#naturalists — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #naturalists, aggregated by home.social.
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Which Place Is Best for a 4-Day Trip in India? Top Destinations for a Short Vacation in 2026-27
India is one of the few countries where a four-day trip can deliver an extraordinary mix of history, wildlife, culture, luxury, and adventure. Whether you dream of standing before the iconic Taj Mahal, spotting Bengal tigers in the wild, exploring royal palaces, or experiencing luxury travel, India offers countless options for a memorable short getaway. But with so many destinations to choose from, travelers often ask: Which place is best for a 4-day trip in India? The answer depends on […] -
How Do I Choose the Best Wildlife Tours in India? Ultimate Guide for Safari 2026
India is a paradise for wildlife enthusiasts, offering everything from majestic tigers prowling in dense forests to rare Asiatic lions, one-horned rhinos, and exotic bird species. But with so many options available, planning the perfect safari trip to India can feel overwhelming. Choosing the right wildlife tours in India is essential to ensure a safe, luxurious, and unforgettable experience. Why India is a Top Wildlife Destination? India is home to over 100 national parks and wildlife […] -
Why is #JavaScript so popular? I hate everything about it.
I'm speaking at the #Canberra Field #Naturalists meeting at #ANU next month on #Malaise trapping and the #insects and other #invertebrates that surround us without our noticing them.
I expect most of my slides to be arrays of four or six #microscope images with a header (probably a family name in most cases) and captions for each image.
I don't want to lay out all these images in #LibreOffice (or any similar presentation tool) because I'm a perfectionist and getting it all tidy will take forever.
So, I decided to try out #Slidev, #Marp and other #Markdown-based presentation tools. The Markdown part is very appealing, but they all lean hard into JavaScript. That would be fine so long as I don't have to think about that side of things.
Slidev's AppleBasic theme seemed to be the best starting point, so I started hacking it to add som extra gridded image views. Plain image grids were not too challenging, but I really want captions for each image, so I started trying to understand how the templates use the forest of underlying JS libraries and CSS artefacts to produce the displayed slides.
Frankly, the whole thing is so opaque and would take me much longer to understand than preparing multiple presentations by hand would.
Then I realised I can use #montage on the command line to produce the kind of layouts I want, and I can script #exiftool to extract and prepare the captions which will save time.
So, my new plan is to write a #Python script that processes a #YAML file listing all the slides, titles and image paths. It can generate PNG images that are close to the target 1920*1080 size (give or take a little). I'll then use LibreOffice for a couple of more text-oriented or irregular slides, export those and combine all the images into a PDF.
I'm sure this will be way faster than battling Node.js. Not sure why I felt I had to write it up.
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📢#OutNow in #OA: '#Decolonial #Ecologies: The Reinvention of #NaturalHistory in #LatinAmerican #Art', by Joanna Page.
In this book, Joanna Page illuminates the ways in which #contemporary #artists in #LatinAmerica are reinventing #historical methods of collecting, organizing, and displaying nature in order to develop new #aesthetic and #political perspectives on the past and the present.
Page brings together an entirely new corpus of #artistic projects from #Argentina, #Brazil, #Chile, #Colombia, #Ecuador, #Mexico, and #Peru that engage critically and creatively with forms as diverse as the #medieval #bestiary, #baroque #cabinetsofcuriosities, atlases created by #European travellers to the #NewWorld, the #floras and #herbaria composed by eighteenth- and nineteenth-century #naturalists, and the #dioramas designed for #naturalhistory #museums.
Access this OA title for free or get a hard copy at https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0339