Friday, August 10, 2012

Cricket or Grasshopper? Stop the confusion!

Cricket definition
Insect having long antennae and, in the males, the ability to produce a chirping sound (stridulation) by rubbing together the leathery forewings. It's commonly found in pastures and meadows (field cricket) or on trees and shrubs (tree cricket). A cricket sounds like this.




Grasshopper definition
Herbivorous insect with the hind legs adapted for leaping and having chewing mouth parts, some species being highly destructive to vegetation. They also make easily heard noises by rubbing the hind femurs against the forewings or abdomen. Grasshoppers sound like this.





How to differentiate (this applies only to common species):
  • Most crickets are black or dark brown while most grasshoppers are green or light brown.
  • Field crickets have very limited jumping ability while grasshoppers can jump very high.
  • The crickets sound is very calming, like "cri-cri-cri".
  • The cricket head is round like a ball, the grasshopper head is somewhere between egg-shaped and triangular.
  • Most common cricket species cannot fly, while most of grasshoppers are pretty good flyers on short distances.

Thursday, August 09, 2012

How to recover Rovio admin password with Linux

  1. Turn off the Rovio
  2. Connect a computer using USB cable with the Rovio
  3. Turn on the Rovio
  4. Look at all devices with something like fdisk -l(you must be root) and locate the Rovio, something like /dev/sdb
  5. Don't try to mount or format it, instead use dd if=/dev/sdb of=/home/user/rovio.dump
  6. Use a hex file editor or simply do strings /home/user/rovio.dump and look at the last 20-30 lines, you should see all the information you need in clear text

Tuesday, July 31, 2012

What material is used for r-hop in airsoft?

The creator of rhop refuses to say what materials he's using to create the patches. Instead, he sells them for $12, which is very expensive considering that you will probably ruin the first batch of 3, since they are quite hard to cut and fit perfectly.

Personally, I have found a small rubber hose which I have cut in small pieces and it worked well. Even bike tube will work, but you will have issues fixing it to the barrel, you'll have to glue it to your hop-up rubber.

Just think to some rubber/silicon hose you may have in your house or you may buy from a local store.

Wednesday, July 25, 2012

How to buy and raise baby mantis

I am writing this so you can learn from my mistakes.

1. If you buy mantis egg cases from Ebay, tell the seller to put them in a box and not directly in the envelope. I have received them in an envelope and more than half were dead, because they hatched during transportation and they got smashed.

2. Be very careful where you place the terrarium. If you let it in a sunny place, the mantis babies will die. Only spray a little of water, they are very fragile and too much water will kill them.

3. Make sure the terrarium is well ventilated, otherwise the mold will invade it, especially if it has soil.

4. Give them food and water once every two days. The best food when they are little are aphids, then when they get bigger, flies are a good meal. Keep in mind they are predators, so they like to catch the food alive.

5. Before a mantis reaches adulthood, it has to molt 6 times. Sometimes they get stuck and you have to help them. If a couple of hours passed and they are still trapped in the old exoskeleton, you have to help them. Very gently!

6. Try to manipulate inside the terrarium as rare as possible. They are so delicate, even a touch could kill them.

Wednesday, July 11, 2012

E-gold claims process - Rust Consulting

So every couple of months, E-gold has news for us. On 5 July they announce:
The court approved Claims Administrator is Rust Consulting, Inc. Website: http://www.egoldclaimsprocess.com/
After reading everything there, things are still not clear.
Basically they thrown a couple of .pdf files and a FAQ section where they didn't bother to use new line tags or lists, making it very hard to read. To summarize, they are sending notifications to the first group now:
Rust is in the process of sending notices to the first group of people whose accounts appear to the Government to contain funds that were criminally derived.
So it's good if you don't receive a notification yet. After you receive a notification you have to send a claim and an answer, then after who knows how many more years, they will send a check or electronic funds transfer.

Good luck!