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The Story of Zoya and Shura
full text from greeklish.org

Photo Galleries/Φωτογραφίες

Bandiera Rossa by Pankrti


Dynata Dynata
by Antique



Rang de Basanti from the film
Rang de Basanti (2006)



Teri Mehfil Mein
from the film Mughal-e-Azam (1960)



Rob Van Dam
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at One Night Stand (2006)



CM Punk wins
the World Heavyweight
Championship (2008)




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View Article  Lessons of the Spider House
Yesterday, I lifted the lid on the Spider House for the last time this season.  Although it has only been a few months, this time around has been the most active and the most heavily populated Spider House since I created it several years ago.  This experience has helped to point out a few significant design flaws in the Spider House which will need to be corrected before the next time around.

The most problematic of these flaws is the relatively "escape proof" design of the "roof" of the enclosure.  I designed the roof to allow for airflow while minimizing routes of escape for  "spider food" like crickets and flies.  The problem here is that once egg sacs from female spiders begin to hatch, the "spiderlings" aren't able to wander far from their place of birth and large numbers remain concentrated in the corners of the house.  At one point in the summer, I had about 3 egg sacs hatch at once, which yielded a couple of hundred baby spiders in the Spider House.  It was kind of crowded in there for a while.  But in this kind of situation, spiderlings ultimately became easy prey for the adults in the house, which is kind of unfortunate.  I know from experience that if egg sacs hatch in an enclosure with air holes that are a decent size (big enough for the babies to exit, but small enough to keep the adults in), the spiderlings will eventually stray outside of the enclosure.  Along the way, they leave tons and tons of little webs behind, coating the outside walls of the enclosure.  It sounds creepy, but it's pretty cool.

A few weeks ago, I went kind of crazy catching funnel weavers when I found a whole slew of them hiding in a large plant in our front yard.  A couple of these spiders ultimately emerged as the dominant residents of the Spider House, spinning webs all through the various levels of the enclosure and making short work of their main competition, which were the large brown and red garden spiders.  I took a picture of the web network in the Spider House as it looks today, but after a couple of months of spider activity, one might well imagine that the scene is pretty messy and nasty.

I probably could have maintained the Spider House a bit longer, but there are still quite a few unhatched egg sacs left and I figure that if I leave the enclosure open and effectively end the experiment for now, I will let a few hundred baby spiders free.  This way, I’ll have some time to reflect on the lessons learned from this year's Spider House so that next year's experience is even better.




A view from the inside (roof) of the Spider House.
Those little dots are baby spiders...
and, yes, they are alive!
View Article  With apologies to spider-haters
If it’s any consolation at all to you spider-hating folks, soon it will be cold and all the spiders (and all the pictures of them) will eventually be in short supply.  But for now, I have a new picture.  This evening, I went back to check on our baby mantis (who is in about the same spot as the other day) and I came upon a rather impressive sight:  I found a huge reddish-brown spider snacking on a yellowjacket.  There was a light breeze and it was difficult to get a good close-up picture, but I tried my best...

spider eating yellowjacket
click on the picture to view a larger image
 

I returned a few minutes later to catch this beast for the Spider House, but she had dragged her dinner away to a safe spot behind a drainpipe.  But I’ll check back soon.

View Article  Another really big spider
Here’s a picture of a really big spider that I found on the north side of our house today.  I think it’s a Black and Yellow Argiope.  She is about 2 inches from top to bottom (or that might be from bottom to top, as she is pointing down towards the ground.)  I would typically be inclined to catch this beauty and put her in my Spider House, but that particular project has gone by the wayside for now.  It seems as though my plate is now full with two jobs, two kids, four fish, a dog, volunteer work and a blog.  So she will stay on where she is for now and we’ll entrust her to keep all of the other pesky bugs away.   Click here to see another spider that I found last year.




Click on the picture to see a larger version

View Article  The Spider House Rules
When we were kids, my brother and I used to catch spiders during the spring and summer.  We usually kept them in jars and I would like to say that there was some sort of scientific value in our efforts, but we really just liked to watch them fight and eat bugs.  About 7 or 8 years ago, I thought it would be interesting to catch a whole bunch of spiders and keep them in a more complex environment where I could watch their development over a long period of time.  My idea was for a "spider collective" of sorts.  Let’s call it "The Spider House."

spider house front
      The view from the front
click on the picture to view a larger image
So years ago, I built a small spider habitat in a 1½ gallon aquarium.  I filled it with about 10 spiders or so and it was pretty cool for a while.  But at that point in time, I really had a lot of competing interests and my interest in the project faded.  I held on to the aquarium, though, and with the arrival of spring this year, my interest in building a spider commune has returned.  I recently got the old habitat down from a shelf in the garage, dusted it off, and added some new nooks and crannies for the forthcoming occupants of The Spider House.  

Included inside the tank are some rocks, a Gargoyles action figure (without any wings), some bits and pieces from around the garage, and a broken head from a statue that I found smashed in the street near our house.  The lid of the tank is plywood with a few holes drilled in the top.  The "domes" are the tops of bubbles from a toy vending machine.  These cover the two large air holes.  The air holes were originally covered by some plastic screen pieces when I had first built the habitat, but when I had dumped some feeder crickets in the tank for the spiders and one night the crickets chewed right through the mesh and they all escaped.  At that time, I was keeping the tank in my office at my old job and the crickets were all over the office for weeks.  

spider house front
      The view from the top
click on the picture to view a larger image
Most of the spiders that I catch are small run-of-the mill orb weavers, although from time to time, I might be adventurous and try to nab one of those gigantic garden spiders or some funnel weavers here and there. I prefer female spiders, partially  for their longevity and also because it is really cool when their babies hatch.  I have already welcomed 6 or 7 spiders into the new and improved Spider House and I have tossed in a few flying insects to make sure that the spiders don’t turn on each other right away.  

I was going to take pictures of the spiders as I catch them and offer readers of this page a chance to give the spiders names, but I decided there must be some kind of limit to my geekiness.

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