Category Archives: Photography

September 29, 2024 · 23:31

Sunday At SoFi

SoFi Stadium in Inglewood is where the LA Chargers and the LA Rams play football. Today my beloved Chiefs were playing their division rivals, the Chargers.

It’s a stunningly gorgeous stadium and facility.

We were up in the nosebleed seats, but could still see everything just find, assisted by that GINORMOUS video scoreboard.

My beloved Chiefs did not play particularly well and made way too many mistakes with penalties and turnovers.

Our quarterback, #15 there, is pretty good. Good enough, so we’re 4-0 now. All four wins have been “ugly,” but a win’s a win.

As is usually the case with Chargers games (we’ve gone here, at their previous smaller venue before SoFi opened, and their old home down in San Diego) a huge percentage of their seats get resold to fans of the opposing team. Thus our nickname, “Arrowhead West.”

And since we’re just a couple miles from LAX, we get to watch planes on short final while waiting out in the parking lot for our shuttle bus back to the offsite parking location. This was a British Airways A380, floating up there exactly the same way that bricks don’t.

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Filed under KC Chiefs, Photography, Sports

September 28, 2024 · 22:55

Spoiler Alert!

Not the best joke, and not original, but some days you just have to go with what you have.

Related, how do you make a Cybertruck even uglier? You put a spoiler on it! I’ve seen one, very near here, about two weeks ago. Believe me, as butt ugly as those wannabe dumpsters are to begin with, putting a HUGE spoiler on the back makes it worse. No pictures, it flashed by in crossing traffic while I was waiting at a red light, so you’re going to have to trust me on this one.

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Filed under Paul, Photography, Silly Shit

September 26, 2024 · 23:46

Halloween’s Coming

Is it me? Is it this year? Are people needing to escape reality starting weeks earlier than normal? (I blame politics – if that’s not a reason these days to escape reality, I don’t know what is!) Are the Halloween decorations starting weeks and weeks earlier than in all previous years?

We’ve got a fair number of houses in the neighborhood that go all out for Halloween, the same way I go a bit over the top for Christmas lights. But that has normally meant that three weeks or so, maybe around October 7-10th, we would see the decorations going up.

This year I saw the first big displays going up around September 15th. Of course, there have been Halloween candy displays in the supermarkets since July 5th, that’s “normal.” But today I noticed a dozen more houses that have their full displays up.

Again, when we were at the Pomelo house, a half block from the local elementary school, on flat ground, on a more prominent street, and at a place where we had been for decades, we would put out the telescopes, put up some decorations, and sit out there handing out candy and letting folks take a look at whatever was up in the sky that night. These days, nowhere near a school or anything other than more houses, at the top of a freakishly large and steep hill, we probably won’t bring out the scopes or doing anything else, no matter what all of the folks at the bottom of the hill are doing. I think we’ve had something like five Trick or Treaters show up at our house in six years.

Another thing to keep in mind when we’re finalizing our search for The Forever Home. Next year. I don’t see that happening in any sort of time frame for this year.

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Filed under Christmas Lights, Forever Home, Photography

September 25, 2024 · 23:22

One More Time In The Dentist’s Chair

It’s been an ordeal. I’ve lost track, but I think it was back sometime at the end of 2023 that I went in for some minor cleaning or “small” issue and ended up with three root canals, three new crowns, several thousand dollars in payments, and far more “discomfort” than Extra Strength Excedrin was ever meant to deal with.

I’m told that this was it, the new permanent crowns are in, they shouldn’t crack or fall out like the temporary ones have done repeatedly, and all I need to do is my semi-annual cleanings.

We’ll see.

I figured that Karma owed me one, so as I left I dropped into the liquor store next door in the little strip mall and got some Quick Picks for tonight’s $208M Power Ball drawing. Then again, we all know that Karma’s a bitch, so I’m not holding my breath.

Join me in dancing naked in the moonlight, or just howling at the moon, or both?

Anyone want to pick a time and date in the betting pool to guess when one or all of these crown crack or eject themselves from my mouth?

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Filed under Astronomy, Health, Photography

September 24, 2024 · 23:51

Amelia

Burbank is a charming little airport. It’s also old. Back in the day, one of the folks who flew out of there and worked there was Amelia Earhart.

This is in the lobby before you get to the TSA screening area. One of the next few times through there I’ll have to remember to look and see who the artist is.

It’s probably on that plate at the bottom or one of the posters right there.

This was more of a hit-&-run photographic opportunity. The TSA inspection line awaited…

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Filed under Art, Photography, Travel

September 23, 2024 · 23:16

On The Ground, Looking Up

The new iPhone 16 is out and I hear that the cameras on it (as well as the iPhone 15) are spectacular, even doing a very good job with simple astrophotography.

I have an iPhone 13 and it does not have those features, but I don’t have any other reason to spend $1,000+ on an upgrade right now. Maybe next year with the iPhone 17.

But what is my old phone capable of? Especially here in the LA suburbs with enough light polllution so that only the brightest stars are visible anyway?

Well, you can see stars! It’s not that different than what you see with the naked eye in all of this light pollution, at least in terms of how many and what the limiting magnitude is. Blow the image up full sized and there’s a ton of noise in the image, but we’re probably seeing stars at least a magnitude fainter than what the naked eye can see, which is better than I expected. This view is looking from the zenith all the way down to the west.

This is more looking straight up. The tree at the “top” is to the east, but straight overhead you can see Deneb and the “northern cross” constellation, Cygnus. The brightest star near the bottom is Vega in the constellation Lyra.

Like so. Somewhere up around the edge of the tree branches should be the Andromeda Galaxy, but while this old iPhone camera might grab it in a dark sky, with all of this coastal haze and light, I think that’s a no-go.

The key to getting good pictures with this uber simple setup is to keep the phone extremely steady, so I just put it on the ground. The good news while I was down on the patio taking the pictures I didn’t encounter Coco (the neighbor’s dog), any curious rabbits, raccoons, or The Long Suffering Wife wondering if I got down on the ground in an involuntary fashion. I got down and then back up all by myself with no damage, thank you very much!

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Filed under Astronomy, Photography

September 22, 2024 · 23:48

Running A Tiny Little Bit Warm

Which is unusual, normally I tend to be a half degree F or so on the cool side.

Whatever.

You may safely assume that I met my absolutely drop dead deadline even if I failed miserably to meet my desired deadlines, I’m upright and taking nourishment, and celebrating the Chiefs’ win bringing them to 3-0 for the season.

*makes that little pop noise with my little finger in my mouth and spins my index finger about in a celebratory manner*

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Filed under KC Chiefs, Paul, Photography

September 21, 2024 · 23:55

Proof Of Life – September 21st

Whoever designed the day did a lousy job of it – not enough hours in it.

We were originally supposed to kick off the next season at the Ahmanson/Taper (they’ve combined their series) last Saturday, but I was in KC. We moved it to tonight, but I’m underwater with deadlines and couldn’t reasonably justify the time.

Adulting sucks – but the red-shouldered hawk was back and screaming in the back yard today and the red-tailed hawks were back and circling overhead for the first time in many months, so it can’t all be bad.

It’s no Eye of Sauron, but it still more or less works. Reminds me more of a whale’s eye, like you would see if you were swimming in the ocean and got lucky enough to have one come up and give you a gander.

Happy Solstice! Fall’s here! Astronomically speaking.

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Filed under Paul, Photography

September 20, 2024 · 23:38

No Context For You – September 20th

Schedules are nice. Schedules are useful. Routines help you keep track of which day of the week it is.

Short holiday weeks and long holiday work weeks are great, but the disrupt the routine. So do quick trips to Kansas City. So do unexpected days off for emergencies.

It’s Friday today? Yes? Maybe?

Lacking context it’s difficult to troubleshoot everything looking fuzzy and “off.” Is it me, the camera, my eyes, my brain, the universe?

“Yes,” might be the answer.

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Filed under Photography

September 18, 2024 · 23:45

Controlled Flight Into Terrain

I heard the thump, all the way from the kitchen to where I was still in bed down the hall at the other end of the house. I expected to find another dead mourning dove. But there was no carcass, and at first I didn’t even see a mark on the window.

Until almost sunset, when the sunlight coming directly in the front door backlit the door.

The detail in the feathers on the body is remarkable.

From the right view, you can even see its head, even the eye socket detail. I’m amazed.

This has happened before, which is why I’ve taken steps to try to mitigate the problem.

The butterfly clings seem to have helped lower the incidence of collisions.

In the human flying world, this is referred to as “controlled flight into terrain.” My first NASA social at Edwards Air Force Base many years ago was about some of the amazing work being done to prevent F-16s from doing it. I’m not sure how we get that software downloaded into mourning doves.

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Filed under Birds, Photography