Braconid Wasp

A female braconid wasp, possibly a Bracon sp (Hymenoptera: Braconidae), based mainly on the similiarity to specimens show in the lower half of this page at James Lindsey's Ecology of Commanster site.

Photo taken in Whiteknights Park, Reading University grounds, Reading, UK, on 2010-08-22.

Moths

From back in late spring: two small moths mating, probably Micropterix aruncella (Lepidoptera: Micropterigidae).  See here for an earlier post about these moths.

Photo taken in Whiteknights Park, Reading University grounds, Reading, UK, on 2010-05-30.

Lonchaeid Fly

A small, stout metallic-blue fly with red eyes: a female Lonchaeid fly (Diptera: Lonchaeidae), either a Lonchaea sp or a Setisquamalonchaea sp (ID by Iain MacGowan).  I came across 3 of these on the seed-head of a sowthistle (Sonchus arvensis).

Photos taken on the dam at the bottom end of the large lake in Whiteknights Park, Reading, UK, on 2010-08-22.

Filename Horrors

To my mind, one of the biggest mistakes that Microsoft made in Windows 95 was to put a space in the name of the main program installation directory: "C:\Program Files".  This caused untold grief to users as the default installation of lots of otherwise compatible Windows 3.1 programs would fail with messages such as "Can't find directory C:\Program".  And this seemed totally unnecessary: it was is if the marketing people at Microsoft were just showing off that Windows could now handle filenames with spaces in, but had forgotten that many of the programs that users might want to install couldn't handle them.  As a result of this, lots of programs defaulted to installing themselves in the top-level directory "C:\", and I learnt to avoid putting spaces in filenames (and directory names) altogether.  Even now, 15 years later, I will always name a file "some-name.txt" or "some_name.txt" rather than "some name.txt".

I had assumed that the designers of Unix and Linux would not have made such a silly mistake, but I have just come across Fixing Unix/Linux/POSIX Filenames: Control Characters (such as Newline), Leading Dashes, and Other Problems by David A. Wheeler (Via Avery Pennarum.), and the situation seems much worse.  These systems allow control characters such as newlines in filenames.  This is really appalling: you can't hope to build secure software on top of a system that subverts your expectations to such an extent.  As John DuBois said (quoted by Wheeler)  "Newlines in filenames are mainly something you would encounter in a malicious context..".  Anyone who develops software for Unix/Linux systems really should read through Wheeler's article.

Clearwing Moth

From a month ago: a red-tipped clearwing moth, Synanthedon formicaeforimis (Lepidoptera: Sesiidae).  The red tips of the wings and the red band around the abdomen are not very clear in this photo.

Photo taken in Whiteknights Park, Reading, UK, on 2010-07-30.