News Archive

01/19/2022

A new year, in a new town, playing with new tools. After fixing up the old volatility plotting software a bit, I felt like trying to integrate any sort of live trading logic would be beyond my skill level, or the codebase was just not clean enough to make it worthwhile (I would end up pulling my hair out). I looked for visual programming frameworks to make editing algorithms and data flows easy, and checked out Ryven before settling on Node-RED to re-write the IV plotting software. Most recently I've been figuring out the easiest/best way to fit a curve to the IV data from the market prices and ran across this paper Curve-Fitting Method for Implied Volatility which exposed me to methods beyond splines and I think I've found something good using LOESS. In my initial implementation I fit a curve to each expiration, but discovered I really need to fit an entire surface (both across the strikes and expirations) due to the wide spreads, plus it's just the right way to do it. Here's a screenshot of the new charts with the per-expiry fitted curve in black:

I also added a Mind's Forge channel to my Odysee account (sign up for an account there to follow, plenty of other good channels are there including Louis Rossmann, EEVBlog, ElectroBOOM, and more). I've been streaming work on the IV plotting -> automated trading software as well as some microscopy, finally picked up a compound microscope and was able to see an amoeba when doing a test stream.

I've got some interesting experiments in mind involving the x-ray mutagenesis setup and the microscope. One is to irradiate samples of the stagnant water (control sample, then increase the time exposed to other samples), another is to germinate some control Wisconsin Fast Plant seeds and some from the mutant line and check the cellular morphology. It's been a while since doing any experiments, I was struggling with a lot (spiritually and dealing with the worldly) in 2019 -> 2020 and 2021 was busy with cleaning my dad's old house out to sell and moving out of the city. If you pray, please pray for me, I'm sure the kinds of works I do are spiritually dangerous. Thanks, until next time, peace!

12/17/2021

I took about a week long road trip through California up to the Redwoods and back, visiting family and checking a few things off the bucket list. I visited the Orthodox monastery in Platina, the ocean and the Forestiere Underground Gardens in Fresno. Before leaving I "finished" (it's still a WIP-backburner) the NFT redeemer. I also did some work on the implied volatility chart software after getting back, mostly bug fixes and updating the README to include what Redis wanted in order for it to be eligible for inclusion in their Redis Launchpad. I've still been trading, selling XSP and MRUT index options, occasional delta hedging and dispersion into long individual stock vol. Realized vol picked up for a bit (along with an IV spike, VIX hit around 30) which was a bit stressful. Trading other CME futures/options too, like oil and lumber -- only currently open position on CME is 10yr treasury futures options.

I'm feeling an urge to start experimenting/building away from the screen again. I really feel like screens can impede the human imagination (especially visual). It would be interesting to do a study with fMRI where you take people with high daily screen time vs. people with less and see how their brain lights up when asked to visualize something.

I also spent a day with family helping make tamales and remembered how much real work it is! I hope everyone reading this has a blessed holiday, staying healthy both spiritually and physically. God bless.

11/04/2021

The UFO watch party was sort of neat, didn't see any flying saucers, but I did see a bright light appear then fade out in the middle of the sky all within about 5 seconds, also met the guy who owned the ghost town where the convention was being held. Ended up he worked with Emanuel Derman at Goldman Sachs (I'm a big fan of Derman), pretty cool connection to make. I've also been working on making an app to allow people to easily redeem NFTs for things like stickers:

They turned out pretty nice. The app is almost in it's most basic usable form and I'm excited to finally show it off, even though I'm not sure if anyone will actually use it. There is another artist on token.gallery that's made redeemable NFTs, but he requires the purchaser to return the NFT and send an email. My app will allow the NFT holder to just sign a message declaring the NFT they wish to redeem, along with other information like shipping address, and then the system verifies they are the owners of the NFT and passes the information along to the creator. Eventually the status of NFTs as being redeemed or not will be "on chain", but for now I think just having the message/signature verification -> notification system will be good enough to see if anyone is interested in using it.

I've also done a couple trips out to the wash to metal detect. Nothing besides cans, rusty nails, ferrous rocks, bits of barbed wire... that kind of stuff. I thought this might be a meteorite:

Expand then "right click and open in new tab" to see full resolution picture of the suspect rock/slag

.... but I'm pretty sure it's a meteorWRONG, maybe some slag? I ground a bit away with a diamond wheel and had some hope when I saw the yellowish specks, but there's too many indicators that it's not anything extraterrestrial.

Selling vol without delta hedging has been brutal (what a surprise) as we've torn to new all time highs. Maybe I'll take a position in SPY to hedge deltas, or just sell the put side until portfolio delta neutralizes.

Logged back into Veloren recently, it's really becoming a great game. I'm looking forward to exploring the new things they've added.

I've got some ideas of what to write about for the next Wren's Warble, but have just been dealing with other things (and the NFT redeemer project). Slowly, but surely, things will come together.

10/09/2021

This is the latest NFT art that I made for the EGGs collection, I also used that design as the basis for a physical holographic sticker, excited to see how they turn out. I was also interviewed about NFT stuff by another apostle I met from the Great I Am movie, we almost died from being eaten alive by mosquitos.

I participated in Ludum Dare 49 with a game I called "Snow Dash", it was the first game I made with Godot (besides the 2D tutorial game). The theme was "unstable" so I ended up making a game mechanic using a see-saw and trying to balance it.

I've started selling volatility daily using the mini-SPX index options (XSP). I think I'll try and automate this strategy. I also want to figure out the best way of sprinkling in long vol with positions in S&P500 companies, a lot of it right now is just mechanical selling and throwing a dart at elevated IV companies (only one so far), but there's probably a better (quanty) way. I've stopped playing the ClubGG poker games after I heard about the WSOP requiring vaccine papers. I've been enjoying watching the Triton Million as they release episodes though.

I also finally had a print of Salvador Dali's Corpus Hypercubus (Crucifixion) framed and it's hung up as the centerpiece of my non-Orthodox "prayer corner".

Tomorrow I'll be going to a paranormal convention, there's going to be a UFO watching event in the evening too. Next update I'll hopefully be talking about metal detecting adventures too. Until next time, peace.

09/01/2021

I'll start this update by saying that the Redis Hackathon project was able to get a bronze cash prize ($500), even with it's subpar video and documentation! I haven't touched the LedgerX options software since then, so I haven't been scraping up vol dislocations or anything. I've been busy doing the move, estate sale, getting things donated, dumped, sold, etc. It's been a chore and a half, but I'm starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. The old place will more than likely be sold in the next couple weeks. I've also slacked on making updates to the Wren's Warble (and I still haven't made a proper landing page for cactuswren.capital), but I haven't forgot about it. I still give different answers as to "what I do" to different people because I don't really know myself. I got a gig as an (non-speaking) actor for a film adaptation of the gospel of John that's being filmed in the new town, I've only done one day so far and it's been a great experience and has got me to look at movies and shows a lot differently.

I've also been making NFT art, some cool internet dudes have built token.gallery, an NFT marketplace that uses the Ubiq blockchain to allow minting/selling/trading NFTs. I want to experiment with writing my own solidity contract someday, it seems much more accessible these days (and using UBQ instead of ETH makes it more affordable too).

I recently binged the British show "Utopia" (it's on archive.org), I recommend it. I enjoyed it more than the American reboot.

I've also been grinding WSOP Main event sattelite tournaments on the ClubGG poker platform. For $50/mo they run a 3 stage tournament structure where you have to win the top 20% of stage 1 to get a stage 2 ticket which then gets you into a 9-90max sit-n-go tournament that pays out (1/9) the final stage ticket for the Sunday standard MTT (starting stack 200BB, 10 min blind levels) which are paying out 5 WSOP Main event tickets (worth $10,000) to the top 5 finishers... I've played 4 finals so far and more people are playing every week. The first week there were only 132 players, last week there was over 500.

Here's a couple pictures of my new stomping grounds:

06/04/2021

I love it, every month feels like a year (in a good way). Makes it feel like I'm evolving at an accelerated pace. First off, I'm moving to a town outside Phoenix to downsize, this house used to be home to both my dad his dog too, but it has been just me for just under a year now. I've had suggestions to rent the place out, get a roommate, etc. but I feel like that would end up being a full-time job in itself and that's just not the kind of logistics I'd be good at dealing with. Second, I've been inspired to put the pedal to the metal when it comes to forming an entity to do my financial content production and trading from (I might have to officially seperate the two, but since I'm only working with my own capital and publishing content to everyone and keeping it general, there shouldn't be any problem from what I've read).

Participated in the Redis Hackathon and submitted an entry 5 minutes before the deadline. Felt good to get it done, but was a stressful week because I was dealing with a new tax accountant that didn't keep me in the loop and the deadline for that was that coming Monday. I was also starting the house search and was dealing with a realator that seemed to have a buyer she was trying to get a "steal" of a house for. They were more interested in getting me to let go of my house instead of finding me a new one.

I was lucky to be reminded we have a real estate agent in the family, so I've been working with her and am in the process of buying the property the previous agent said was already sold for half the listed value... what a world!

On the religious front, I pray daily, but not as structured as I used to be at the beginning of the year. The new place is surrounded by different kinds of churches, but no Orthodox ones nearby, the closest to that would be a Roman Catholic church. I'll probably visit them all someday, but I've been visualizing a "Prayer Garden" or "Peace Garden" in the desert as a place of worship and community. Maybe it'll be part of a non-profit someday. Just a faint vision for now, I feel like I need to "settle down", but honestly I'm not sure that's how life works.

The fruit trees are producing sweet fruit this year: apples, apricots, peaches... I made a couple peach-apricot cobblers and some apricot preserves (that didn't gel properly). The quail were put back together for a few days and seperated again, this time I put the male in their starter crate. I've been having issues with wild birds trespassing into their enclosures too. It doesn't look like the HOA would be too happy with quail, I might be able to get away with my ham radio antenna, but not sure if I want to even push it. I might just do something that would be in the backyard with the mobile antenna just to see what kind of range I can get, and maybe they need an APRS station out there!

I mean to post a link to my guitaring that I recorded earlier this year. Just as I've slacked with religious activities, I haven't been playing guitar as much. I've had a handful of "musician" or DJ names in the past: NAK, Semaphore, Murdoch (w/my Roomate... which reminds me of Bards of Yore? Not sure, but I did some rap beats and an example rap but no one else really did anything), Transistorized...I thought that was just an album name, but I think that was a whole project. I had to pick a new name for my cellphone recorded late night guitar/vocal sessions: Vagabond Trader - Odd's 'n Ends, I'm not pretending it's great or anything, just throwing something up and out there after a long time of not putting much out. It's taken me months to even get around to posting it here! With all the changes I feel like putting feelers out into the world is the right thing to be doing.

Speaking of which, I've just started this Substack newsletter/blog: The Wren's Warble. Seems interesting and I could see it as a way to capitalize on quantitative research. Have a free weekly publication with a paid subscription with more in depth articles about specific techniques and implementations. We'll see. For now I'll just focus on writing instead of charging for it! I need to see if what I write is worth even LOOKING at let alone paying for. I might end up leaving the platform though, they charge 10% for their infrastructure and if I start charging hedgies for my newsletter I don't think I could afford to lose 10% of that so easily.

I'm sure I'm leaving things out, but I've had this edit window open all day long and have been sitting down adding to this post sporadically throughout the day while sorting, cleaning and getting things ready to sell or give away. Subscribe to the Wren's Warble so I can feel good about my subscriber count going up!

Until next time, peace!

05/01/2021

Been working on options trading stuff still, finally getting around to logging some data using RedisTimeSeries. Planning to periodically downsample/flush data to the disk for archiving but still need to work out all the details. Found a good deal for a storage VPS (no referal link or anything, just was such a good deal I had to share.), might even switch this server over to them since I'm paying more for less with my current VPS provider.

Used Bokeh to plot the numbers you see in that animation above. It shows the volatility smile of some bitcoin option expiration (showing the bid and ask IV as seperate glyphs) -- the line is the spline interpolating the mid price implied volatilities. So to boil it down when the line is out of wack you buy/sell in order to "un-kink" the volatility surface (while market making strategically to hedge portfolio delta).

It's 3 systems: Option Pricing Model -> Portfolio Delta Hedging -> Order placement/filling A couple years ago I tried naive market making on Poloniex -- inventory risk is real, so that's one reason things have become this way... another reason is back before options became popular there was a fellow on reddit that talked about his firm's strategy and potential for retail traders making profit and it looked something like this (but in cboe index/cme futures options markets). Should be interesting to see what happens this round, fingers crossed we'll see something.

I had to seperate the quail, the 2 girls were attacking the boy and ripping his feathers out so they've been seperated and are taking their time to heal. Been cleaning up, getting rid of junk. Chief among sinners, praying for mercy.

04/06/2021

I think these Japanese family crests were the last thing I printed. I still have fantasies of making a marble machine, or other interesting kinetic structure. I'll get around to it!

I haven't played with APRS any more really. I do sort of want to setup something that beacons the network with a "messages welcome" message and have somethign setup to buzz my phone when someone calls my sign. I suspect that'll be moved to a back burner.

Finally visited this Rapid Deployment Vaccine Collaborative (RADVAC) website which is interesting:

I suspect this push for mRNA vaccines is just a way to get the general population comfortable with the technology before deploying it on every bothersome virus, the question we should be asking is if this is okay for cv19, why wasn't it okay for the other deadlier viruses. I believe it boils down to the relaxation of regulation which gave a perfect opening for a trillion dollar market to be born. Maybe next post I'll be talking about sourcing vaccine ingredients.

Quail are still doing well, 3 are hanging out and I'm getting about 2 eggs a day. Starting a new project, going to try and do some market making on a bitcoin options market, the spreads are very wide so there's room for small time traders to come in and try and automate some market making.

03/04/2021

The month of March is here! What do we have in store for this update? We've got that APRS setup working that I was talking about last time. It's using a Raspberry Pi 3 running Dire Wolf, I've got a 555 timer circuit setup so the PTT doesn't stick open in case of a software failure and the pin remains high, a resistor divider + capacitor between the speaker out and the microphone input on the Pi's USB soundcard. The Pi's line out went straight into the radio and worked without any adjustment (a bit unexpected, but I read somewhere that the radio's (ICOM 2100) mic has a pre-amp in it). I connect to Dire Wolf with XASTIR on my main laptop, screenshot below shows what appears after listening for a few hours. Now that I have an idea of how this 1200bps network is setup, it's got me thinking about making a BBS. There's an i-gate close to me so there's probably no need for any more digipeaters or igates.

Trading stuff update is boring, last time I said I was going to try again, I did and it didn't work. These automated trading experiments are just a small part of my "total trading", but I really don't update that stuff here, I have a pseudo-anonymous account on stocktwits that I keep updated with other ideas and trades.

Quail are doing alright, got them some new sand yesterday.

Haven't done anymore mad science (x-ray, bacteriophage) yet, still not sure about my experiments I started back in 2019.

Thinking about business possibilities a bit here and there too. Made an inquiry about formulating that energy drink that I've been working on for mass production, within the realm of possibility but I need to do a deep dive on distribution possibilities (call up places locally, see the process to get a product on a shelf or a minifridge in a store would be). Also thinking about electronics kits (like the APRS interface circuit), or maybe I should just take a stab at playing live poker for a month!

That's it for now, love 'n peace

02/10/2021

Second month of the new year and I've been slacking on site updates (and more). Lately my focus has shifted back towards automated trading. I've been using the Tradier API to take a stab at trading the CBOE index option market, TD Ameritrade has finally exposed their API to small time traders too (although it took their support team over a month to get back to me about a question, Tradier is much quicker to respond). My first attempts weren't successful, ironing out bugs, slippage from entering and exiting positions because of software issues was painful and sort of took the wind out of my sails for a few weeks now, but I think it's about time to try, try again. I've also considered that doing some educational work in this space would be useful to traders, there's not enough love for XSP (an option series that trades at 1/10 the size of SPX) and next month MRUT is going to start trading, a mini Russell 2000 series that is 1/10 the size of RUT. I don't have a good feeling that it will remain trading for long though, the RUT has only 2.4% of the volume that the SPX has, and the mini-SPX is a fraction of that even, so I can imagine the volume on MRUT will be VERY tiny... if only smaller investors could figure out the value of using these products: 60/40 long term, short term capital gain split for tax purposes (1256 contracts), cash settled (no assignment risk, European style options) and then the ability to build specific risk profiles, trade volatility (instead of direction) and asymmetric risk/payoff.

Enough with market stuff, and I didn't even mention cryptocurrency bitcoin hoopla or the GME short squeeze! Look at these eggs:

I thought I only had male quails, seems like I have at least 1 female, and from the number of eggs I'm getting I may actually have 2 (or even all 3 girls?!) I did lose another quail for some reason, I don't know what happened, didn't seem like a cat or anything got to it, RIP. Other than that they seem to be doing well.

Also picked up a PRUSA Mini+, I ordered it back in October and it arrived in December, they've been in constant backorder mode since the release. I haven't used it too much, but I've experimented with using it to make two color prints, as well as the large prosphora stamp. I recently did a print of a cross to hang from my rear-view mirror with it using the filament swap to get different colors:

I also did some work to make a print of a Japanese family crest (I didn't get a picture of the final product, I used the 2 color technique to make a gift for a friend that paid for half of the printer, if you're reading this Dick, thanks!) I still need to make another one for his other side of the family, shouldn't be too difficult since it's much less ornate.

Last month I almost got around to dipping my toe into packet radio again, except I was nervous about building an interface to my radio. There's software these days that lets you control your radio using a relatively cheap Raspberry Pi computer which would allow me to build an APRS gateway for cheap, monitor local traffic and route it to the net and back out from the net locally (at least that's how I imagine it to work). Funny that recently I was sort of reaching outside my current Orthodox path for spiritual insight and grabbed a book I picked up from when I first was "initiated" into living under God's guidance and found this notecard being used as a bookmarker:

My grandpa helped repair my radio (a gift from him as well) when I first tried to interface to it and found that this diode or resistor acted like a fuse when I had the pinout reversed and apparently shorted "Pin 1 to ground" burning it up. Was fun running into it again after being nervous about trying to do the same thing again 15 years later, as well as my "re-introduction" to that stream of grace, that I feel like I'm slacking on my side of things, journaling daily with a focus on grace would probably be the most beneficial at this point in time.

12/04/2020

Still feeling a bit timorous pushing forward with any of my mutagenesis stuff. It's been a while since growing more from the mutant brassica rapa line, and I don't think the log page for that project is up to date. I have a seed in a bag here from that last entry on 5/13/20, and I think that was the only one that looked viable. So, if I am able to get it to flower I'll have to back cross it. I'm suprised that so many of the original different mutations were carried down this line.

I also have the cactus going still, although there are quite a few dead grafts, I've been fighting scale bugs, and a mouse ate one too I'm sure. I have a bunch replanted in pots on the back porch too. And the "non research" plants are doing alright, I feel like I'm not making full use of the grow light area though.

It's been a whirlwind, but I guess that's how life is. I'm considering selling all the stuff I collected last year to do bacteriophage work. Maybe renting a storage unit would be reasonable, but at the same time I don't want to fall into the trap of clinging to things of this world. Liquidation in order to live more of a "van life" is what I'm feeling at the moment, but I do have a desire to have a lab again and I'm not sure where that impulse of will arises from, the higher will of God or my little mortal will of dust. Honestly it's that relationship, a divine love to get closer and "know" more, to do well by the army of heaven. There's a passage in "The Pilgrim Continues his Way" that says: "Pray and do what you want" -- because if you keep that line of connection to the persons of heaven it's sort of living life with bowling bumpers on. Turning away and saying that you can do it all on your own is an option too of course, but gutter balls are eternal. And it's not saying playing with bumpers is "easy", a strike may consist of brutal physical torture and death here on earth, look to the lives of the saints for plenty examples.

11/12/2020

Things are moving right along. I haven't posted about my isopod culture, but I started a culture this February 2020 from eBay. They're listed as Porcellionides pruinosus powder orange. I ended up collecting some isopods from the wild and keeping them too, what ended up happening was some orange escaped to the wild container and ended up cross breeding. There were some incidences where I let things get dry, so there were some Malthusian catastrophes, but was able to get the culture to revive. The genetics have seemed to have balanced out between the two containers, you can tell there's a bit of the "blue" genes floating around, but it's mainly orange.

The quail have grown up, but I've read they stop/slow down laying in the winter. You can fix that by using a light on a timer, but I haven't decided to do that. I ended up with more males than I thought before too, I'm guessing it's 4 males and 2 females, which isn't the best and I should look into selling some.

I was recently introduced to a book: Beginning to Pray by Anthony Bloom, and it's very good. After reading the introduction I ended up ordering a few more copies to lend out /give away.

That paragraph is from the introduction. It's a short book, just over 100 pages, dense with the spirit. I'm only about halfway through and am putting those tape markers throughout it in order to reference particular pearls of wisdom that are strung through the reading.

Alright, so still on the path, still juggling worldly duties and aiming for love and light.

10/14/2020

Realized that it's been a little over a year since switching over to using PmWiki for the site, I think I'll keep it!

The quail have grown up quite a bit, I have moved them in with the remaining adult quail (I lost my egg laying hen to a neighborhood cat)... The rabbit hutch thing was just a little too wide and a cat was able to get it's claws through and the quail weren't smart enough to stay away. This pic is from 10/2 around midnight, was moving them because of flood irrigation:

I also finally designed and printed off a kitchen knife handle for my friend, I guess the original shattered:

I didn't expect to print so many templates, but the screw hole alignment offset was a tricky problem to suss out. I also just shipped out a commission for these cool mushroom earcuffs, based off Mycena genus mushrooms:

One of the xray pollen Daturas bloomed:

I guess that'll be it for now, lots of "stuff" to do. Poor dog is fighting back a swollen paw, starting to pick up speed on cleaning things up around the house to move along the path to "lighter" realms. I could write a bit more on some other fun projects, but that'll just have to wait!

09/18/2020

Posted this project: 3D printed prosphora seals, prosphora is the bread that is used in the Orthodox Eucharist.

I also recorded a video that's over an hour long just talking about my experiences over the last 15 years or so leading up to where I'm at now as a catechumen. I started to edit it down and add title annotations, but it got late and I got self conscious. Might continue it sometime if I feel it?

I incubated 7 quail eggs with 5 hatching (9/4/20), I had to help one out with some forceps and dental pick (and I could've probably helped another one out, but I wasn't sure it needed help) only one was empty when I candled them at day 15. Maybe I should make a "project" page for quail? Here's some pics of the babies:

They're much larger now and I'm hoping to get a outdoor rabbit hutch thing delivered today. I'll probably move the adults to that and the new generation into the old crate I made out of 2x4's and let them grow up another week or so. I also experimented with pickling the extra quail eggs, they're turning out good!

I guess that's it besides just plodding through worldly "duties", adjustments and the normal housekeeping chores. I've also been more "scholarly" lately, doing a lot of reading and note taking that I haven't had the energy to do the past few years.

08/28/2020

A lot has changed in my life since my last update.

I've continued looking into the Orthodox church since, although I won't be posting anymore Peterson videos (whew!), I may have to make my own video on this obsession sometime. The quail have started laying (the female of course, 1/day) and I caught them humping once, so I started incubating a set of 7 eggs, lower temperature and higher humidity (95F and 62% at 11 days in, 4 more days until "lock down"). It seems like they're alive, the surface temp measured ~100-102F when I waved the IR thermometer over them.

I've also made a couple more batches of "energy drink" concentrate, without any sweeteners, and it's been pretty good! I ordered some hibiscus extract along with yerba mate extract from a new supplier, so we'll have to see how that turns out.

I logged into Twitter when my sister was over and ended up reading this long Ribbon Farm article on Weaponized Sacredness aloud to her, the two main things that stood out to me were the ideas of widespread preference falsification being "fragile" and has a domino effect sort of collapse when someone with a high enough charisma score calls it out (and can in turn create a whole new set of preference falsifications), as well as the idea of thinking of groups of ideological peoples as egregores that have their own evolutionary histories that have either kept the ideas alive through the generations, or have become footnotes in history books (also interesting in regards to my attraction to Orthodoxy).

I haven't done anymore with the bacteriophage or x-ray mutation stuff. I do have the datura growing in pots out back, but it's been a pretty rough season with extreme temperatures, even for these desert plants. One of them died back and is growing a second set of leaves after I put it in a more hospitable location.

I've been mostly focusing on post-caregiving duties, keeping up with all the extra attention from everyone has been sort of tiring on top of all the mental and spiritual adjustments. I wrote a little rant about 4 days before his passing, I'll post it here: I Wont Be Here Forever.

I can't think of anything else at the moment, maybe I'll post more of my theological writings here too (and I want to continue to threaten to clean everything up, but that's the nice thing about this wiki, I can just throw things up and just keep moving forward, no need to get stuck on anything). As always, feel free to email me, don't get caught up in this world, it's not permanent.

07/07/2020

Hello again, I don't really check the nginx logs for my website viewership stats. I used to be really into that, back when I had a Geocities page and I'd watch the counter go up I'd imagine who was out there in the real world who had visited my site. Then of course just running your own domain on some sort of shared hosting setup, good old days. These days I just look at the RAM usage chart of the VPS to get an idea. I hate to admit that I used the Google analytics setup at one point.

The point is, I don't know who's reading this if anyone. But this is what I do. I've hired help around the house here so I can write stuff like this on my site. Updates!

Cast your gaze upon these pretty plants, I've been fighting a scale bug infestation with them most of the grafts seem to be doing okay (besides those scale bugs), they need water!

I bought a slide whistle so I could make this silent movie better: Attach:slidewhistle.webm

3 quail hatched! One was a runt and died though. So I've got two Coturnix quail in the backyard. They spent their first night outside and seemed to do well. I also 3D printed a new watering setup last night and just set that up outside.

The first pic is just the first bits of 2x4 that I cut and started attaching to one another using screws. I used a nail for the first corner, and drilled pilot holes for long wood screws. Then I attached the plastic hardware cloth to the frame to create the floor. Then attached another set of 4 2x4 peices to make the sides (I should've made the top frame before wrapping it with the hardware cloth). Then just set a piece of leftover aluminium grating on top of the structure, I actually built around the dimensions of that grating.

I'm still philosophizing again, but using the philosophy to "rise above" philosophy. It's a strange feeling, like I'm doing an equal and opposite move towards "light" that I did towards "darkness" that I was playing with back 10 years ago or so. I remember feeling a distinct feeling in my heart recently where a burst of joy and a burst of sorrow happened almost instantaneously with one another. I was struggling with bursts of sorrow for quite a long time, but recently started having the opposite, but then combined. I hope I'm not going off the rails again though. I'm getting weekly counselings, but I'm not sure if it's good enough? Maybe I really have enough experience with this kind of stuff, the breaking down and re-organization of fundamental psychological structures that can drive people mad without guidance. I'll just keep going and trying to be more confident in the direction(s) I'm going. Have faith in other words, even in darkness there was still only the light, just different words.

I haven't played with bacteriophage isolation recently, although I do have a minifridge running here for that purpose, so I do want to start again with that. If only I had more time! What a project to start before things hit the fan, but it sort of made sense to me... to know how to create solutions of phages that might be able to beat terrible infections? Sounds useful if you can do it without a huge expensive lab!

Isopod cultures are doing well, I have 3 and it seems like the genetics have migrated between the different cultures since I had some wild caught ones along with the eBay "powder orange". I should start selling them!

I've setup a "Ringo Ranger" 2M antenna, part of my staying positive in the apocalypse along with the quail. I haven't been able to transmit with it though, so I'm wondering what's going on with that, either there's a connection issue with the antenna (and there's some overload protection, because it seems like it tries to transmit every so often, then quickly stops.) or there's an issue with the actual radio. Receiving seems to work fine, so I don't know yet, the quail were in the way of that project and they were just moved out yesterday so we'll see what we can find out in the next few days.

I want to sell more things on eBay since sales have slowed down a bit and only have a few items actually left up for sale, the trade imbalance must be fixed!

I've been also playing around on the fediverse more. I want to learn LISP still, which this extra hired help should give me a bit more time to do if these other projects and studies don't take priority. The more I learn about theology and the history of Judeo-Christian religion the more interesting it becomes, it's always been interesting, like I've recently pulled Elaine Pagels book off the shelf and have looked up some of her recent talks. I like her approach to the study. My heart is joyous in Christ and sorrowful of this world! To risk seeming nu-fedora, I'll post this discussion with the (in)famous Jordan Peterson about Orthodox Christianity, seems very well thought out and he realizes how complicated, paradoxical and convoluted the explanation is. It's like trying to talk about one of those illusions that look like both a rabbit and a duck as if it were both things and the ink on a page, or the pixels on the screen and the force of the creator who came up and drew the darn thing.

That's it for the monthly update. Time to water the plants!

06/08/2020

It's the same old same old. Watching plants grow, and die, trying to get things to thrive and testing the limits of others resilience. It's just like the good book in a lot of ways, current events unfolding the way they are, history repeating itself over and over again, same patterns, echos of the structure of the holy prototype itself. Some things are going parabolic though, so expecting lots of volatility in coming months and years, but I'm predisposed to that sort of thinking if my self-reflections are worth anything.

Lots of cactus seedlings and grafts seem to be doing well, my Huerina Zebrina got root rot due to the store bought cactus soil not draining. I have a bunch of arms that I separated drying off, so maybe some will start to root. Also been experimenting with incubating quail eggs, I'm sitting next to a smelly incubator right now (purchased more for microbiology experiments, but should work)... I have a feeling the post really man-handled the eggs, we've got about 2 more days before I really give up on this first batch. I have another 20 eggs going from another seller that I started last week too. They were shipped in much better packaging and seemed to be more consistently large. I have a better gut feeling about this second batch of eggs.

Still formulating an energy drink, the recipe really hasn't changed much the past couple months. Also formulating (reverse engineering) sugar free mints for dry mouth, also good success there, but haven't written about it at all (until now!). Working on theological philosophy, increasing synchronicity. Hopefully update some pages soon!

05/09/2020

It's been a little while and the plants have been taking off, even the cat's claw started growing after I potted it and brought it in under the LED grow light. I've become pretty comfortable with how cactus grow and graft, so I should be doing some actual x-ray exposure on a few of those seeds soon. I uploaded this video exposing the scam UV-C "corncob LED" bulbs that have showed up on eBay yesterday, where we incubate a couple petri dishes, one exposed to the light, one control and find out it's a big ol' lie. I have collected and dried some good looking seeds from the F1 generation of x-ray Wisconsin Fast plants, and we're basically ready to go to plant the F2 series of seeds. I'll be updating the x-ray plant pages after publishing this news edit!

04/19/2020

Just installed an instance of PeerTube here at video.mindsforge.com. I made a video last night (testing a head mounted GoPro setup) and was upset about YouTube being so "owned" these days and want to stop feeding that system. I have some other videos too, like the one I just test uploaded of the cactus graft. I also received the adjustable pipettes in the mail yesterday so I should be able to work on making up the sterile phage buffer solutions soon.

04/14/2020

It's just past midnight and I just finished writing these notes out regarding the bacteriophage project. Still haven't settled on an architecture for the wiki, haven't even felt like I've had the time or energy to do that. Maybe I should go to bed instead of doing this and I would have more energy!

03/12/2020

I should mention the corona virus going around the world of course. Other than that I'm working on too many things at once, trying to distract myself from the terrible secret of space. I've begun working on a protocol for finding and purifying a bacteriophage to attack an infection. Lots of plants things are coming along, I've made some mistakes (which is to be expected). Lots of rain here. Thinking of re-organizing the wiki, there's notes of this scattered around here as they come to mind. Definitely need to re-organize a lot of stuff.

01/19/2020

I've been trying to get a phosphor scintillation screen to light up with the x-ray setup to no avail. I bought a surplus screen off eBay removed from one of those x-ray backscatter machines that lets the TSA look under your clothes. I figured that would've worked, but I got no luminescence at all while my geiger counter was peaking. I'm doing these experiments with the exposed tube while wearing a 0.5mm equivalent apron and protective gloves bought 2nd hand on eBay as well. I've also been selling a lot of my stuff off, anything that I'm not currently using is heading out basically.

12/24/2019

Merry Christmas! Just recently split up the mutagenesis page into multiple pages to follow each species that I'm working with as well as keep a page specifically for the mutagen chamber. I've been reading the Bible lately, but have slowed down, it's been good and fun to get a "whole picture" view instead of just hearing about a myth here, story there, words of wisdom without any context... Just as a quick example, Jesus refers back to the prophecy of Isaiah multiple times (in Matthew at least), it's fun especially after studying Kabbalistic things beforehand. There are a lot of "puns" in the Old Testament names that also hold information. Well, have a happy new year!

10/6/2019

Current focus is caregiving first and foremost, then I play with things, like using X-rays to mutate plants. I also try and find time to design for 3D Printing stuff. That's about all I have the time and energy for at the moment, besides reading and art.