Pictures and Words

Hello! My name is Peter C. Hayward, and I recently spent $100 on a security system to watch a $20 plate of meat in my back yard.

My father was visiting, so he joined in in setting up the security system. He shall henceforth be referred to as "StinkyDad".

I have no idea why the cord wasn’t working yesterday, but when I went to demonstrate the fault to StinkyDad, there were no problems, so we started setting everything up.

The camera and transmitter were already in place, so we worked on transmitting the image to the TV in my loungeroom. As several people had predicted, there wasn’t enough light to see the meat, and the night-vision on the camera wasn’t as good as I had hoped it would be. Throwing discretion out the window, we set up a light, shining directly on the StinkyPlate – we had to move everything a few metres, so that the light wouldn’t be as visible from the park.

The camera in its new position.

We all got really sick of moving grass-clippings around, so the cord is no longer hidden. We predict that people will notice the light shining on the plate of meat in the back yard before they notice a wire running along the ground.

The next problem was reception. The box for the transmitter/receiver promised that it would penetrate walls, floors and ceilings for 100m; the meat is somewhere between 70m and 50m from the TV in my lounge room, and there are a couple of walls.

The transmitter comes with a dinky little aerial (the wire going diagonally across my shirt):

I tied it to a tree.

MeatGirl and I communicated by mobile phone, so that she could let me know when the signal came through strongly and when it wasn’t working. I was outside messing with it, she was inside watching the TV:

The image was consistently inconsistent.

No matter what we did, we couldn’t seem to get the image any clearer. We jiggled and poked, but the only time MeatGirl could actually see what was happening outside was when I was physically holding the aerial, and boosting the signal with my body.

We added a metre or two of wire, but it didn’t have the same effect. It seems as if my body was the only solution. (this applies to a surprsingly large number of problems in life.)

We moved the receiver into the kitchen, a few metres closer to the StinkyPlate (one less wall causing interference) but still couldn’t get it working. What was particularly frustrating was that sporadically the signal would be clear (as clear as we were ever going to get, anyway) but the moments of clarity seemed to be completely unrelated to anything we were doing.

Wondering if it was hooked up incorrectly, I took the whole system apart and put it back together, but nothing changed. Eventually, I went inside, and MeatGirl went outside to play with the aerial.

We felt a bit like we were in an episode of Star Trek, using futuristic communicators.

I went inside, and the image was…great! I could see the plate and the ground around it quite clearly. I could see colour and light and it was working like a charm. “It’s fine,” I announced over the phone. “Whatever you’ve done has fixed it, I can see everything.”

“We haven’t done anything,” she replied, confused.

MeatGirl came inside to see this perfect image, and I went out the back to see what they had done. We switched phones on the stairs, and I was looking at the aerial, thinking “Wow, they really haven’t done anything” when she said

“What do you mean it’s fine? I can’t see a thing. It’s all grey and squiggly.”

I ran back inside while StinkyDad continued to play with the aerial, and she was right – grey, squiggly lines were running up and down the screen, but the StinkyPlate was nowhere to be seen.. I was baffled. MeatGirl said that maybe, just maybe, this was never going to work, and I should just abandon the plan.

“Never give up,” I shouted, “Never surrender!” (we’d just watched Galaxy Quest earlier that day.) I had spent $100 on this system, and we were so close to getting it working.

After another half-hour of back and forthing, we worked out the problem – whenever a male, like myself or StinkyDad was playing with or even standing near the aerial, picture on the TV inside completely disappeared. Whenever I was inside, and StinkyDad was off adjusting lights, the image was clear. For some reason, MeatGirl didn’t affect the image at all. (perhaps because she is a vegetarian?)

In any case, the image was fine, and now all we needed to do was adjust the actual shot. Because I needed both hands for this, we enlisted the help of Bernhard, a friend of mine who happened to drop in halfway through us setting up. (“Hey Bernhard! Can’t talk right now! I’m trying to adjust a camera in my back yard so that I can see a plate of meat from my lounge-room.”)

Bernhard was given the phone, and relayed messages between myself and MeatGirl. For this, he earned the special code name “Communications Officer Bernhard”.

Communications Officer Bernhard, hard at work.

Adjusting the camera took another 10 minutes or so, and by the end of it, the phone’s battery was almost dead. My enquiries of “Can you see the plate? How about my foot next to the plate? What about if I wiggle the Poking Stick, can you see that?” were repeated through the phone by Communications Officer Bernhard, answered by MeatGirl, and then relayed to me. It was a long, and occasionally frustrating process, but eventually, success!

We had a clear image coming through to the TV in my loungeroom:

That dark rectangle in the corner is the SPAM, maintaining its rectangular shape.

Ladies and gentlemen, it took several hours, six people, and a lot of money, but I finally had the ability to watch a plate of meat in my back yard from the convenience of my own loungeroom.

What’s more, it wasn’t that noticeable. I went into the park across the fence, and snapped this shot:

Up the top left is my kitchen window and back door. Below that is the laundre underneath the house. The StinkyPlate + light + security system? That's the patch of light down the bottom right. It's actually quite well-hidden.

I felt like I had accomplished something. Something expensive and elaborate and kind of pointless, but in the afterglow of success, you don’t dwell on the negative.

Less than two hours later, we took it all down again.

Not because it didn’t work, or because of rain, or because we were afraid it was being stolen, but because it had served its purpose!

Up next: Catching the culprit! Photos and video of the meat-thief in action!

Hello! My name is Peter C. Hayward, and for the past 96 hours, a plate of meat has been sitting in my back yard and slowly taking over my life.

MeatGirl didn't realise she was so zoomed in when she took this shot. The Kangaroo Steak gets lost in my hair. (this is a complaint I hear all the time at restaurants.)

From the comments:

Jen says

That Mystery Bug looks just like the other bug you were calling an earwig. Thanks to a google image search for “earwig” (with Safe-Search off) I think we can unsafely conclude they are earwigs. See the prongs? They use those to “wig” into ears! If I was named an earwig, I’d go about changing it by Depol ASAP.

Well, I’ve never been one to doubt google image search, so unless further evidence comes to light, they are officially earwigs!

I’m curious as to why you had to turn Safe-Search off. Does google consider an earwig that is not wearing clothes to be improper? Or were you really, really desperate to look at some earwig porn?

Rule 35, people. Get on it.

And that is how anty-spam software was created.

I woke up this morning, delighted to discover that the SPAM was not only still there, but absolutely covered in ants. Very little bolognaise sauce was left, and only one sausage remains, but the SPAM was still there in force!

No earwigs today, but I did manage to capture a huge cockroach, as it explored the meat:

I think we can all agree that this is a cockroach.

The cockroach ran across all the meats equally, so each of them will get a 1 point bonus to their popularity scores today. (that’s correct. Right above these words is a photo…of a cockroach of +1 popularity.)

Other than our new guest, no major developments. Setting up the security, I had to move the plate, which accidentally caused the meat to shift around, and I think we lost the ants as a result. Hopefully this will only be temporary, and they will quickly rediscover the location of everyone’s favourite canned meat product.

Meat stats: (general)

Weather – dry – no exciting weather today. It got a bit hot tonight, but that may have been because we were running all over the place trying to set up a security system. No rain, that’s for sure.

Number of meats – 3.2 – the SPAM is still there, there’s a single sausage, and the kangaroo steak remains completely untouched. There is also a tiny bit of bolognaise sauce, which I gave an arbitrary value of “+2″.

Stench – 0 – you may not believe this (I didn’t believe it at first) but there is absolutely no stench. Even the SPAM no longer smells!

The inappropriately-named “Stinky”Plate seems to be some kind of stench-absorbing zone. It’s fast becoming ludicrous. Ludicrous, I say!

And don’t accuse me of not trying. I got so close to the plate that I was in danger of the cockroach running up my nose. Nothing.
Stench radius – 0

Give us, Lord, our Daily Meat...

Individual meats:

Kangaroo Steak:

Toughness – 9/10 – perhaps it was the excitement of moving, or perhaps the steak flipped over, but it was very slightly juicier tonight than it was yesterday, and so goes back to 9.
Popularity – 1/10 – and that’s because of the cockroach. No one will ever love this piece of Kangaroo Steak. It is doomed to a life of solitude. A long life though, so that’s something.
Appeal – 6/10 – not nearly as appealing as yesterday. The juiciness makes it resemble beef jerky much less, and that’s really all it’s got going for it.

Pork Steak:

GONE

Dad’s Spaghetti Bolognaise:

Toughness – 5/10 – the bolognaise was really quite resistant to the Poking Stick today, but that was most likely because it’s started to cake onto the plate.
Popularity – 1/10 – The insects seem to have completely given up on Dad’s sauce (without the word “bolognaise” in there, that sounds quite dirty…) One point for the cockroach.
Appeal – 3/10 – It would be quite low on the list of “foods I’d like to eat”, even when I’m starving to death.

Single Solitary Saveloy:

Toughness – 9/10 – this baby is tough. I was poking it, expecting jolly sausage bounciness, but this was one stiff sausage.
Popularity – 1/10 – maybe that’s why this is the only sausage left. Even the ants don’t want it. One point for the cockroach.
Appeal – 5/10 – I’d eat it to survive. I’m not expecting that I’d enjoy it, but I’d definitely try this before the bolognaise sauce.

Can o’ SPAM:

Toughness – 4.5/10 – the SPAM is resistant, but it feels like if I forced it, I could quite easily poke a hole in this. When we were trying to calibrate the camera, my father did, in fact, poke a hole in the SPAM (don’t even try to work out how the two activities are related). End rating: “tough, but easily folds”.
Popularity – 5/10 – ants were going mad on this, and the cockroach certainly helped. 5 points.
Appeal – 7/10 – the SPAM has gone a strange kind of yellow colour, and it looks a bit drier, but I get the feeling that it would taste almost exactly the same as it did yesterday. If anyone wants to leave a can of SPAM out for 24 hours and try it, I’d love to hear the results.

I have developed a plan to shake things up: Tune in tomorrow, you will not want to miss it. Tell your friends! Tell your old teachers that you don’t keep in contact with any more (it’s a great conversation-starter!) Tell your interior designer! If you don’t have an interior designer, just look one up in the phone book, give them a call, and give them the link to this website! I’m sure that they will appreciate it, and not be annoyed at all!

I am not impressed by the lack of smell.

Tomorrow: Security Measures, Part III!