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Ant Farm PC
secolactico writes "This has got to be the coolest case mod I've come across. An ant farm in your PC case. Too bad there are no pics of the case actually on a working PC. It'd be interesting to observe the effect that the temperature and vibration of an operating PC would have on the ants."
I happened to catch the episode where they showed this thing... Yes it works, no the heat/vibrations didn't kill the ants. It was a pretty cool mod.
especially if you have ever been anywhere near fire ants. (for the record, I used to be in Louisiana - and I concur every bit with the article.
My life in the land of the rising sun.
I think that might get /.'ed for real. I was the original AC, but this link expains it more like when I first saw it. Some help desk guy really got called because someone's computer had a snake in it.
I'll never get karma. =(
The problem with predatory fish is they tend to live fast and die young, either by design (insert pet shop conspiracy here), or because of sick feeder fish (insert another pet shop conspiracy here). My friend had a bunch of those cool little barracudas that will gobble up guppies, but they would always die withing 2 - 4 weeks. I thought maybe he was overfeeding them, but I dunno...
Other fish however last a long time, as long as they don't eat each other.
Been done already my friend.
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
The small black ants that are usually seen at our homes cannot withstand a lot of hear. It is a well known fact that even little bit of sun rays on them literally boil them as they lack any spinal structure.
The Lspace links to a veritable treasure trove of Pratchettiana but there's so much there, you'll have to have a poke around to find what you're after.
Terry Pratchett is an English writer known for his Discworld novels, a series that began purely as a humourous parody of fantasy books. The Discworld stories have evolved over time, a reflection of Pratchett's own development
The HEX is the Discworld version of a computer made by the guys in the HEM (High Energy Magic) building. It contains ants. A buggy system indeed *ducks*. Some of the more common error messages include: "++ Permission Denied +++ ++ Out Of Cheese Error +++ and ++ Redo From Start +++".
In this picture, you can see that there's a small fishbowl-type filter in the tank. I'm not sure how effective they really are (I use an undergravel filter in a 10-gallon tank at work and a hang-on-the-back type of filter on a 55-gallon tank at home), but it appears there was at least some thought put into keeping it livable.
That said, $720 to put what can't be more than a 2-gallon aquarium inside a computer is a bit ridiculous. You can set up a 10-gallon tank (much more room for the fishes) for somewhere around $50, and you'll get better visibility and no chance that a leak will toast your computer. (Besides, my dual-Athlon machines run too hot anyway...fish stew, anyone? :-) )
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
Apparently, they will eat it (or try to) as PCBs contain some foodstuffs. Same goes for plastics. Anyone have details of what is included. I forgot to eat my daily dose of 486 mobos today and I am feeling a bit low.
it is only after a long journey that you know the strength of the horse.
Hex was ofcourse the first thing crossing my mind when I read computer and ants in the same sentence.
/. tradition I haven't read the article, but the next mod should be adding backup-memory (beehives), adding a mouse (a real one), etc.
In true
I don't remember if Hex was overclocked, but it certainly has evolved quite a bit since its first mentioning in the books.
My room had a door to the outside, so I would leave it open to let the anoles in and probably had a good 4 or 5 living in my room at any given time. Since they were there, the ants were not (nor were the cockroaches/palmetto bugs). They took good care of me and they stayed away from the photography chemicals (my room doubled as a darkroom...guess they didn't like the smell...this was another reason why I would leave my door open).
However, sometimes they did there job a little too well. Though I would rarely find any insect life in my room, there were the sad occasions when I would find a dead and mummified anole when cleaning. :-(
Never found one in my computer case though. I wonder what attracted one to yours (heat? electric field? curiosity?)
Anyway, in the war on bugs (hehe), natures defense turned out to be the best defense in my experience. Especially the geckos. If you have an insect problem and can effectively seal off your house/apartment/room, catch or buy a gecko and set it loose in there. Don't forget to catch it after a few days, because it will probably eat everything and you need to keep it from starving. Then you can either set it free, or keep it in an aquarium and feed it crickets and stuff until you need it to be out and around again.
At least, these were my experiences. YMMV.
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
Great Whites have those pores on their noses. In an old (70s?) TV documentary, they try to keep a juvenile White in captivity, but it keeps banging its head into the wall of its circular loop of a tank -- because some wiring's giving off an electrical field near the tank wall there, IIRC.
Wonder if this is a problem for commonly kept species, like Brown sharks or Nurses? Maybe it's more your pelagic species that rely on this sense so much that they get distracted in a tank? Those'd be the ones that would need it for navigation more...
(Maybe our dream of sharks in the walls of titanium laptops will go forever unfulfilled.)
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
Adventure games. Discworld 1, 2 and Discworld Noir. Check Ebay.