FYI

Wednesday-ish one of the fans on charybdis died, which caused one of the hard drives to melt, which caused a so-far-not-completely-understood chain of other reactions the end result of which is that www.ellipsis.cx and www.nomic.net have been mostly down since Friday evening, and may be down for a bit longer. So, if you've tried to email me about anything urgent since Friday evening, try my UvA email instead.

I love having a digital camera

I just spent about 45 minutes outside sitting on the edge of the canal in front of our apartment feeding old bread to the ducks, including a mother mallard and five ducklings that had to be only a few days old, they were so small. After awhile I'd collected too many ducks and I could tell the mother was getting a bit anxious, so I moved down a bit, and fed two coots and their three older offspring (not old enough to have the white face plates and real feathers, but old enough so that they're fluffiness was no longer cute.) Even though the cootlings were clearly old enough to eat bread out of the water on their own, the parents would still rush to collect the bread and then feed it to the cootlings themselves.

But after awhile all the other ducks had left where I had been, except the mallard and ducklings, so I sat back there for quite awhile and took tons of pictures. I was sitting on the edge of the canal with my feet on the rock wall sloping down to the water, and the water level was no more than two feet away, and that's where the ducklings were. I've never been so close to so young a wild animal before.

Right now the camera battery is charging, but look for tons and tons of duckling pictures in the future! I think I got some good ones.