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The pecking order

We introduced the chicks to the 4 grown up chickens today. They shared the same quarters for weeks now and were able to get used to each other. Of course the big ones went immediately after the small ones to establish the pecking order.

It always breaks my heart but that’s the way it is. All I do is make sure one of them doesn’t get all the attention. Natural as it is, I’m still angry towards the big ones, especially considering they too were small before. I can’t help but grab a plastic rake and establish my pecking order if they go too hard on them. This has the double advantage of satisfying my need for justice while reinforcing my place at the very top of said order. All the chickens respect the crap out of me now and make way around me. That’s right, I’m the alpha-chicken!

Which is good because Rhode-Island reds are not shy at all which causes problems when locking them up every night among other things. It’s a healthy reminder that they are on the wrong end of the plastic rake.

No pics or video, I was too busy containing this ruckus.

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Markov chains music generation

Here’s a project I’ve had on the back-burner for many years. Following the natural progression of generating stuff based on Markov chains, I decided a while ago to port the algorithm to music.

Music presents many challenges that I haven’t been able to address well so far. As a result, what the algorithm produces always had a bitter unfinished aftertaste to me, hence why I haven’t published anything about it for years.

  • Music is multidimensional, time is relevant and needs it own analysis and subsequent generation
  • The interconnectedness of different instruments from the piece is important as well.
  • Random generation even based on Markov chains fails to produce any structure. The pieces all sound like a long solo without chorus or any other repetition that would give us what we strive for: anticipation. In other words, it’s perfect for jazz.

I’m hoping that publishing this will give me the kick in the nuts necessary to keep improving it. Without further ado, here’s what I have so far.


Future improvements:

  • add to corpus
  • clean pieces analyzed of noise
  • try to infuse structure
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A successful introduction

I installed 2 colonies today and everything went extremely well. Having done this once in the past really helped; I knew how to read the bees better and kept them very docile during the whole process.

The second package introduced into the top bar hive

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The hives in all their glory

A close-up of the new Langstroth hive this season (up-side down because iPhone)

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Busy figuring their new place out

[flv:http://ben.akrin.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/IMG_1292.MOV.flv http://ben.akrin.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/IMG_1292.MOV.flv.jpg 688 387]

The weather kept me on my toes but fortunately left us alone for a good while. The rain poured heavily a couple of hours afterwards, I hope all the bees found their way inside before.