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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
May 31, 2021 · 23:37

Fine Feathered Friends – May 31st

As we put a stake in the heart of May and bid it adieu, another new bird showed up out of nowhere today.

Yellow birds stand out – we don’t get many of them. Which is why I was so surprised to see this one just a couple of days after the yellow-headed blackbird showed up here.

My first thought was that it might be one of the yellow-rumped warblers that we have all over, which don’t have what *I* would consider to be exceedingly yellow rumps, but maybe this was a different sex or subspecies than I normally see. But the Cornell Lab app says differently.

The Merlin app at Cornell Labs identifies this bird as a “Pacific-slope flycatcher.” It also notes that they’re almost identical and difficult to distinguish from the Cordilleran flycatcher – but the Pacific-slope flycatcher’s range includes Southern California and the coast, while the Cordilleran flycatcher stays in the mountains of Arizona and down into Mexico.

Which makes me wonder. I haven’t been obsessed with seeing and IDing different birds – but on the other hand I have been watching and keeping my eyes open and living within a mile or two of here for thirty years. So is there some improvement in my observations that has multiple new species being seen here in just the last few months? Or are we actually getting more variety and newer-ish species of birds coming into this area?

Beats me!

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Filed under Birds, Critters, Photography

May 30, 2021 · 23:39

Don’t Think – It Can Only Hurt The Ball Club (Part Deux)

Good advice there. (From “Bull Durham” of course, when Crash first meets Nuke.)

Again, it always gets down to balance.

On the one hand, one can’t blindly blunder through life without two brain cells to rub together. (Well, one can … but then you’ll end up a US Representative from Georgia, or Florida, or Texas, or maybe even California.)

On the other hand, one can’t over analyze and micromanage every decision to the point where nothing ever gets done.

Balance.

And sometimes you just have to make your best guess and get your ass in gear.

I might have mentioned this a few times a year over the past 8+ years. The fact that I already have used the Bull Durham quote for a post at least once proves that. The fact that I love that movies so much would be another, but I digress.

I guess tonight’s the night to take another whack at our deceased equine friend.

Or, as I learned in high school (thanks, Kevin), “Don’t sweat the petty things, and don’t pet the sweaty things!)”

Or as I learned from 80’s Los Angeles drivetime AM radio, “EGBOK! – Everything’s Gonna Be OK!” (Have I told that story here? That’s one of the better ones…)

June’s starting soon.

There are quests and adventures to be undertaken, fears to be faced down, monsters to be slain.

Dare Mighty Things.

Pick a gear. Any gear. Just get your ass moving.

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Filed under Paul

May 29, 2021 · 23:04

“Zoey’s” Marathon Tomorrow On E! Network

I mentioned this after the second season finale of “Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist” aired a couple weeks ago – tomorrow there’s a marathon of all of the first two season’s shows, starting at 09:00 PDT (noon EDT).

If you’re looking for something truly astonishing to watch, make the effort. (I think it’s also available on Hulu just about any time.) It’s the best television show in years and years and years. As in, in my not-so-humble opinion, on a par with shows like “West Wing,” “M*A*S*H,” and “The Good Place.”

If you have a soul, tissues will be required frequently. And that’s SUCH a good thing!

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May 28, 2021 · 22:55

Random Old Photos – May 28th

Going way back, near the start of my digital photography era. September, 2000, in Chicago for Worldcon.

I had a tiny Epson point-and-shoot digital camera, 640×640 (0.4 megapixel) resolution. (For reference, my 2005 Canon DSLR is 8 megapixels, my 2007 Canon is 10 megapixels, current Canons are 24 megapixels and up – and iPhones from model 7 through model 12 are 12 megapixels.) So the image size and quality is “marginal” even compared to early smartphones.

This image is from the morning that I was up early to start packing for the return flight to LA. Navy Pier’s in the center along with Chicago River.

It occurs to me that while I grew up for a while (junior high school years) in the Chicago suburbs, and I’ve been back at least two or three times for conventions, I haven’t ever been back there as an adult to be a tourist and just hang around and see the sights. I’ve seen the Picasso sculpture and the Adler Planetarium and the Shedd Aquarium and Grant Park and the Museum of Science and Industry – but all just once each, on school field trips. I’ve never been back to see them and spend as much time as I want and on my own schedule without worrying about a teacher yelling at me to get back on the bus or be left behind.

It would be really nice to do that some day.

 

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Filed under Photography, Travel

May 27, 2021 · 23:20

Fine Feathered Friends – May 27th

A fantastic new visitor today, out of the blue! But first, a lesson.

I’ve often watched professional photographers at weddings or other social events. Many of them will habitually take a quick glance at the image on the back of the camera every dozen or so shots, particularly after they’ve changed a lens, a camera body, or some setting on the camera. Today I learned why that’s an excellent habit to start training myself in. Because if you’re doing astrophotography (for example, for no particular reason) and you have the camera on full manual mode with the exposure set at 1/100 second because you were taking pictures of the nearly full moon through a high-powered telescope (for example, for no particular reason) and then something happens outside and you grab the camera and start taking pictures without realizing that you’re still on full manual mode while in bright, daylight conditions where you really should be shooting at about 1/2000 second, you’ll get this:

Noting wrong with your computer, phone, or tablet – there’s an image there, click on it. It’s 100% white, overexposed by a factor of twenty.

Fortunately, I realized the error in time and this particular fine feathered friend hadn’t flown off yet, so I got at least a couple of images. And they’re pretty cool!

I was just going to take the trash cans out and this guy was above the neighbor’s sidewalk, directly across the street. He stood out.

I remember seeing him or one of his close relatives in our back yard, once, shortly after we moved in three years ago. The Cornell Labs bird ID app confirmed what I suspected from that first encounter.

This is a yellow-headed blackbird. Their permanent range is along the Colorado River from the US/Mexico border into Nevada, around Las Vegas, but they’re occasionally seen here and there in Southern California. It’s possible to see them sometimes pretty much anywhere west of the Mississippi and east of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, but they’re not terribly common in the LA Metro area.

A most pleasant surprise and beautiful visitor, as well as a lesson learned (I hope) in my photography practices!

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Filed under Birds, Photography

May 26, 2021 · 22:51

The Clouds Won Last Night

The odds were in their favor, as we saw all day yesterday. I did not have my hopes up and I wasn’t disappointed.

I got up at 02:30, about the time the partial phases were supposed to be starting.

I sort of remember wandering around to look out the window about 04:00-ish – there as a dim reddish spot in the clouds over in the west, but nothing that prevented a quick retreat to a warm bed.

A few hours later, of course:

That’s a stunning shade of blue – where was it ten hours earlier?

Even toward the west, where the coast and the haze and the “coastal eddy,” “May gray,” “June gloom” always lurk, it was unlimited visibility.

The next total lunar eclipse for the US West Coast is November 8, 2022, seventeen and a half months away. I’m sure the weather forecast is for clouds. (Yes, there’s an earlier total lunar eclipse on May 16, 2022, just under a year away, but it’s occurring just as the moon is rising in Los Angeles, so we might not see much of it at all.)

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Filed under Astronomy, Photography, Weather

May 25, 2021 · 23:32

Stupid, Stupid, Pretty Sunset!

I’ve been watching all day.

It hasn’t looked that great.

It did give us a very pretty sunset, but that’s sorta counterproductive for tonight’s particular goal.

Now, at 23:05 local, with totality beginning at 04:11 local, a little over five hours from now, it’s… complicated.

On the one hand, it looks spectacular.

On the other hand, it’s about 80% cloud covered – and getting worse.

I’ve got the cameras all ready to go and the alarms set – we’ll see if I can drag my sorry butt out of bed in the middle of the night to at least check to see how cloudy it is.

Let the games begin.

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Filed under Astronomy, Photography, Sunsets, Weather

May 24, 2021 · 22:40

Twenty-Seven Hours & Counting

Tomorrow night there’s a total eclipse of the moon, visible from all over the Pacific hemisphere. If you’re in Europe or eastern North or South America, better luck next time. If you’re in Hawaii, you’re golden. In eastern Australia or New Zealand, you’ll see it in the east not too long after moonrise. If you’re in Los Angeles or on the US West Coast, you’ll see it just before sunrise.

Unlike solar eclipses (*NEVER* look at a solar eclipse with the naked eye or any kind of magnification), lunar eclipses are 100% safe to look at with the naked eye, or with binoculars, or a telescope. In this case, if you’re in LA or San Diego or San Francisco or Phoenix or Seattle (you get the idea) your biggest issues will be possible clouds and getting up at 03:00. (I plan on being ready, getting up, checking for clouds, and if they’re there, I’m back in bed!)

Here’s a great site for information on when the different phases of the eclipse start, including detailed information for major cities. This is a short eclipse by lunar eclipse standards. The full phase of the eclipse is only fourteen minutes long, 04:11 to 04:25 in Los Angeles.

After being “clear and a bazillion” for the whole day, I rolled the telescope out late this afternoon and within second it was starting to cloud up.

By the time the moon rose and cleared those trees, it was downright “yucky.” (That’s an official, technical, internationally recognized astronomy term by the way.) I was testing out my equipment for attaching my good DSLR cameras directly to the telescope, using it as a humongous telephoto lens.

The moon was there – the focus wasn’t.

I’m going to blame the clouds. Which is not unreasonable at all, they were an issue.

In addition, right around full moon (we’re 27 hours away, since lunar eclipse = full moon, by definition = do the geometry) most of the moon’s surface looks flat and featureless.

The “good” pictures are always along the terminator, the division between night and day on the lunar surface, where the shadows are sharp.

You can see a tiny bit of that along the top side, where some of the craters on the limb (edge of the visible disk) are highlighted. But not much.

For example, this picture showing the center of the moon with no portion of the limb? Lots of rays and some bright spots, but no shadows with the Sun almost straight overhead.

We’ll see what tomorrow night / Wednesday pre-dawn brings for the eclipse. Keep your fingers crossed!

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Filed under Astronomy, Photography, Space, Weather

May 23, 2021 · 18:04

Fine Feathered Friends – May 23rd

Another bird that’s common around here (like the mockingbirds) is the mourning dove.

Being “common” isn’t a slam, just a fact. The finches are common, and they got a ton of press here when they had a nest right outside the kitchen window last year.

I’ve tended to focus on the “new” species (the hummingbirds, the juncos, the wrens, the woodpeckers, and so on) and have some more coming up, but I don’t want to let the “common” species get shortchanged.

So, many of you have probably seen mourning doves, or heard them.

They have that stereotypical dove body and head, gray-ish brown with darker spots.

Also look for the weird, brighter than average red feet. (Well, *I* think they’re weird.)

Lots of folks will hear that call and think it’s an owl, particularly since mourning doves will continue to call past sunset and will start before sunrise. It’s not an owl, although the sounds are a bit similar.

They’re not the fastest birds in the race, and when they take off (slowly…) there’s a a lot of noise and wing flapping and some rapid, high-pitched “coo! coo! coo!” sounds with each flap as they grunt sort of like a tennis player with a monstrous serve.

In this neighborhood, a couple of times of year we’ll find a patch of mourning dove feathers spread out over a few square yards of lawn. That’s what a slow takeoff will get you in a neighborhood full of real owls and hawks.

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Filed under Birds, Photography

May 22, 2021 · 22:46

No Context For You – May 22nd

That’s actually a really nice collection of lens flares.

Very JJ Abrams of me, intentionally or not.

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Filed under Photography