Using my character for reading English books

I know I'm a little like a child in a sense. I always wonder why and how something is and how it works. People say that children are full of curiosity, but as they grow, they lose their mind of wonder but I'm not losing it. I don't know it's a good thing or a bad thing. My curiosity usually goes to scientific matters and artistic things.

Then, one idea came up to my mind. I have a habit to eagerly know something that I'm interested in. I think I can use this personality for practicing English. I have been thinking I have to read more English books, so if I read mystery novels, I think I cannot stop reading.

I think anyone has experiences of stopping reading books partway through. There are various reasons, but the biggest reason is a book wasn't so interesting to you. To think of myself, I like mysteries, so the best idea to keep reading is reading mystery novels. I think I'm not able to stop reading until I know who the criminal is.
I liked reading Sue Grafton's novels. Maybe I'll try to read one of her books again.

Interesting shape of bread

When I was looking at an old folder in my computer, I found an interesting photo of bread. It was more than 10 years ago when I took this photo. I bought this bread at the local supermarket in Japan. This is a bread which at first glance appears to be ordinary bread, but it caught my puzzle sense and that's why I bought it.

 

This bread looks a bit difficult to make its shape. It seems possible if there is a long piece of bread dough, I can make this shape by the same method of one-stroke sketch. What I mean is three-dimensional-one-stroke sketch. I don't know if there is a word "three-dimensional-one-stroke sketch", I just made it up now, you know what I mean?
I'm not a hundred percent sure now, but I think I looked at the bottom of this bread and saw there are three types of bread dough combined together. So, in fact, it might have been not so difficult making this shape, I guess.
As you noticed, people like me who are interested in puzzles pay attention to something that other people don't care about. I was excited when I ssw this bread at the supermarket. If someone who was there and saw me excited looking at the bread, what did she or he think? I hope she or he didn't misunderstand I was a strange person or maybe I was.
The world is full of interesting things through a puzzle sense of eyes.

Box lover

If you have experience keeping cats, you may know that cats love boxes. 
They cannot stop going into a box if they find one.

I can understand their feelings. When I was small, I also loved to go into a box. Staying in a box made me feel I had a special room, just for myself.
In my childhood, one of my favorite plays was making boxes with paper. I made lots of tiny paper boxes and displayed them in my room. It was quite fun. 

It may be a holdover from those experiences, but I still love to go in and see new buildings or houses. You know, these are the same as boxes, huge boxes.  

When I bought my first computer, what I did was buy a 3D software. As you can guess, what I drew using the 3D software was a box. I wonder why I don't get tired of making boxes?

So, I like packing types of puzzles as well. Usually, having the skill of solving puzzles is not useful for our daily lives but I think packing puzzle skills might be useful when you pack a suitcase or pack your belongings when you move.
Unfortunately, I don't have too many opportunities to pack a suitcase, but I enjoy puzzles involving boxes.

Colourful but invisible on trees - The Rainbow Lorikeet

I love birds. I wanted them to come to my yard, so I placed two water basins several years ago, one in the front yard and the other one in the backyard. I live in Queensland, Australia, the weather here is very hot in summer and birds get thirsty easily. Birds are coming constantly to the water basins, some take a bath and some drink water.

One of the common birds around here is the Rainbow Lorikeet, a bird that is colourful and active. They usually go around in pairs; a pair has a close relationship and is lovely. Foreigners who visit Australia for the very first time would be surprised to see its colour. 

Here are some pictures of Rainbow lorikeets below. 

Well, are you surprised?

When I saw them for the first time, I thought what a daring design they are! 

Who designed them?
When I was a kid, I learnt that most animals which are targeted by a predator have protective coloration. Following the previous theory of protective coloration, I cannot understand the color scheme of the Rainbow Lorikeet. Look at their colour; orange, yellow, blue, red, green. These are the kind of colours almost the same as the crayon which the child in kindergarten uses. Why is this colour scheme needed?

Countershading is one of wild animals' features. For example, penguins have a white colour in front and black on their back. They spend lots of time in the ocean, and when a predator comes under them and looks at them above, their white stomach melts into a bright sky colour and it becomes hard to be found. It's not every animal but lots of animals, especially birds and fish have a lighter coloured stomach.

From this way of thinking, rainbow lorikeets should have a bright colored stomach, but they don't. On the contrary, they have very colourful stomachs; orange, yellow and blue that is close to purple. I wondered if they don't have a chance to be pursued by a predator?

There are several tall trees in my yard and they love these trees. One day, I heard they were chirping on the front yard trees. I looked up and tried to see them, but I couldn't see them. I'm nearsighted, so I used my camera and zoomed the lens, but still I couldn't find them. I was amazed that I couldn't find the birds with their vivid colours. The predators around here are raptors. If they saw rainbow lorikeets from the sky, can they see these colourful birds on a tree?

Then one idea came up in my mind, in my impression, animals in tropical areas have vivid colours on their body. I wondered if their body colour was related to the strength of the sunlight? 

If I have a chance to see an ornithologist, I would like to ask why the Rainbow Lorikeet is colourful.

Mother nature is a daring designer, isn't she?

Looking for unique ideas

My husband and I run our family business of designing and making wooden puzzles. We sell our puzzles on our online shop. My husband has been designing puzzles from when he was a teenager, so he has lots of experiences and skills in woodworking. Meanwhile, I don't have experience designing puzzles; I just like them.

I know it's difficult to design puzzles, but I would like to design my original puzzle not for selling, but just for my collection. I have been thinking of ideas and the rough image is completed in my head. The most difficult part is to make the rough images into realistic drawings. It happens often that an idea that I thought would work well was unrealizable.

I tripped and stopped in the middle of designing again and again. I'm still struggling to find a better and unique mechanism. While I have been thinking of mechanism in puzzles, another idea suddenly came up in my mind and I thought that I can use that idea for automatons. Either puzzles or automatons, I would like to make something unique and fun.

I wish I could write the details, but I cannot. I have some bad experiences with my Internet puzzle games being stolen on my website. Therefore, I have become cautious since then. I have to avoid having ideas stolen somehow.

It will take time, but one day, I'm going to show you my automaton or puzzle using my idea on this blog. I promise.