the luna moth caterpillars are doing pretty well, some are already in their second instar. their second exoskeleton. there are 5 instars, then the pupa stage. Each instar lasts around 5-8 days. I also saw the first mantis outside in at least 2-3 weeks. It was a stage 4 mantis, like Ideal. It also rained, when it wasn't supposed to.

The original container the caterpillar's were in is pictured below. I moved them to a bigger one earlier today. (this was a picture I took yesterday)











































the bottom picture is my dad's picture in the "me taking a picture of mom taking a picture of dad"

actually it's more like "me taking a picture of mom taking a picture of dad, who is taking a picture of me taking a picture of mom who is taking a picture of me taking a picture of mom taking a picture of dad" I could go on... but I won't :P

Ideal is a level 4 mantis now. by the next molt I'll be able to put him in my special, terrarium.


Ideal looking for some higher ground to go to.


Ideal, in the pose praying mantis' are named for.


Ideal cleaning one on her/his leg (I won't be able to determine that until the final molt)...


A 3-D puzzle of the Notre Dame Cathedral I did years ago. Not an easy one at that... It got sat on by a pet once and I had to reconstruct it. I was quite upset too. Especially since I had to reattach those cardboard pieces on the left all over again. I don't think I could reattach them a third time. For that reason I've kept it out of sitting range...


the first four vials of insects I was given by this lady who taught me how to preserve bugs, though I've forgotten quite a bit of it. I have enough vials to show you four for a week. (28 if you don't want to figure that out :P). Quite a few of the bugs I don't know exactly what they are.

I was thinking about doing this myseld.

Ok, I just looked up the method I'd rather use... which is the vial method. it's easier then the pin method... The vial method can only be used with soft bodied insects (example: not beetles).

I found out I really don't like trying on new clothes.

On another note, another nice day here. :D

These are pictures from yesterday when we went to (it called the rose garden park or something... I forget). It also happend to be mom, and dad's 31st anniversary.


picture of a rose with a droplet of water on it.

A close up of a rose

A Big leaf!

Me, the human fountain exhibit, which is no longer on display :P

overview of the park of roses (hey I remembered the name :D)
It probably has around 1000 rose bushes. *thorns are included


a picture of mom, taking a picture, of dad taking a picture. hehe

The luna moth caterpillars are growing nicely, I could have 20 moths when I'm done. I'll definitely try to get pictures of them coming out of their pupa's when the time comes.

Wonder what the two people who saw me getting the picture for "the human fountain" were thinking... hehe

Well, we were about to leave for church, when first dad noticed he couldn't unlock the door remotely. We were hoping it was just the remote, but no it was the car battery. So we didn't get to go to church sadly. The culprit was a dome light, which had been on for possibly the whole weekend. I painted the wood that had been replaced on the deck. Apparently enough so that a second coat wasn't necessary.

The first soccer practice is tomorrow 5-7, and the same time every day this week. Also we have a double funeral to attend on friday, since the spouse died 5 days later (which was yesterday morning).

It appears the Luna moth caterpillar's are eating the leaves I gave them yesterday.

I got some paint on a certain someone's listening devices. (if you didn't know, somepeople prefer to call them ears :P)
He didn't appreciate it too much, did you dad?

The green mantis is Ideal, while the brown one is Hatchet. It's getting more difficult to tell them apart, since with every successful molt by hatchet, his severed antennae gets longer (it's being repaired basically). The color difference is the best way to tell them apart now. They're not in any real danger of starving, but each molt could kill them. Especially the last one.

Heh, it looks like I have much less hair when it's wet.

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this plant has been partially eaten by something. That something was a deer.




























a neat fungus I found




























A flower (well duh)




























me sittin by a creek




























me walking in the same creek




























the creek




























affects of two thrown rocks... It took quite a few times to get a picture like this (over 20)


I was relieved when coach told us that we were done early, which meant no 17 60s (hip, hip hurray!!!! :D). I hurt my foot, when I slid for the ball and another person also slid for it. Their foot hit the inside of mine. It was just a bruise though. I kept playing with it. It only really started to hurt after I took off my shoe. Actually now that it's wrapped I can walk with it again.

note: a 17 60 is when you start at one endline, go to the other in 17 seconds, and you get back in 60. As soon as the 60 are up though, coach blows the whistle for the next one, so you want to make it ahead of time.

I like the shirts we got last year for warmups. On the back they say "audience of ONE" I really like that part.

yesterday wasn't very bad conditioning wise, except one person tossed their cookies. also both mantids are level 3s. Today conditioning was a bit more well conditioning... 6 17-60s for me, while yesterday there was only 4 (on the last 17-60 we don't do the 60 part).

Yesterday I made a method to decrypt a message pretty well. Let's use "The cat runs" as an example
Caution: Math content in the following section! (It's not like everyone likes math... :P)

"The cat runs". now to do the first method the original message will be in bold for now. to make the second half we write the message backwards

The cat runs snur tac eht

but you don't stop here, then we merge the two starting with the first letter of the original message, then you use the first letter in the message backwards. repeat with the second letter. We keep the spaces in the original message, discarding the ones in the message backwards. now for the the combination, the original message will be in caps

The cat runs snur tac eht

TsHnEu CrAtTa RcUeNhSt now with out the caps the message appears tshneu cratta rcuenhst

That's the first step...
the second step is two parts
first we assign each letter a number
space=0 A=1 B=2 C=3 ect... up until Z=26

but we shift this sequence over... In an actual message I sent so far it was a shift by 3
so space=3 A=4 B=5 C=6....V=25 W=26 X=0 Y=1 Z=2 so it wraps around after you get to 26.

Now the message would appear
remember 3 = a space
23 22 11 17 8 24 3 6 21 4 23 23 4 3 21 6 24 8 17 11 22 23
now if you noticed without the threes it's symetrical that's because the first method made it that way...

Now for the final method... you'll need a good calculator... one like the TI-84 that you can plug in for the X's

I used an equation to make points out of these numbers, further disguising them... I use the X points as placeholders to tell you the order of the Ys, but in the first one I put 4 (in the first message I gave like this). This 4 represent what A equals.. which gives you the position of all the letters.

The Y point is what you get from the equation

the equation I used was: Y=(X^3)-(16X^2)+(40X)-14
Now for this I'll give the key
0 would become -14
1 would become 11
2 would become 10
3 would become -11
4 would become -46
5 would become -89
6 would become -134
7 would become -175
8 would become -206
9 would become -221
10 would become -214
11 would become -179
12 would become -110
13 would become -1
14 would become 154
15 would become 361
16 would become 626
17 would become 955
18 would become 1354
19 would become 1829
20 would become 2386
21 would become 3031
22 would become 3770
23 would become 4609
24 would become 5554
25 would become 6611
26 would become 7786

so the message would go from
23 22 11 17 8 24 3 6 21 4 23 23 4 3 21 6 24 8 17 11 22 23
to
(4, 4609) (5, 3770) (6, -179) (7, 955) (8, -206) (9, 5554) (10, -11) (11, -134) (12, 3031) (13, -46) (14, 4609) (15, 4609) (16, -46) (17,-11) (18, 3031) (19, -134) (20, 5554) (21, -206) (22, 955) (23, -179) (24, 3770) (25, 4609)

tada! it's been encrypted 3 ways. Though if the message is long enough it could be figured out though they'd have to still figure out the first method. I'm working on two ways, I just haven't written them down yet. keyword, yet...

now if you still don't get the shift then here...

0=x 1=y 2=z 3= a space 4=a 5=b 6=c 7=d 8=e 9=f 10=g 11=h 12=i 13=j 14=k 15=l 16=m 17=n 18=o 19=p 20=q 21=r 22=s 23=t 24=u 25=v 26=w
that when A like I said is 4...

now for an experimental method 4 Type-7 ("yet" in "I haven't written it down yet" no longer applies :D) here's what the first two points become
dkfxmgcsqlfjantr

here's the key to that...

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 ( ) space
g h i j k l m a b c d e f
t u v w x y z n o p q r s

how did i get that?

I specified type 7, that meant I moved the letters over by 7
the original would have looked like this

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 ( ) space
a b c d e f g h i j k l m
n o p q r s t u v w x y z

see how a in the type 7 key resides under the 7

the original key is type 0

now to encrypt this just repeat method 2, but no shift of A is required since we were encrypting numbers, now if it were words, it would be different! This is the 5th and last method to this process, which might I add is a bit tiresome... trust me I know... it took around 2-3 hours to create and send the first message (that was before I created the 4th and 5th method today, since that was yesterday)

so dkfxmgcsqlfjantr becomes
4 11 6 24 16 7 3 19 17 12 6 10 1 14 20 18

now you could use that formula in step 3 but it's not necessary. because if anyone tries to use probability to figure out a longer message (I know you, dad, have done this before) it won't work. since these are numbers that have been encoded, and to be safe, I made it so two letters represent one thing, to further mess up probability.

heh I went a little crazy on this... but it was worth it :D

I enjoyed my first trial with it hehe... though I didn't enjoy the part where the test subject fired back...

etiam risus magne me (that was my response to it)

still haven't figured it out *cough* hint, hint *cough*