Jewel-Like Jumping Spiders

Sometime back I posted phone pics of an electric blue jumping spider, and said "someday I hope to get a good macro shot of one of these beauties".

Since then I've been carrying my camera more frequently when I go for walks in the Botanic Gardens, and keeping an eye out for spiders – and you really do need to keep an eye out, because these guys are tiny!

Besides the electric blue jumping spider (Phintella vittata) that I saw earlier, there are at least two other species with a jewel-like blue-green carapace (this post was very helpful for identification).

1. Cosmophasis thalassina (sea green jumping spider)

With their big round eyes, jumping spiders are incredibly cute and photogenic. Wikipedia describes them in more sedate terms:

the large anterior eyes of Salticidae are adapted to detailed, three-dimensional vision for purposes of estimating the range, direction, and nature of potential prey, permitting the spider to direct its attacking leaps with great precision.

2. Cosmophasis umbratica (shiny jumping spider)

3. Phintella vittata (electric blue jumping spider)

Another reason I love jumping spiders is because they are so curious, often gazing up at me and my camera – perhaps sizing us up as potential prey – and even jumping onto my bag (as in the photo above) or my arm (below). That's my forearm hair, in case you needed a reminder of how tiny they are.

Art Galleries and Beverages: London Photos

Some photos from my recent trip to London, as promised. Captions are below each photo.

Looking at art in 2024 (the National Gallery)

Turbine Hall at the Tate Modern

One-second exposure resting my camera on the railing. My friend who was with me saw the photo on my LCD and asked for a copy to hang on her wall :)

Camden Art Centre

Phone pic! I hadn't been to Camden Art Centre in all the years I lived in London. This time round, I met a friend here for coffee. I'm glad I went; it's a lovely space.

The Chandos, a pub near the National Gallery

Café in South Kensington

It would have been easy enough to straighten this in post, but I like the Dutch tilt.

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Blog note: The text column of my blogposts is 580px wide. But if images are 580px wide, the image quality suffers on high-pixel-density displays like the one on my Asus Zenbook laptop. One solution is to upload 1500px-wide images, and edit the HTML code so that they are displayed at 580px. I've been doing this manually for a while, but Tommy kindly wrote some code for me which makes the process easier.

Animals in Good Light

Sometimes I think I should post animal photos only if it's (a) a relatively uncommon animal, or (b) a common animal exhibiting some interesting behaviour. But I think there's something to be said for animals in good light, even if – as in this case – they are relatively common animals, just going about their day.

The first animal literally has "common" in its name – the common sun skink. And true to its name, it was sitting in a patch of sunlight.

And this here is a white-crested laughingthrush:

Blog note: Earlier this month I wrote about moving some inactive or extinct blogs from my blogroll to my CQA page. My subset of friends who blog has dwindled since when I started out, but for the first time in years, I've added two friends' blogs to my blogroll. Say hello to Tomoe and Violet :)

Charizard

My friend's kid, who is into Pokémon, asked for a Charizard drawing, for which I repurposed a page from my UK visa application. I then cut around the drawing and made it into a card, but I think the full page is more amusing.

Balestier Buildings 1: Lam Yeo Coffee Powder Factory

I live just off Balestier Road in Singapore, and I really like the street, and my neighbourhood in general. Among other things, there are quite a few buildings with real character – interesting in a quiet way. The street is eclectic (or chapalang). There are the usual shopping malls, hotels and condominiums, but also Buddhist temples, 90s-style nightclubs, durian stalls, baroque shophouses and a Chinese opera stage.

Most of Singapore is modern – at times it feels almost too modern. But Balestier has several older buildings and establishments. One of those is Lam Yeo Coffee Powder Factory, which sells ground coffee and beans. And which I decided to try and draw.

I'm hoping this can be a series, which is why I optimistically titled this post Balestier Buildings 1. This one is a fineliner sketch, but in future I might try watercolour as well.

For me, the gold standard for this type of drawing is abbillust (no relation to my friend Abbi, mentioned previously). If I could choose between painting like Raphael and drawing like Abby – I kid you not: I would choose drawing like Abby.

Herpetofauna by Night

A few months ago I shared a photo of an oriental whip snake, but that was in the daytime. Now here's one by night, also in Pasir Ris Park:

And a four-lined tree frog (such lovely colours):

We saw a few other snakes that night: dog-faced water snakes (which I've seen before), a bronzeback, and – finally! – a mangrove pit viper. The viper was far away though, so I couldn't get a photo. Maybe one day...

Unfair Contest

My friend Abbi – previously featured on this blog, though not by name, here and here – is in the hospital, and for the past week or so, I've thought of little else. I lost 3 lbs in 3 days, probably just from worrying and being sad. I told her about it, and she said, "Hey, I've lost about 25 the past few months 😅" I said this is an unfair contest.

There's a passage in The Great Gatsby which makes me think of her. In the book, the narrator is talking about Gatsby's smile, but in Abbi's case I'm thinking about her conversation and personality.

It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four of five times in life. … It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey.

I don't know if other people who know her feel this way, but I really do.

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Blog note: Many of the blogs that were on my blogroll are no longer active: some have merely gone quiet, while others have been made private or disappeared altogether. I moved the inactive links to the sidebar of my CQA page. I didn't want to remove them altogether because it's nice to have this record – a bittersweet reminder of a time when blogging was more of a community activity.

Friends, Older and Younger

It's fun having friends from different age groups; I think I'm lucky that way.

A few months ago I used the term core memory in a blogpost. Tommy, who is in his 60s and a former software engineer, commented, "I'm old enough to remember when 'core memory' was what computers had before semiconductor RAM."

Last week my friend Wu Chi asked me my MBTI type. I said I did the test five years ago, and can't remember what I got.

"Five years?! MBTI is that old?! Five years ago I was in high school!"

I looked up MBTI on Wikipedia, which said the Briggs Myers Type Indicator Handbook was published in 1944. Wu Chi had to take a few sips of yuzu soda to recover. "1944," she said wonderingly. "That's older than New China."