My struggle

I didn't make this, but I can relate. The establishment just isn't ready for subaquatic super-hamsters.

Video update for November 2nd, 2016

Hamsters swapped.

George is on land, Scott's underwater. Sorry for lack of updates on megahab, a lot has happened in my life. I'm making some decent money now, so I don't need donations as much as I used to, but I'm also moving and that plus a lot of other changes have me overloaded with stress and work. It's all positive overall, just a lot to deal with.

I will at some point soon have more free time to resume work on megahab. What's really holding up the show is the added complexity of putting a window in the lid, because the picture when I bought it lied about the lid being transparent. I can't really leave it with an opaque lid as no light would make it inside, but carving out an opening for a window, then adding it and making it water tight has really complicated this project.

I will be looking at buying a lexan window cut to the custom dimensions I need as soon as I have the time to think about stuff like that. Everything else is already bought, it's just a matter of assembling it after the window's installed.

Video update for October 14th, 2016

Hamsters swapped

George is on land, Scott is underwater. Video soon.

New video, with unscheduled cat appearance

Hamsters swapped

George is underwater now, Scott's on land. Will probs do a video in the next couple of days. Still working on mega hab, I am doing better financially now so I'm looking at having TAP plastics make a custom window for the hab lid. I asked Home Depot if they would custom cut lexan and they said no, so I pretty much have to custom order it from TAP now which is gonna be pricey.

Just being silly

Hamsters swapped

George is now on land, while Scott begins a new underwater mission. Have a video:

Hamsters swapped

George is now on land, while Scott begins a new underwater mission. Have a video:

Got a small pool

Aka "artificial ocean mk 1." I've been thinking about doing this for months, so I'd have a bigger body of water to put larger habitats in. It's not as deep as I expected but it beats the aquarium. 

Hamsters swapped

Scotts on land now, George is underwater. A mundane update but then half the challenge of doing anything involving underwater living space is just endurance. Keeping it up for a long time. Nearly every structure of this type designed for humans has long since been pulled out of the water and sold for scrap to recoup some of the expenses. Owning my own itty bitty habitat program means I can ensure that never happens. :3

Hamsters swapped.

Now Scott's underwater, and George is on land. Have a video:

Hamsters swapped.

George is now back underwater while Scott enjoys some R and R in the landbase. :3

New video

Hamsters swapped

George is now maxin and relaxin in the land base while Scott is down in the hab. Probably will take a video sometime soon.

Hamsters swapped

Scott wasn't underwater long, but I decided I want to swap them on the first of each month to make it easy to keep track of. So Scott is now chillin in the land base, and George is down in the hab.

New video!

New hamsternaut embarks upon first underwater mission:

The sort of thing I'd do with more funding

Another video from the Nemo's Garden project. Growing various edible crops in undersea inflatable bubble habs.

In particular what caught my attention was the new observatory dome shown early on in the video (seen in the still above.) That is exactly the sort of inflatable domed enclosure I once proposed as a massive habitat I called "Hamlantis". The idea being that either there are cages which float on the water inside or which are mounted to/suspended from the walls in a ring.

That would let me surface inside to do stuff like changing litter and resupplying food and water, allowing it to be truly permanent. The hamsters could live their entire lives down there happily for many generations, never needing to come to the surface.

It's sort of a waste that they're only using these enclosures for plants. Even one of those could house 100 hamsters, easily. The trick would be running power and air lines from shore to keep the inside warm, and the air breathable. Humidity would also be difficult to manage as it's open on the bottom, but I'm sure something could be worked out.

Another possibility would be to use the bubble as someplace to bring smaller habitats up into when I need to open them up and change the litter, resupply food and water, etc. so I could have a large number of individual smaller habitats, and the bubble as a dry space in which to service them without needing to bring them to the surface. 

To do before Summer:

-Find out cost of custom cut acyrlic for the lid of Mega hab. I can't do any other work on it until this, as if I attach the weights first, it will be awkward and difficult to work with when I later try to add the window to the lid.  

-Get hamcam back online. Looking at what caused the wifi issues last time, fixing up old laptop to stream from.  

-Build the inner floors for Megahab. There will be 2 or 3 floors depending on whether a running saucer will fit with 3. I have some ideas for carving out a crescent of the floor just above it to make room for the saucer while still having 3 floors. Hamsters presumably don't appreciate wastefully high ceilings but would like the additional living space of an extra floor.  

Reminder: I cannot reply to your comments

I don't know why, only that it's a common issue as you'll see if you Google "can't reply to blogger comments". I've tried the solutions suggested there but nothing works. Don't think I'm ignoring your comments! I read them all, but can no longer reply for whatever reason.

New hamsternauts purchased

Recently, I've felt up to owning some fuzzbros again. So I bought two males that I've named George and Scott, after the father of saturation diving George F. Bond, and famed aquanaut Scott Carpenter. For now they're exploring the land habitat, though I was told not to cohabitate males beyond a certain age, so one of 'em will be going underwater fairly soon.

On a lighter note

It looks like one of those ambitious underwater hotel projects will actually happen finally. It's being backed by someone with the necessary wealth, who is a credible figure also associated with the Lunar X-Prize, and who appears personally driven to put human beings underwater for the purpose of improving ecological awareness.

"It will sit 8.5 meters (28 feet) below the surface of the water, and remarkably, it can even move to avoid storms—it’s not just underwater; it’s mobile! The hotel will be moving from one location to another and has even invited every Caribbean island nation to register and provide a mooring locations for the hotel. Interestingly, the hotel is technically classed as a vessel, because it can navigate ocean waters using electromechanical propulsion technology to seek shelter under its own power in the event of a hurricane.

Each room will be air-conditioned and have WiFi.

The project is being funded by Tony Webb, a space tourism entrepreneur who is also backing the SYNERGY MOON project, which is competing for The Google Lunar X Prize to get a robot to the moon. The new underwater hotel is part of Webb’s larger philanthropic plan of restoring coral reefs worldwide."

It was probably a mistake to choose such a cute animal to do this with

You can't help but get attached to the little fuzz nuggets, who then only live ~3 years. Doing all this cool shit with them only makes you more attached too. They're like adventurers who deserve a longer lifespan or something, I don't know.

I've buried Cousteau but am now wondering whether miniature viking funerals wouldn't be more appropriate going forward.

RIP Cousteau

Went to put him in the hab, found him curled up dead. No apparent cause, food's fine, water's fine. Old age I guess. RIP Cousteau. :(

I'm gonna take a break for a little while, I don't particularly want more hamsters just yet.