Thirty-seven thousand feet is a pretty great place to be taking pictures.
Sometimes, if you’re prepared and really, really lucky, you can see truly amazing things.
I absolutely do NOT understand how folks can fly with the window shade shut all of the time.
Filed under Flying, Photography, Travel
Outside of my bathroom window is a hibiscus plant which I’ve shared before. One morning recently I found that one of the large, flaming red hibiscus flowers had turned away from the sun and was pressed up against the glass. With the sun streaming directly in through the window (as you migh surmise, I am NOT an early riser) the intensity of the red flower and green leaves, broken up by the thousands of tiny prisms in the bathroom window glass, was almost overwhelming.
It was incredible how rich the colors were. I had to delay my shower while I grabbed my phone to take pictures.
A) This behavior should not surprise anyone who’s known me for more than thirty seconds.
B) No, I was not high on any artificial substances, legal or otherwise. It was just life, maaaaaaan…
Seriously – pay attention to the really bright colors out there, the hues that are screaming at you to be noticed.
And maybe clean the bathroom windows just a little bit more often. (Duly noted!)
Filed under Flowers, Photography
The word “planet” comes from the Greek word for “wanderer” and indicated that the “star” in question wasn’t fixed, but instead moved relative to the other stars.
In our western, sunset sky we often see bright planets. Search this site for “conjunction” or “Venus” and you’ll find plenty of pictures. So I wasn’t surprised to go out the front door the other day and see something bright just above the horizon.
See it? Just to the right of the batch of palm trees, between the mountain (Castle Peak) and the lowest cable? Here’s a close up.
Not bright enough to be Venus. And wait… Venus is in the morning sky, not the evening sky. Jupiter might be that bright in the sunset sky, but it rises around midnight these days.
So what is it?
Well, around here, the way to check for the next most likely object is to wait a minute. Is it “wandering” toward the horizon as the planet rotates, or is it “wandering” in the wrong direction and a bit faster than anything ever seen by the Greeks?
Right. It’s moving too slow to be the ISS (although the direction fits) but shortly after this picture was taken it got close enough overhead to see the other green and red navigation lights.
The new LED navigation and landing lights are really bright. When I first saw him he was probably out to the west of the 23 Freeway, near the edge of this image or even somewhere off to the left, just climbing out of CMA.
Wandering, yes. A star, no.
Filed under Astronomy, Flying, Photography, Sunsets
As mentioned over the last few days, we went to Worldcon or NASFiC eight of ten years in ten years between 2000 and 2009. I had gone to Worldcon or NASFiC (and in 1979 I went to both, one of only two people to do so that I know of, the other being my college roommate who introduced me to fandom and conventions in 1978) twelve times in the twenty-two years between 1978 and 1999. But in the 2010’s? Nada.
By 2020 of course we were dealing with COVID and lockdowns and travel restrictions. The 2020 Worldcon in New Zealand was cancelled in the real world, but held virtually. We had serious plans to get to the 2021 Worldcon in Washington, D.C., but COVID was still an issue, they had some serious problems with their hotel shutting down, the convention got moved to December, and we ended up not going.
By 2022 most of the travel and other COVID restrictions were gone (we can debate elsewhere whether that was wise) but it was time for us to get back on the Worldcon trail.
2023’s Worldcon is in China and they’re having some issues that have caused them to move it to October. There are also many folks in fandom, including a number of prominent authors, who will be skipping the Chengdu Worldcon due to various human rights policies and violations by the Chinese government. But, with Worldcon out of North America, there was a NASFiC, which brought us to Winnipeg six weeks ago.
Next year Worldcon is in Glasgow, Scotland, with a NASFiC in Buffalo, NY. We would like to get to Glasgow having never been to Scotland, and a trip to Buffalo might also be nice. We’ll see.
2025’s Worldcon location will be determined by Worldcon members voting at Chengdu. So far only Seattle has a bid to host the convention. We like Seattle.
As I learned at my first Worldcon in 1978:
FIAWOL = Fandom Is A Way Of Life = can be true
FIJAGDH = Fandom Is Just A God Damned Hobby = should probably be true, but too often isn’t
FIJAGDWOL = you do the math, but it’s the greatest truth of the three
Filed under Fandom, Photography, Travel
The 2009 Worldcon was in Montreal. Despite the “less than optimal” experience visiting the city in 2004, we went back for Worldcon. And had a really nice time.
The convention was fine with the convention center directly across the street from our hotel, so there weren’t any long walks to get anywhere. I have some nice memories of that con.
We did touristy things, saw the city, ate a lot (didn’t have poutine – still haven’t, which is sad), and sat and watched fireworks every night as there was some sort of huge international competition a mile or so away from the hotel and the view was great from the rooftop lounge area on the convention center.
Thus began, for reasons that weren’t entirely clear at any point, the interregnum, a period of twelve years where we didn’t go to Worldcon or NASFiC. We had gone as a family eight of the previous ten years and we went to other science fiction conventions, but the 2010’s had other plans for us. We traveled, some years a LOT, but it was more for family events, weddings, NASA Socials for me, a wonderful international trip (search this site for “Shanghai,” “Seoul,” or “Kyoto”), an eclipse, and some football games. But no Worldcons.
C’est la vie!
Filed under Fandom, Photography, Travel
The 2008 Worldcon was in Denver. Opportunities abounded. The Long Suffering Wife had relatives there and others could come out at the same time to visit and see their first convention. There was a trip to Pike’s Peak and a day of white water rafting. (Both were fantastic!) We visited the Garden of the Gods. (Also fantastic!)
The convention center and our hotel were right near downtown Denver and the state capitol building, so we played tourist for a while.
Gorgeous architecture!
All in all this was one of the better family vacation trips. Denver’s a nice place, even if they could use a little bit more oxygen sometimes.
Filed under Photography, Travel
Some years the World Science Fiction Convention (Worldcon) is held outside of North America. In those cases, because like it or not, the majority of fans who attend Worldcons come from the US and Canada, there’s a second convention, the North American Science Fiction Convention, or NASFiC, somewhere in North America. For example, this year the Worldcon is in China, so the NASFiC was in Winnipeg. Both Worldcon and NASFiC are run by the World Science Fiction Society (WSFS). NASFiCs tend to be smaller in terms of attendance than Worldcons and they don’t give out Hugo Awards or other awards – they’re Worldcons’ baby sibling for those who can’t afford the time and/or the money to travel overseas.
In 2005 the Worldcon was in Glasgow (where it’s going to be again in 2024, we really hope to be there this time) and the NASFiC was in Seattle. We took a family trip to Seattle in August, but NASFiC was in July, so we missed it.
In 2006 the Worldcon was in Los Angeles (easy! right?) and I was there for about a half hour, literally. The family attended, but I was in the middle of my MBA at Pepperdine University and couldn’t afford the time even if it was just down the freeway. I’m told that I was also suffering from a severe case of shingles, but I have absolutely no memory of it. Which means it must have been really bad, so thank goodness my brain short circuited and didn’t retain those memories!
In 2007 the Worldcon was in Japan, so we were back off to NASFiC. It was held in Colinsville, IL, a small suburb of St. Louis. Normally we might have skipped it, but our son was stationed at Scott Air Force Base just a few miles away, so we got to kill several birds with one stone by attending.
I don’t remember the convention as being anything spectacular, but some of the sightseeing was. I remember fondly my visits to Hannibal, MO as a kid and I’ve always been a huge fan of Mark Twain and his works. It was great to take the family there.
Filed under Fandom, Photography, Science Fiction, Travel
We interrupt our traipsing through past Worldcon trips to bring you today’s “Blue Supermoon” rising!
You couldn’t possibly have missed all of the hype. But the short (and factual) description is that tonight the Moon was full (happens every 29.5 days, more or less), it was a tiny percentage closer to Earth than average (its orbit is an ellipse, not a circle, so sometimes it’s a bit closer, sometimes it’s a bit farther away, perfectly normal and routine) which means it was a tiny percentage brighter than average, and it was the second full moon in a calendar month (which happens on average every couple of years because our calendar is weird and irregular and lumpy), and tonight all three of those things happened more or less simultaneously. The press had a field day.
First of all, the camera (and hidden image processing software) in the iPhone 13 doesn’t quite know what to do with an bright orange super blue Moon on a dark-ish, dusk-ish background. It does its best.
The good news is that it did better this time on focusing on the Moon instead of the telephone pole and trees. Not great, mind you, but better.
The good camera (Canon Rebel XT DSLR with a 300mm Tamron lens) is lousy in full auto mode being even older and more computationally primitive than the iPhone. But put it in manual mode and shoot a series of pictures with varying exposures and manually focusing, then something in that series is going to get close.
This is a LOT like what it looked like in terms of color and contrast. And yes, just coming up through the turbulent, hot, pea soup atmosphere over downtown Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley it does look that distorted and misshapen.
As it gets up a bit and we’re not viewing it through quite so much icky atmosphere, the Moon rounds up and starts to get bright. Like really, really bright.
Which confuses the crap out of the camera, which sees all of that black and wants to do a 1/2 or 3/4 second exposure. Knowing (a little bit) better, I overrode it for a 1/250 second exposure. Still too bright! Should have gone for 1/1000 second. Or shorter.
The iPhone never gets over that and constantly overexposes the scene. But it does a decent job of catching the city spread out down below.
Now that it’s way up overhead, even a 1/1000 second exposure would be way, way too long. I don’t think my older (13 years? 15 years?) DSLR will do an exposure short enough to show detail on any full moon, not just a super duper blue Moon. Not without going to some sort of neutral density filter to cut down on the light.
Regolith is reflective as all get out, especially for just vacuum cured grey dust and pulverized rock!
Filed under Astronomy, Photography, Space
The family trip to the 2004 Worldcon was memorable for some good reasons but also for a handful of lousy ones.
Worldcon was in Boston, a city I dearly love visiting, having spent a lot of time there when I was in high school in Vermont. Prior to going to Worldcon we stopped in Vermont and saw family, which was great.
In between there was a trip to Montreal, which was fine right up until the moment when we came back to our rental car, found the windows smashed out and my briefcase and our luggage gone, and had to deal with the French-Canadian authorities and rental car folks to get a replacement car. Not the greatest first impression with the family for Montreal. (For what it’s worth, Worldcon was in Montreal five years later, in 2009, and we were back and had a great time.)
This bridge, the Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill Memorial Bridge, familiar to anyone who’s driven through Boston, is infamous in our family. We’ve driven across it over, and over, and over, and over, back and forth, trying to get from downtown to Logan International Airport. “But Paul, I’m very familiar with Boston and you don’t go over that bridge when going from downtown to Logan,” you’re saying.
Thus, the problem.
Filed under Fandom, Photography, Travel
Favorite author John Scalzi had a nice post on his website today about his first science fiction convention, twenty years ago today.
As I was recollecting yesterday, Labor Day weekend has quite often been our family vacation weekend at Worldcon, and it turns out we were at that convention in Toronto as well.
In addition to just traveling for the convention, we also go for ballgames, amusement parks, and other touristy activities. If you go to Toronto and get down by the ballpark, look up!
You never can tell who might be heckling you.
While Mr. Scalzi was reminscing on twenty years, I started thinking about my first convention. It was fifteen years earlier than… No, wait, it was twenty-five years earlier?
That can’t be right! I’m not THAT freakin’ old! That would be forty-five years ago. 2023 minus 1978 is … forty-five years.
At least three years later I had a better camera.
Filed under Fandom, Photography, Travel
We Love The Stars Too Fondly 