Gamera and Yoshi: A Photostory

I went and bought a UVB lamp today, along with a thermometer for water temperature and vitamins to add to their food. I just wanted to add a few photos i made before my camera batteries went out!

The new setup

Yoshi Hiding

Gamera hiding

Yoshi exploring

Gamera a little camera shy

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Gamera and Yoshi

I have recently been interested in buying a pair of water turtles to keep in the house with me. After doing all the reading up I could on them i went out and bought them. I named one Gamera (it has black lines all over the shell) and Gloria named the other one Yoshi (very green shell with a few white spots).

They are slider turtles or Scrypta Scrypta by their greek names. They are not red eared sliders because they are illegal here in Italy. They were made illegal because people were abandoning them when they got too big (they can grow up to 30 cm.) and they were healthy carriers of a turtle disease that decimated the indigenous turtles in italy.

Anyway, they’re beautiful!

I got them a nice aquarium (a bit small but i’ll buy a bigger one when they grow), with a water heater (water temp should be kept at 27-28.5 °C), a water pump with filter, and i’m waiting for a UV light at the shop (they didnt have one available at the moment) which will let them bask and make the necessary vitamins to keep a healthy shell.

Their diet should be varied. I give them Gammarus as a treat (small dried freshwater shrimps) together with some different kinds of vegetable pellets (Purina Multifloc and JBL Rugil). They are omnivorous creatures although when they are small they prefer meat over veggies.

One thing i’ve noticed is that they really do beg for their food eheh. Swimming towards me with their mouths open all the time. They are very voracious but people should watch out not to overfeed them. They’re not actually hungry! This is their instinct because food in the wild is so scarce.

Enough talk! Here they are! (sorry about aweful pics but i made them with my iphone.)

P.S. THEY SHIT LIKE RHINOCEROSES (it’s actually a word)

My Top 5 Iphone Games

Why just 5 you ask? Well it’s because there really aren’t that many games that will keep you entertained for more than a few minutes except just a few of them… I can assure you that the money you spend with these games i’m about to list, is really well spent. So enough with the banter…here they are:

NUMBER 5

RAGDOLL BLASTER

Ragdoll Blaster is THE game with the best ingame physics engine you can find on the iphone. It involves shooting “ragdolls” from a cannon so that they eventually end up on the red bullseye. It’s not as easy as it sounds! The game has a lot of levels and some become frustratingly difficult. It will keep you entertained for a long time. This game is my number 5 pick because once you’ve finished all the levels there isn’t much replay value.

NUMBER 4

PAPER TOSS

Paper toss is just that. You have to toss your scrunched up pieces of paper into your bin. It is a very simple concept but it will become very addictive. A fan is also added to make a “wind” effect so you have to adjust your throws accordingly. This gets very insane at higher levels where the rubbish bin is very far away!

NUMBER 3

FLIGHT CONTROL

Flight control is a graphically and gamplay-wise gratifying game. You practically have to trace a line from the airplanes/helicopters to the landing strip to make them land. It gets harder as you progress because you can’t make them crash as more and more planes get sent into your tiny iphone screen. It’s a challenge and it has definetly earned third place in my list. There are many different landing strips to vary the scenery.

Here we come to the top 2 games!

NUMBER 2

CANABALT

Canabalt probably has some of the best music in any game on the iphone. Not only that but it is all in all, a very well designed game. There’s only one thing you have to do in this game: click the screen to jump. If you click it lightly your running man will make a small jump. If you hold your “click” he will jump higher. The longer you go without stumbling on crates the faster you go. The faster you go the further you’ll jump. The aim of the game is to beat your friends or the global ladder and get the furthest distance you can.

NUMBER 1

DOODLE JUMP

This little game may look like shit on screenshots but believe you me… Even my girlfriend is hooked on this game. It is so simple it’s pretty unbelievable how it can be such a great game. Doodle jump uses the in-built iphone motion sensor to move your doodlemonster left and right. What you have to do is keep him jumping on steady ground/or slabs whatever they are. There are powerups like springs, springboots, tramplines and sometimes enemies appear and you have to shoot them down!

The aim of the game is to get up as high as you can, again to beat your friends on facebook or the global ladder. This is by far the most addictive iphone game there is and if you want to beat my current record of 56000 meters add me on facebook 😀

Hope you enjoyed my top iphone games. If you did be sure to leave a comment

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Bladida

Well i’ve been ill for the past 5 days. Which means gold in blogtown.
I actually did a lot of things… well not motionwise though.
I watched 2012… which was entertaining at best. No story no interest no nothing except for gorgeous special effects. Worth a watch anyway.
I also watched Up. This movie on the other hand was very good. It was worth watching just to see the most adorable dog in the history of Disney/Pixar (bit of a spoiler: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ui9Mm63zpfE).

Another highlight of my “ill-week” is that I have managed to update my Wii softmod. I hadn’t touched my wii for about a year, but now I can play my downloaded wii games off of my hard drive which is great as I don’t have to write images to dvd’s to play.

Here’s where Bludge is going to be happy. There’s a lot of “watch catching-up” to do.
First of all, my father brought me his old watches. Those old watches that he kept tucked away in a drawer for god knows how long. Most of them did not interest me except one.
It had Datzward written on it, water resistant 20Atmospheres and it looked like a chronograph. I asked him where he’d got it and he told me a parent of his was a watch repairer back in the day and that he bought it off him. My father wore this watch throughout his 20’s. It is the most valuable (both sentimentally and money-wise) watch I possess and once it returns from repairs (thorough clean and new front glass) it’ll probably become my daily watch! Just check out the pictures below and i’m sure you’ll agree to how beautiful it is. Datzward was one of the many makes at the time. They used to buy good movements and sell cheaper watches. The movements were great but they weren’t prestigious names, hence the lower price tag.

It has a Tachimetric scale (to measure speed in km/h), a Production scale (to measure production speed), and a Telemetric scale (to calculate distance of an object by measuring the time it takes between visual and auditory contact). The movement is a Valjoux 92, an excellent movement mounted also by TAG Heuer in the 70’s.
The numbers are written in Trizium (a slightly radioactive substance used to see the numbers at night).
I actually also found an old photograph my mother took of my father (one of their first dates) when he was actually wearing the watch. He scarily looks a lot like me…

Another little “antique” find was an AGAT chronometer, made in USSR. 15 jewels, runs like a train. Not much else to say. Don’t ask me when or where i’ll use it.

I also faced two little problems. I’m 99% certain that the Perseo I spoke about and bought in the last post is a shameless fake. Unfortunately I trusted the seller, when i should not have.

I guess that’s more than enough for now. Enjoy the pictures!

Datzward

Datzward back

Datzward Valjoux 92

Datzward Valjoux 92 balance wheel detail

My father with the Datzward in the 70s (nice hairstyle dad)

Agat front

Agat Movement

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Greek Riots

Greek riots.

A picture is worth 1000 words?

I wish.

New watches.

I know these topics must be getting pretty boring for some people but recently I don’t really feel like talking about anything else. God knows why but at least i’m keeping it active with new content.

I went to the usual monthly antique market in Aviano and found some very interesting watches.

I have been looking for a Perseo “Ferrovie Dello Stato” (FS, literally translates to State Railways). It’s a watch issued to Italian railway employees. This one should be from the 1970’s.

It has a 17 Jewels Unitas movement with Incabloc. Incabloc is practically an anti-shock system for watch movements. It involves a lyre shaped spring holding the balance wheel jewel in place. This “lyre” spring absorbs any impact from the exterior so reducing probability of the jewel breaking. More info here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incabloc_shock_protection_system

You can see it’s marked FS on the back.

The other watch is a soviet Made in CCCP ofcourse. It’s a Vostok komandirskie “submarine dial”. The thing with this one is that it’s antimagnetic! I thought it said automatic on it but when i picked it up i felt it did not have a rotor inside so it couldn’t have been automatic. At this point it was either a frankenstein watch or it said antimagnetic. Sources confirmed me that it is indeed antimagnetic and pretty rare. It also used to be Water Resistant up to 200 meters hence “amphibia” written on the back casing. I’m guessing that the state it’s in it wouldn’t even survive english drizzle!Only bought it for 15 euros though ahah. Fantastic!

Here are the pictures!

Perseo 17 Jewels Ferrovie dello Stato

FS (Ferrovie dello Stato) engraving

17 jewel Unitas movement

You can see the incabloc here and the UT symbol for Unitas

Vostok Komandirskie “Submarine”

Amphibia because it’s Water resistant 200m

Probable 17 jewel movement. Antimagnetic.

There’s more watches coming from ebay. Both soviet. One pocket watch and one wristwatch. Will keep you updated.

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Ebay Hamilton Pocket Watch

It finally arrived and it’s just as beautiful as I thought it would be. It’s in working condition. The only thing it needs is a nice clean-up and it’s ready to be used 😀

This is a Hamilton 975 grade 17 jewel, adjusted, pocket watch that dates back to 1916-1919.

Here are some pictures:

Hamilton 975 front

Hamilton 975 movement

Heres an old catalog  for Hamilton pocket watches in the 1920’s:

I dated it back to 1916-19 thanks to its serial number and these websites: http://library.ihc185.com/catalogs/ ; http://thewatchguy.homestead.com/pages/HamiltonSerial.html

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