Author Archives: momdude

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About momdude

Space cadet | Family dude | Photographer | Music lover | Traveler | Science fiction fan | Hugo Award nominee | Writer | 5x NASA Social participant | KC Chiefs fan | LA Kings fan | Senior Director of Finance & Administration for ALS Network | Member & former staff Finance Officer at the Commemorative Air Force SoCal Wing | Hard core left-wing liberal | Looking for whatever other shenanigans I can get into
October 18, 2021 · 23:20

iPhone 13 Panorama Surprise

Yesterday’s awful lot of blue did eventually include a few clouds and a bit of drizzle this morning.

(Clickenate to embiggenate!)

We would have much preferred a half-inch to an inch of steady rain every day for the next several weeks. We’re in a multi-year drought and if we don’t get some decent rain this year we might start to really be hurting. But we’ll take what we can get, I guess. You’ve got to start somewhere.

Meanwhile, after going out and testing the new phone camera on some deep blue and puffy whiteness, I noticed something exciting!

On my old iPhone 6, the panorama pictures covered about 310º, so I would have to think a bit about what 50º or so I wanted to leave out. It never occurred to me that the iPhone 13 might do better. (My bad!)

In the photo here, you’ll notice those cypress trees on the left and again on the right? They’re the same trees! The iPhone 13 panorama mode doesn’t cut off at 310º or so, it goes all the way to about 390º, MORE than a full circle!

This makes me stupidly happy, but then again, as many have noted, I am a simple creature.

Needless to say, expect more panoramas in your future.

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Filed under Panorama, Photography, Weather

October 17, 2021 · 23:25

An Awful Lot Of Blue

Considering that they say we’re going to get a tiny bit (maybe 0.10″ at best) of rain (every drop is appreciated!) tonight and tomorrow morning, there sure wasn’t any sign of it this afternoon!

No processing, straight out of the iPhone 13, no filters.

Here’s to finding the joy in a (potentially) rainy Monday morning and a new week!

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Filed under Photography, Weather

October 16, 2021 · 21:58

Firewall

A busy, busy day at the hangar, but I wanted to at least snap a couple of pictures with the new phone.

Our F8F Bearcat is undergoing a major overhaul. The engine is off completely, along with a number of other chunks. Here’s the firewall, forward of the cockpit, to which the engine mount, engine, a half gazillion parts, the cowling, and pretty much the whole pointy end of the plane will be attached.

But that might be a few months away, maybe a year or more. We’ll see.

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Filed under CAF, Photography

October 15, 2021 · 23:53

Three Planets And One (Visible) Moon

Again playing with the iPhone 13 Night Mode, this time with the wide-angle lens and the top of the mailbox as a crude tripod, or at least a steady surface.

(Click to make it bigger – it’s worth it!)

From left to right, that really bright light is the moon (coming up on full in a couple days), Jupiter (directly above the big tree on the left), Saturn (slightly dimmer, just to the left of that line of light in the center), and Venus (very bright, right over the neighbor’s roof on the right).

Blow up the picture and you see that there’s some trailing on the stars from the long exposure. But look at the top of the telephone pole right in the center – surrounding it is the “teapot” of Capricorn. And surrounding Venus is the “head” of Scorpius with Antares being the brightest star.

Not bad for the next step up from 100% handheld. I wonder what happens if I actually use a tripod? Maybe tomorrow night…

Oh, that “line of light in the center?” While often in my pictures that might be the ISS, not tonight. That’s SkyWest Airlines flight #5752 from LAX to Sacramento.

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Filed under Astronomy, Photography

October 14, 2021 · 23:46

Playing With iPhone 13 Night Mode

I continue to find time to “play” with some of the new camera features of the iPhone 13, not just to learn what it will do and how to do it, but to see if I can push those boundaries and find interesting or different ways to force it to do something unexpected. Thus the term “play.”

Tonight’s idea was to go someplace dark, really dark, and then figure out how it’s supposed to work to give you a really good picture in really low light (it’s pretty cool how it works and how well it works, letting some very smart processing deal with the digital image in real time) and then making the built-in functions keep telling me “Don’t do that!” and trying to drive that processing AI a bit mad.

The results can be spectral.

In short, in low light the camera is doing a long exposure and using digital magic to erase any motion that would blur the long image. I deliberately move the camera – up, down, left, right, sideways, spinning, tilting, closer, further away. And see what happens.

I particularly like this one – not sure where the bright purple spots came from, but they add another level of interesting objects to the image.

Cool “toy.” Fun “play.”

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Filed under Photography

October 13, 2021 · 23:33

Randomness

How much of our world is random? How much can be planned for and foreseen?

(Image from RandomOrg app)

How much control can we have and how much do we just think (incorrectly) we have?

Despite all of our best efforts and intentions, how much is every decision just a bet with incomplete information and inaccurate assumptions?

And most importantly, does it matter? Do we just need to push on, doing our best, getting up when we’re knocked down, refusing to give up even when we know the game is random at best, rigged against us at worst, because for all of that it’s still the only game in town?

Yep, one of those deep thought nights. Sorry for being boring and “emo.” Just doing the best I can and pushing on.

But it would be nice every now and then to get a clue that it’s all working and not just a completely random outcome of 13,700,000,000 years of molecular Brownian motion and a handful of laws of physics.

I guess that’s what religion is for, and we all I know I’m not going down THAT road. Been there. Done that. It’s worse.

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Filed under Deep Thoughts

October 12, 2021 · 23:28

Fine Feathered Friends – Spotted Towhee

“What happened to all of the bird pictures?” I hear you asking. (No, really, I hear it.) Good question. “Life,” would be the answer, but said in character as Marvin the Paranoid Android (aka Marvin the Manically Depressed Robot).

But there are plenty of unseen bird pictures from earlier in the year, including a couple that I’ve never shown, so here you go!

I’ve only ever seen this guy four, maybe five times, and I’ve only gotten decent pictures twice. He’s a Spotted Towhee.

We have LOTS of California Towees. They’re pretty plain looking, dark, dark brown or gray.

The Spotted Towhee is quite stunning in comparison to their California cousins.

Black head, brownish-red belly, white band at the throat, black and white speckled back.

This one was living in our bushes for a month or two, from late April to mid July.

Not sure why this one moved on, especially given all of the free seed that gets scattered about every day.

However, since I only ever saw the one male, perhaps even daily free means wasn’t enough incentive to keep him here when female companionship was needed.

He obviously didn’t mind sharing the dinner table (i.e., the back yard) with the squirrels, mourning doves, California Towhees, juncos, and other residents.

I’ll keep an eye out. Maybe he’ll come back with a female that he’s regaled with tails of a California paradise.

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Filed under Birds, Critters

October 11, 2021 · 22:57

Everything In Motion

And yet that new iPhone 13 “night mode” camera takes a pretty decent photo without even a tripod…

Jupiter at top, just left of center, Saturn just a scooch above center to the left of the tree, the quarter moon setting between the tree and the house. Various other stars visible if you click on the image to blow the whole thing up to full sized.

No tripod, so this image shows a little blur and jiggle – but as I said, everything is in motion.

The Moon in its orbit around the Earth has now moved to be visible at this time of night. The Earth has rotated so that we’re in night. The trees are all blowing in 16 knot winds, gusting to 24 knots, so they’re waving about a bit. And I’m trying to hold the phone/camera as still as possible while standing in those winds as a faux tripod.

Yet – the picture is lovely.

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Filed under Astronomy, Castle Willett, Photography

October 10, 2021 · 23:58

Gobsmacked Today

I’m a little tired and fried tonight (been an odd weekend for lack of a better term) so I’ll share one mind-blowing factoid that I learned this weekend. I even double checked to make sure it wasn’t a silly meme thing designed to see how many folks would fall for it. Ready?

Historically and chronologically, Cleopatra lived closer to today than she did to the building of the Great Pyramid at Giza.

Wow!

I know that in a very general sense, I figured they were sort of concurrent. At least, within a few hundred, maybe a thousand years. That’s a pretty broad range. And I’m handicapped by having an American education.

But Cleopatra lived from 69 BCE to 30 BCE, roughly 2,180 years ago (to her birth). Where the Great Pyramid of Giza was started around 2,550 BCE, and finished about 2,500 BCE.

Gobsmacked!

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Filed under Curiosities, Paul

October 9, 2021 · 23:46

Hawks

Another quick, impromptu test of what the iPhone 13 will do. I was out in the yard, catching up on some cleanup work and I had been hearing the hawks for a few minutes. Just like the soundtrack of the establishing shot in every Western movie ever made…

I heard them getting closer, so pulled the phone out, put it in video mode and started recording. No tripod, no instructions, just let’s see what happens. Here’s a 10-second shot that I edited out, when the pair was right overhead and maybe 300-400 feet up.

The sound isn’t overwhelming, but turn it up and watch it in full screen mode. Right around the four-second mark, when the second hawk flys in from the top, you can hear them calling.

It doesn’t suck for a five minute break from yard work.

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Filed under Birds, Video