Remember that bug I found on one of my tomatoes growing in the garden? I found it by browsing the What's That Bug on the first page of caterpillars. Yay, poisonous spines!

Saddleback Caterpillar
(08/08/2004) Hello Bugman,
My wife found this really awesome caterpillar a few days ago on her Gerber Daisies. I have been looking all over the Internet trying to identify it, when I stumbled across you site. It looks like someone has asked you about a particular “Saddleback Caterpillar”, and that seems to fit the description of the picture I'm sending you now. Is that what this is? Thanks for your help!
Gray Benton
Iron Station, North Carolina

Hi Gray,
Yes, indeed, you have a Saddleback Caterpillar, Sibine stimulea. Beware those poisonous spines. They can cause quite a bit or irritation. Holland writes: “Nettles are not to be compared in stinging power to the armament of this beautifully colored larva.” Thanks for the photo and I'm so glad our site was helpful.

As an update to my previous post about how to add LAME MP3 export functionality to Quicktime Player, here's the link to the current project with an installer for universal binaries.

Link.

I've been looking for an elegant solution to the tangle of wires and bulbous wall warts that cling around the cell phones, iPods, digital cameras and bluetooth headsets whilst they are charging. One simple idea is to take a small plastic box and put the cables and wall warts inside the box and thread the cables through small holes in the top. It's very simple and uses an easy to find part.

Link.

DUB fills in a badly needed void in the aftermarket automotive industry. How can I impress the ladies with my wheels while trying to drive? Pimpstar to the rescue. It touts the ability to create your own graphical message with LED segments using the POV trick, designing messages even while you drive. Yeah, that I'd like to see that.. Isn't it illegal to have such messaging systems on a car?

Link via PhillyMINI forum.

Handbrake can create videos that play on your iPhone. I've had pretty good success with everything I've tried. Here are the settings I use.

Output Settings:
File format: MP4
Codecs: AVC/H.2644 Video/ AAC Audio
Create chapter markers: Checked, if movie contains chapters

Video:
Framerate: 29.97fps
Encoder: x264 (h.264 iPod)
Bitrate: 768kb/s
Width: 480px
Height: (matching proportional to 480px)
2-pass encoding: Checked

Audio
Track 1 Mix: Stereo
Sample rate: 48khz
Bitrate: 128kb/s
Subtitles: none

I've put premium in the MINI since the day I bought it since the manual says to do so. So yesterday was the first day that I put a tank of regular in it.

Why?

The engine has been sluggish at startup after sitting overnight. It sputters and “harleys” for a bit before purring normally. Trying to find a cause and solution to this problem leads you to the forum holy war between MINI know-it-alls. Some has suggested to put a tank of regular in to fix that problem. Some say it has to do with the ethanol that's being added to gas in the summer. Whatever it is, we'll see if this makes a diff.

Link to an MP4 movie of the MINI sputtering in the morning. (:10, 400KB) You may want to turn up your speakers or use headphones, it's a little hard to hear. Use the tachometer as a guide to what you are hearing, you'll see the needle swing up as the engine settles.

Image by cobalt123 via Flickr, under Creative Commons License.

Sure, Apple currently doesn't have a solution for IM on your shiny new iPhone but I believe there were probably some very good reasons why they didn't include it in the first place (battery life being the biggest reason).

So to fill the void, a couple of sites have popped up so you can IM on your iPhone. The first I found was a web interface for AOL IM which to date has received over 1000 digs. What people need to realize is that by using these services, you are allowing a proxy to pass your information to AOL and back again, namely your username, password and all conversation. The author does mention this and claims to not save any information but how can anyone be certain? I downloaded the source code to have a look-see and I found references to MySQL calls in the code. The calls seemed innocuous in nature, however. But what is stopping anyone from offering a faux version of the “source code” and having a more malicious version running live?

Where does it end? A site that will check your credit card balances for you– all they need are your account number and expiration date?

Moral of the story: beware of what you give up to third parties.

Day 6 and the blossom has opened the second tier of fruit. The leaves (or petals) that conceals each tier seems to wither and fall off after opening, leaving just the fruit.