I have received the information required to apply for a Regional Art Development Fund grant. The grant is for creating data files and DVDs of the 100 plus hours of the video archive for the State Library of Queensland. Steve got the library’s understanding that we include a high resolution version for future editing purposes.
It’s amazing how creatures can take hold of you. About a month ago Hugh Alexander noticed a daddy long legs-like creature when we were night filming in the Knoll NP. It had a tiny body and immensely long legs, but what was utterly remarkable was what we took to be eye stalks, many times its body length. None of us had ever seen anything like it. Well, today we saw 3 in all, at the same spot on rocks next to the path; the third on our way back. In the meantime we found out a bit about harvestmen, but nothing about the ones Hugh discovered. Harvestmen are arachnids (8 legged). Their bodies are unsegmented and the stalks are sexual organs. To totally dombfound us, the third specimen’s stalks had an equally long extension forming a right angle.
Today I received the great news that EOL is now able to harvest videos from vimeo. Compared with generating new website gallery pages and converting the data they contain to XML, making the videos harvestable only involves providing the binomial (scientific name) and family to which a species belongs, adding some specific tags and including the relevant licensing agreement.
I received an email from Lynne Sealie, the communications manager of ALA, which is an international partner of EOL, praising our website and flagging various linkages, including displaying my images on their site.
I felt somewhat daunted by the thought that I have such a backlog of images to get onto EOL.
I received an email from a friend, which caused me to Google the scientific name of the Leaf-Tailed Gecko. Inter alia I clicked on a Wikipedia entry provided by the State Library of Queensland and at the bottom of the page they included a ‘See the Leaf-tailed Gecko on the Encyclopedia of Life’ link, which I followed and was taken straight to my page! That was a real boost.
I phoned Simon to tell him about this and he replied with some terrific news of his own. He had proposed to Nicole early on New Year’s Day and been accepted. Talk about a great start to 2011.