had their own graduation day, moving out of the magic nursery and into the big 38-gallon tank where their parents live. It took these two only about 6 or 7 weeks to reach the 1-inch length.

Here’s one of the young corydoras, exploring the new big tank. Before releasing them into the big tank, they spent some time floating in a cup at the top of the tank, to get accustomed to the new temperature. You can see the two of them, along with a baby snail stowaway:

First impressions, based on the Gallery and Tech Specs pages at Apple.com: Meh.

Here’s a list of things they should have incorporated from the get-go:

• Fold-out Handle. It’s all curvy and smooth and sleek, but unlike the iPod or iPhone it’s too big to wrap your hand around. I predict lots of dropped iPads. Added bonus – a fold out handle with the right articulation could give the iPad a nice tilt if you happen to be using it on a desk with the onscreen keyboard.
• Built-in SD card reader. They’ve put them on iMacs. The iPad should have had one too. Making it an add-on for the dock connector is stupid, it’s something extra you have to buy and remember.
• Camera. It wouldn’t have killed them to stick a tiny camera (or two!) in the iPad. I don’t know if anyone uses them that much, but better to have than not have. They could have had one on the back like the iPhone, then stuck one on the front for video conferencing.
• USB port. It obviously has one in the dock, but you shouldn’t need an extra dock adaptor just to plug in a USB peripheral. It should have a simple ordinary plain boring old USB port or two.

I don’t know if the iPad will be a fail or not, but I’m not itching to run out and buy one. The only thing I saw that did interest me was the keyboard with the built-in dock connector. I wonder if that would work with an iPhone – I hate the onscreen keyboard on the iPhone. Well to be specific I hate the inaccuracy of it. Without getting all into the technicalities, the way the touchscreen works makes it difficult to be really precise. Anyways, the keyboard accessory looked good.

One other thing intrigued me a little – they mentioned the processor was a custom-designed Apple A4 system on a chip. I wonder what the specs are, who made it, if the architecture is similar to or based on anything we’re familiar with, etc. etc.