Tiger staring through a chain link fence

The tiger was a lot closer to the fence than I expected, watching us tourists with a disdainful look as it lounged in the afternoon heat. The fence mostly blurred out of view, but I didn’t notice a dry leaf in front of its face to the left of its mouth, leaving a brown splotch in the camera’s view. The tigers at the San Diego Zoo’s Safari Park have quite a bit of space, and this isn’t the only shade, which makes me think they were people watching. It’s an intriguing thought. And a disturbing one!

Looking at the photo reminded me: Tigers and other large cats have round pupils, unlike housecats. I read an article a while back on a study that linked pupil shape to ecological niche: Horizontal pupils mainly appear in prey animals (sheep and goats, for instance), and vertical pupils appear primarily in ambush predators who are active in both day and night, and whose heads are low to the ground (like snakes and smaller cats). Horizontal pupils handle glare better and offer a wider visual field. Vertical pupils adjust to a greater range of light levels and, by narrowing the depth of field, offer better distance cues…but that effect is stronger when your eyes are close to the ground. Higher off the ground, the vertical slits don’t help as much, so bigger cats like lions kept round pupils.

Expanded from a post at Photog.social. More photos from trips to the Safari Park in this Flickr album.

It took four extra days due to the UPS snafu—and would have taken longer if the regular carrier hadn’t been on the route. (They changed the suite number. I know I didn’t enter it in wrong, because when I talked with them on the phone Friday afternoon, they told me they had changed it.)

Anyway, I opened up the box to take a look, and aside from a sticker on the box and a 1-paragraph license addendum, I don’t see anything else to indicate how the 5-license pack differs from the standard 1-license pack. I guess they figure on voluntary compliance rather than messing around with license keys. (Keep in mind I’ve never actually installed Mac OS X before. Katie’s upgraded her computer a couple of times, but the laptop came with Panther pre-installed.)

On the plus side, we already know 10 days’ worth of pitfalls to watch out for before upgrading…whenever we have the time to do it.

Anyway, off to lunch and then back to work.

I’m going to have to stop using Amazon’s super-saver free shipping. It doesn’t let you choose the carrier (which, I’m sure, is part of why it’s free). For whatever reason, Amazon shipped part of my latest order by Priority Mail and part of it by UPS. Random paperback novel? Arrived safely in a locked mailbox three days ago. Mac OS X Tiger? UPS left a notice on the door today indicating that they need someone to sign for it in person, and they’ll try again during work hours tomorrow.

*Sigh*

Either that, or I’m just going to have to start asking Amazon to ship things to the office instead. As it is, I’ve asked UPS to redirect this package, but if their website is to be believed, they won’t be able to do so until Monday. So much for using Saturday to upgrade.

eWeek: Tiger Bugs Break Networking Software. Apparently a lot of third-party VPNs and other networking programs don’t work with the Mac OS X update. Some are due to changes in the way the OS works, and some are apparently due to bugs in the OS.

So…did no one bother to test their software with the betas? Sure, you expect some things to break with any upgrade, but I can’t imagine these were all due to last-minute changes.

It’s been anticipated since Apple first announced Safari, but it’s still a minor shock to see it actually happen. Daring Fireball reports that Internet Explorer is no longer included with Mac OS X Tiger.

You can still download it from Microsoft, but given that they dissolved the development team a few years ago, there’s not much point except for site testing.

(The one I can’t figure out is why they’ve apparently left out StuffIt Expander as well.)