On an adventure, busy, busy, busy, busy.
Don’t worry, taking LOTS of pictures, you’ll have to look at a lot of them later.
In the meantime, here’s a sample panorama from today to whet your appetite.
Damn, but she’s a beautiful lady!
Monthly Archives: August 2016
Adventurous Panorama – August 10th
On an adventure, busy, busy, busy, busy.
Don’t worry, taking LOTS of pictures, you’ll have to look at a lot of them later.
In the meantime, here’s a sample panorama from today to whet your appetite.
What is this water falling from the sky and is that one of the reasons we’re being forced to chew our air before breathing it?
Filed under Panorama, Photography, Sports, Travel
Adventurous Panorama – August 9th
On an adventure, busy, busy, busy, busy.
Don’t worry, taking LOTS of pictures, you’ll have to look at a lot of them later.
In the meantime, here’s a sample panorama from today to whet your appetite.
That’s a BIG freakin’ park! Nice of them to put it right there in the middle of the city!
Filed under Panorama, Photography, Travel
Spotted In The Wild
Coming home from the hangar on Saturday afternoon I spotted a rare beast. I knew they were coming of course, but didn’t know they were out on the streets yet.
See it, that silver one one lane to the left?
One can hope that in a few years you’ll see millions like it, or at least related to it. We’re already seeing TONS of it’s sportier big brother, the Tesla S model.
But this is the first Tesla Model X that I’ve seen out on the road. Where the Model S is a sports car all around, this will be more of a family vehicle. Which can still go from zero to “WTF was that??!!” in about eight seconds. It’s amazing what you can do with all electric, high torque motors on each wheel.
I’ve said that if I ever won the lottery, the Tesla dealer would be my third stop. (First I get something really, really nice for The Long-Suffering Wife because, you know, she puts up with me. That can’t be easy. Second and third stops would be for big, fancy, fast, light, powerful computers and cameras, in either order.) I would be looking to get a Model S, but these are pretty damn cool as well.
They take the standard SUV and make it…adventurous.
Speaking of which, I feel an adventure coming on. Time to get to bed. Adventures start way, way too damn early in the morning around here.
Filed under Photography
Trailcam – August 7th
What have the kits been up to?
You will remember that we have critter “neighbors”, a family of raccoons in particular. A few weeks ago I got a “trailcam” to try to get some better pictures of them. After the initial photos, I left the camera to run for a couple of weeks (i.e., I got too busy to climb up onto the roof and retrieve it) which didn’t work quite as well as I thought it might.
I did get some reasonably nice pictures over the next couple of nights.
The family, mom and her three kits, were active almost every night, usually where this drain pipe from the air conditioning unit emptied out. Their very own watering hole.
So I moved the tripod over to where it was nearer that spot. One doesn’t need much of a close examination to determine that one’s mom, a mammal…
…and nursing her kits.
After not seeing or hearing them on the roof for nearly a week, they were back. Let’s do a tail count here. We have visitors, since I count five tails.
There was the usual roughhousing (“Kits will be kits!”).
Mom and the family look good.
And then something happened. This was the last picture with this view.
Then there was this. Obviously, someone had knocked over the tripod.
Then they sat on it. There are a LOT of pictures that look just like this, nearly every night. The IR flash going off and either being totally overexposed because there was something directly on the camera, or showing blurry, close-up fur like this.
When the camera wasn’t being sat upon by critters, it was looking at the trees above. Those would be the trees above that sway in the slightest breeze. In front of a motion activated camera. With night vision capabilities.
Not that it needs the night vision. The trailcam is perfectly capable of taking pictures at any sign of motion during the day as well.
You see what I’m getting at here?
Following the great tip over of July 24th, over the next 11 days I have 24,755 pictures pretty much all like the two above. That averages out to one every thirty-eight seconds. FOR ELEVEN DAYS.
I know they’re there every couple of days because the tripod’s tipped over near their watering hole and across their normal route of access.
One one occasion only, they were late getting home. Given their nocturnal nature and the fact that mom would have been herding and protecting her kits, I’m very surprised to see them passing by after sunrise.
I’ll see what shakes out and if they’re still hanging around in a week or two. Maybe next time I’ll lash the tripod to some of the HVAC ducting or pipes up there.
I hate it when the critters are demonstrably smarter and more clever than I am.
Filed under Critters, Photography
No Context For You – August 6th
Motion.
Always good for turning the obvious into the transcendent.
Matisse? Or me tripping over my own feet during a long exposure photo?
Filed under Photography
Better, Not Great
Having learned some sort of lesson yesterday, tonight when I went out to walk I took the “big” camera with me, the Canon DSLR with the 75-300mm zoom lens.
The moon, as expected, had moved higher in the sky, away from Mercury, and was now near bright Jupiter.
Tonight’s lesson – a much better camera is much better, especially with a nice zoom lens.
What would be even better yet would be that nice camera with a real zoom lens and a tripod.
On the other hand, a two-mile stroll with a three-pound camera is more work than one without, so I don’t know if I would actually want to walk while carrying the tripod as well. It could be awkward.
Filed under Astronomy, Photography, Space
Jewels In The Evening Sky
I apologize for not giving you more warning or ranting in advance enough about the astronomical display going on in the evening sky. I mentioned it once, but that’s not enough.
In short, just after sundown, you can see all five naked eye planets (see, I know I mentioned it, because of that dumb joke about also seeing the sixth naked eye planet).
Tonight was an excellent night to spot Mercury, which is always the toughest of them. It’s never too far from the Sun (orbital dynamics being what they are) which means it’s never visible in a dark sky, only in the twilight after sunset or before sunrise. But some appearances are better than others due to the tilt of the Earth’s axis. This causes the plane of the ecliptic (where the planets all travel, the solar system being like a humongous, flat disk to a good first approximation) to sometimes be at a steep angle to the horizon, leaving Mercury exposed.
To make it better tonight, a two-day old thin crescent moon was very close to Mercury, making it easy to know where to look. Online I noticed a number of people taking pictures and saying it was the first time they’ve ever actually been able to spot Mercury.
Tomorrow’s not quite as good, since the Moon will have moved on up into the sky nearer to Venus, but Mercury will still be there. It’s an excellent target to easily spot with the naked eye if you have a clear, flat western horizon. It’s even easier to spot if you have a pair of binoculars.
I was out on my evening walk and didn’t have my good cameras with me. The iPhone has a decent camera for about 99.99% of what I need it for on a moment’s notice (“The best camera you own is the one in your hand when you need it”) but it’s only marginal for this sort of thing.
Click on the picture to enlargenate it. Can you see that faint sliver of the crescent moon, about halfway between the basketball hoop and the tree above the car?
There it is! No sign of Mercury in this view since the iPhone doesn’t have an optical zoom, leaving us with a grainy digitally zoomed image.
A good SLR with about a 300mm zoom lens (just like the one I left at home, about 3/4 mile away at this point) would have grabbed it easily, just a smidgen above and to the right of the crescent. (Yes, “smidgen” is an official astronomical term. Because it’s my stinkin’ website, that’s why!)
If you go out and look tomorrow, the moon will have moved up and to the left from Mercury. It will be near Venus, which will be the brightest thing in the sky other than the Sun, Moon, or ISS if it should be passing overhead. (Check heavens-above.com to see if it is, of course.) You’ll be able to see Venus shining nice and bright for at least an hour after twilight ends.
Above and to the left (south) from Venus you’ll see a nice, bright Jupiter. Got binoculars? If so you should be able to see the four Galilean moons. Check them out about once an hour and pay attention to where they are each time. See, Galileo was correct when, unrepentant, he (supposedly) said, “And yet it moves!”
Further up, about due south, you’ll see a triangle of bright objects, two of them with a distinct reddish tint. The brightest one, on the right, is Mars, about six light-minutes away as the photon travels. The one with a more whitish or yellowish tinge on the top left is Saturn, about seventy-five light-minutes away. The reddish one in the lower left is the red giant star Antares, 553.8 light-years away.
Tomorrow night, if you’ve got no other plans and the weather is cooperating (pro tip – don’t go out in a thunderstorm to look for planets), put on lots of DEET-based mosquito repellant (no Zika for my friends!), find a comfy spot outside, and kick back with a beverage to watch the universe come out for your entertainment. Even if you don’t see the ISS, keep an eye out for meteors or other satellites.
It’s your universe. You don’t even have to pay taxes to enjoy it.
Yet.
Filed under Astronomy, Photography
Learning But Not Yet Smart
The predictive autocomplete function on our phones is both very stupid in human terms, and very smart. The latter is because of a simple programming routine, the former because human language and thought are incredibly complex and occasionally bizarre.
For example, if I type in…
…anyone who’s spoken English from birth will KNOW that the extension of “smaller than a bread___” is “breadbox!” But there’s a lot of nuance and context in there, along with about a hundred zillion colloquialisms, not to mention the possibility of “close but no cigar” usage by someone who doesn’t know the exact phrase (“Excuse me, while I kiss this guy”) and people who are deliberately mixing things up (“it’s not brain science”). This is why IBM took years and hundreds of millions of dollars to create Watson.
On the other hand, it’s relatively easy to watch for words which are not in the lexicon but are used repeatedly. This lets your app “learn” and add initials, proper nouns, names, and so on to its stored dictionary.
So after a few days now, I get…
…”Trumpencritter” from “Trum.”
That’s going to save a LOT of time over the next few months.
Walking Through The Twilight Zone
This last week or so I’ve been making sure I get my daily allocation of steps (my fitness smart watch demands my obedience) by going out for a late evening stroll. I’m usually out at 21:00 or even 22:00, walking at least a mile and a half to three miles.
Most nights I’l piss off the occasional dog who objects to my existence on the other side of their wall, and I’ll spot a clown or two running through a stop sign at 50 mph. As long as I’m not actually in the crosswalk at the time, the walk is (hopefully) calming.
Last night it was spooky quiet. I don’t think I saw more than one or two cars all night. After a while it became quite noticeable that I hadn’t heard a single dog barking. I didn’t hear any music playing or noise from any televisions coming from any houses, despite the fact that it was a comfortable night and I would have thought that many folks would have their windows open. No helicopters, no jets heading into Runway 08 at Burbank.
Spooky.
Tonight flipped to the exact opposite. And it was all odd, at least a little bit off in small, subtle ways.
That car parked next to the high school? Only when I was passing it did I realize that it was running and occupied by a couple. No brake lights, no motion, just a sudden realization that there were shapes in there and they were talking loudly. More like an argument than making out, but not exactly threatening or dangerous. I did give a couple of thoughts as I went by as to what I might do if the woman inside saw me and took the opportunity to jump out and shout for help.
Odd.
Around the corner, I can hear an unfamiliar sound. Sort of like a cricket but more metallic or mechanical. It’s soft but somewhere straight ahead of me. Within ten seconds or so I hear the location switch to a location out in the middle of the street about 45° out, then to a spot that sounded like it was about five feet away out in the street, then to a spot behind, at which point it became a more steady drone and quickly dopplered away. The street is well lit there with a high school on one side and a shopping center parking lot on the other, yet I saw nothing passing me by or anywhere near me.
Very odd.
Around the corner, the grocery store had closed at 21:00, about fifteen minutes earlier. There was suddenly an alarm bell going off and I saw three or four people get out of a very high-end SUV and run over to the locked doors. The alarm stopped and they went back to their car and just stood around, waiting for something. I’m going with the closing shift doing a poor job of setting the burglar alarm, correcting the error, and then wasting their time doing something or the other.
Odd.
As I go around the next corner I can see a kid twenty or thirty feet in front of me. A Mini pulls up and there’s some kind of exchange between the several occupants of the car and the teenager on the sidewalk. He gets in but doesn’t seem enthusiastic about it. They roar off – and run through the red light ahead of them. (At least that part was “normal.”) Big brother rounding up the kid who broke curfew? Gang members? Something completely innocent?
Odd.
Now that it’s dead quiet again, coming through the red light from the other direction I can hear music, getting louder. Over the little rise appears a HUGE guy on a bicycle with a boom box blaring away. He reminded me of some of the passing characters in “Blade Runner.”
Odd.
Approaching my home block after about a mile and a half, I can see a large SUV pull over at the corner ahead, stop, and the hazard warning lights turn on. I see someone get out and stand in the middle of the street nearby. As I approach I can hear someone talking quite loudly. It’s the lady standing in the middle of the intersection, talking on her phone. I don’t understand what she’s saying or even recognize the language. She’s quite excited and agitated. Is she having mechanical trouble? Did she run out of gas? As I cross the street I see that she’s tall, really tall, like basketball center on the US Olympic team tall, at least 6’6″ or more. She’s dressed in what looks like some kind of African dashiki and is wearing a turban or headdress of some sort. She never looks at me, just keeps shouting into her phone. As I get across the street to where her car is parked, I see that it’s running, the interior lights on with the driver’s door open. What made her stop her car so fast and jump out? Why is she shouting and who is she shouting at on her phone?
Very, very odd.
As I turn the final corner toward home I half expect to see Rod Serling standing there smoking a cigarette. He wasn’t there, of course. That whole “been dead for a long time” thing and all. But given the rest of the evening, it might not have been as unlikely as it would have been in broad daylight.
Walking through the Twilight Zone is mind bending.
Filed under Curiosities, Paul
We Love The Stars Too Fondly 