It occurred to me after writing that you might have meant media apps, to complement your streaming setup. I actually have a semi–media related project I'd like to do at some point. ☑ realize that tardigrades are awesome. ☐ acquire a tardigrade in a petri dish. ☐ put it under a USB microscope connected to a server, streaming the live video feed to a monitor. Voilà. Instant macroscopic pet tardigrade. From that point, you can: ☐ stream it over the internet, for anyone to watch your pet tardigrade it all its glory. ☐ save the video to a hard drive. ☐ run the video thru image recognition software and write some code to do behavioral analysis—eating, sleeping habits, etc. So far I've only gotten to step 1. Maybe once I get out of grad school and have some of this mythical "spare time" I keep hearing about.
You inspired me to spend a lunch break collecting specimens, though it got me caught in a sudden spring rainstorm. I gathered a wad of moss from a stone wall, some other greenish stuff that might be moss from some stones on the ground, and some more green organic matter on a tree, all three samples taken near a river. I realized that it has been a long time since high school biology and I am pretty ignorant in the realms of moss, lichen, algae, mold, and fungus. Metro card for scale. As the rain and wind picked up, I struggled to record an eVox for cW documenting the adventure. Back at the office, I cut the bottoms off some spring water bottles I had bought for the purpose, and left my tardigrade-rich organic matter soaking over the weekend. A few days passed, and I tried in vain to spot the waterbears frolicking in my fake petri dishes. It didn't help that my microscope was one half of a pair of binoculars held backwards. b_b, this is your line of work, can you recommend a strategy for acquiring a decent binocular dissecting microscope on the cheap? There are some on eBay in the $100 range, but they are new and I suspect that I might get better value buying used, if I can find something with undamaged optics. Ruler showing millimeter marks for scale. I neglected to remove the samples, continuing to add water as necessary, and after two or three weeks I had some growth, but I think it is time to liberate my samples before they start to stink. I like the idea of having a living thing in my otherwise sterile cubicle, a form of emotional sustenance. But maybe for now I should stick to something simpler.realize that tardigrades are awesome.
I have also completed only Step 1.
So THIS is a tardigrade! It seemed in your e-Vox that you were crediting me with telling you about them, which I was fairly certain was not the case, but didn't want to rule out hypnogogic wiki trawls/random sharing. They are indeed badass. Marketing them as stuffed animals will be challenging, given their eyelessness. Their size suggests cuteness, but this may actually be my favorite conception: Don't they look like they're covered in canvas? Such as those ghastly bodysuits actors occasionally don? Also, they evoke for me the Caterpillar of Alice in Wonderland, suggesting that perhaps Alice, on her "magic potion" trip, got a lot smaller than we had previously realized.
