Caterpillar meal for Potter Wasps

Was at home last weekend when I saw an insect banging on my glass door trying to get out. On closer examination, it turned out to be a Potter Wasp carrying a caterpillar longer than itself.

                           

I eventally shooed it out of an open window - unfortunately causing it to drop it's prey on the way. I had seen the wasp's nest a few days ago on my front door but hadn't had the time to clean it up yet.



What are those green and brown things inside the nest ? Let's find out.



According to Otterman's blog, potter wasps seal their eggs into their mud nests together with paralyzed live caterpillars as food for their babies Extremely gross...

Otterman's blog has a picture of a sealed nest, but this one was still open. Not sure what is the time-line for the hatching process is, but there seemed to be some already-hatched larvae out sucking on a still-twitching caterpillar (told you it was gross)


as well as something that looks like an egg case - the clear whorled tube with something green in the middle (or is that a pupa ?)

Click on the magnifying glass in picasa to get a better look. There also seems to be something on the underside of the mud wall of the nest in the two pictures above.

After reading Siva's blog, I realize that the potter wasp rarely stings and actually helps to control caterpillars. Oh well. If it had been on an outside wall, I would probably have left it alone even before I found out it was beneficialbut the front door is a very inconvenient place for a wasp's nest.

Epilog: The wasp came back after I had removed the nest, with another caterpillar but left after she realized the nest was gone.

XO software

I mentioned in my last post that the XO hardware package was pretty robust and well-designed for its educational function. I wish I could say the same about its software package, but I can't. Integrating software, hardware and firmware is difficult (and probably expensive) and OLPC definitely wasn't able to do it on time for the G1G1 release.

Power-management is "coming" but at the moment, it's not possible to put the XO to sleep. Flash animation works poorly if at all, and there's no printing support. "View Source" was supposed to be a pathbreaking feature of the XO, but that isn't quite ready yet, either. It's possible that had they been able to stick to rolling out XO's in phases and in close co-operation with teachers and governments in recipient countries, all these problems could have been resolved or consciously deferred on the grounds that they weren't really important.

Unfortunately, by launching the G1G1 initiative and putting their laptops in the hands of consumers in the affluent world, these omissions stood out as very glaring shortcomings.

XO in Singapore

The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project was originally conceived as a means of promoting development in the Third World by putting US$100 laptops in the hands of children in developing countries. Along the way the founders of the project discovered the realities of economics and politics and decided to jump start their vision by offering Americans and Canadians the chance to donate a laptop to a child in the Third World for $199 and buy one for themselves at the same price.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071112-get-your-own-xo-laptop-olpc-give-1-get-1-project-underway.html

The good news was that 81,000 people donated. The bad news was that 81,000 people donated and OLPC's distribution system was overwhelmed, leading to a total breakdown of the customer support system and long delivery delays.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080125-olpc-angering-donors-give-1-get-1-some-day-probably.html

Personally, I'm a bit sceptical about the value of computers in education, especially in Third World countries which have more pressing needs like teachers and classrooms, but I liked the idea of a group of utopian visionaries willing to think out of the box and design cheaper, simpler computers instead of more powerful, more profitable computers, so I decided to support them by placing an order too. After all, if the government can commit $5 billion to a National Research Fund, I can give $550 to a group of idealistic researchers and get an innovative computer at the same time.

After a long delay and much time spent on hold on IDD calls, my XO laptop finally arrived.

First impressions

The laptop was smaller than I anticipated - 24 x 22 cm but fairly light, ~1.5 kg, with a 7.5 inch screen. 3 USB ports, an SD card reader and a built-in webcam but no optical drive. No hard drive either, instead it has 512 MB of flash memory. Puny specs by First World standards but adequate for basic tasks and web surfing provided you avoid multimedia-intensive websites.

Wi-fi is included, however, and it connected to my home network without any problem. One cool feature of the XO but which I was not able to try out because of a lack of other XO's is mesh networking.

The hardware package does seem robust and it looks as if the designers did put a lot of thought into designing a laptop that is able to withstand the rigours being handled by children in less than ideal environments. The use of flash memory instead of a hard drive, for example, was deliberate, to extend battery life and avoid having moving parts that could fail.

The laptop was also designed to be used as an ebook, and the display can be folded into a tablet form factor. The display also has a special ebook mode that is black and white but can be read in direct sunlight and supposedly gives extra long battery life.

Overall, I'd give than a B+ for the hardware package. A little bit low on the memory, but that's just a cost thing, and will certainly be taken care of as hardware prices drop. No way for memory on existing XO's to be upgraded, though.

XO self-portraits

XO self-portrait taken using the built-in camera and a mirror - which explains the inversion of the image.


Another self-portrait, this time showing it in ebook mode.

XO OLPC is here !

Ok, this is somewhat misleading - Youtube really doesn't run well on the XO

Malay apple