Mokka mit Schlag

Snow Leopard’s broken some of my AppleScripts in some weird way I don’t yet understand. After some debugging the problem seems to lie in files. Specifically files treated as strings. This no longer works:

set libraryFile to file "Macintosh HD:Users:elharo:Cafe Au Lait:support:CafeLib.scpt"

Nor does this:

set libraryFile to alias "Macintosh HD:Users:elharo:Cafe Au Lait:support:CafeLib.scpt"

They both die with

error “File alias Macintosh HD:Users:elharo:Cafe Au Lait:support:CafeLib.scpt of «script» wasn’t found.” number -43

Any ideas?
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I’ve been seeing some interesting day flying moths in the parks here in New York, especially in grassy areas. However I haven’t yet unpacked my camera gear from the move, much less taken it out in the field so it’s lucky I still have a bunch of California moths in the queue, like this beautiful Monopis crocicapitella from Mason Park:

Monopis crocicapitella, Hodges#415
William R. Mason Regional Park, Irvine, California, USA; August 26, 2009
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Before I left Irvine, I was starting to get in the habit of walking around Mason Park after dark, something I’d be a little more nervous about doing in Prospect Park, especially with a couple of thousand dollars worth of camera equipment around my neck. However the few lights in the park really did attract some beautiful insects you’d be hard-pressed to find in the daytime including this Diamondback Moth I found on my very last nightly foray:

Plutella xylostella, Hodges #2366
William R. Mason Regional Park
2009-08-26
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I have almost completely switched over to Safari of Firefox, and have found replacements for almost all my Firefox plugins; but the lack of seamless keyword search in the location bar still bugs the hell out of me, enough to make me switch back to Firefox on occasion just for that. However recently I installed Verizon FIOS and noticed that Verizon’s DNS services intercept failing DNS queries through the browser and replace it with Yahoo search results. This means I can now type “fred brooks” into the location bar, and get a link to the page I need.

Well, almost. There are two problems:
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Now that I’ve moved back to Brooklyn that pretty much closes out my BGBY effort for Orange County at 161, well short of the 200 species I was shooting for. 200 was a stretch but if I had had the extra 4 months, I could easily have added another 10-20 species. At least I managed to improve last year’s total by 2.

The silver lining is that now I get to start a new list for Brooklyn. (I suppose if I had bicycled across the country I could combine the two lists, but, as much fun as that sounds, I don’t have that sort of time or strength.) I’ve made a few excursions to Prospect Park (including 2 back in March) and I’m now starting the year with a very respectable 75 species:
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I missed Moth Monday last week because I was busy packing for my move back to Brooklyn, as well as trying to squeeze in a few more state birds in California. I didn’t quite hit 300, but Little Blue Heron and Semipalmated Sandpiper were still nice additions.

I’m now back in New York. Federal Express hasn’t dropped off the Firewire disk where I store my raw photos, but here’s a JPEG from 2007, and in honor of my return, it’s from Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge. This is Hodges 7132, the Common Tan Wave Moth:

Common Tan Wave Moth, Pleuroprucha insulsaria
Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge; August 12, 2007
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