Category Archives: Video

June 10, 2026 · 23:24

Sunset Conjunction 2026 Max – The Video

From last night, when Venus and Jupiter were at their closest and Merury was still above the horizon.

As long as my iPhone was on the tripod and ready to go after I shot my still photos, let’s see what a timelapse of the planetary trio setting looks like!

That’s the full-sized file – if you need something smaller with compression built in (unfortunately!), here’s the same video from YouTube:

At the very beginning you can see Mercury, just above the peak of the neighbor’s house. It sets quickly, but Venus and Jupiter start out way up in the sky and take their time to crawl below the horizon.

And all of those bright white dots streaking from the lower middle up toward the middle left? Commercial airlines. Guess which way LAX is?

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Filed under Astronomy, Photography, Sunsets, Video

May 28, 2026 · 23:25

Blustery

In more ways than one.

I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to how freakin’ windy it can get up here.

On a day when I was already getting rocked from side to side pretty well in the deadlines & work demands sense, I went out at lunch for a quick doctor’s visit. Nothing serious, routine, but (as usual) a bit on the annoying side. I’m sure they all mean well, but cut me some freakin’ slack! I’m old and tired!

Just about the time that dinner finished and I was really, REALLY hoping to sit on my ass for the evening watching some sports thing or the other, the “emergency” phone call came from further up the corporate ladder and it was time to be a miracle worker again. I did it, that’s why I get the big bucks I guess, but I would have been happier falling asleep in front of the television with some ice cream.

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Filed under Deep Thoughts, Photography, Video, Weather

May 10, 2026 · 23:16

156 Minutes Of Frolicking Baby Squirrels

A couple of weeks ago I set up an iPhone on a tripod right near where all of the baby squirrels were running around and just let it run until the battery on the iPhone died.

Enjoy 156 minutes (2:36) of frolicking baby squirrels. They’re cute as hell, even if they don’t have five brain cells shared between the entire group!

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Filed under Critters, Video

January 10, 2026 · 22:53

Hesperia Christmas Lights 2025 – First Dark

The first night without the lights up is always a sad one. Something’s missing.

The good news, as always, is that five or six days spent putting lights up only take a day or two to take down. Gravity helps.

There was a moment of awe and joy in the whole painful (literally) process. At one point, up on a ladder in a semi-precarious position, on a cold (high 40’s) and windy (15-20 knots with gusts to 30+) afternoon, I noticed a mass of crows headed overhead. I stuck my head out from under the roof and directly overhead, probably not more than 100 feet or so, were two absolutely gorgeous red-tailed hawks circling and hovering in the winds. The image of the crows scrambling to intercept the hawks immediately got compared in my mind to Battle of Britain images of the Spitfires scrambling to climb up to do battle with the German bombers.

The hawks however had another strategy. They caught a thermal and went into a tight spiral in it, their wings never flapping, just cruising up in the jet like they were in an invisible elevator. In less than five minutes they were mere dots in the sky, hundreds of feet up, where the crows couldn’t climb to get them.

Spectuacular, a great treat! I used to watch red-tailed hawks (and other kinds of hawks) at our Scarborough house. It’s such a relief to see them here as well!

Now if we could just get some juncos migrating through…

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Filed under Birds, Christmas Lights, Forever Home, Video

December 8, 2025 · 23:19

Instagram Ad Hell

Mondays! Am I right? Ho, ho, freaking ho, Merry freaking Christmas!

If I’m letting my brain burble for a moment and I’m surfing through videos of sunsets and planes and loons and wild critters and so on on Instagram and you and your mind-numbingly STUPID product interrupt my flow with an ad, I will hate you with the white-hot fire of a million suns.

If on top of that the audio on your ad starts with, “Whoever invented this deserves a raise!” then I hope that they’re excavating a whole new level of Hell for you and I hope you’re there soon.

If the audio on your ad starts with “How did it take until 2025 for someone to figure this out…” then I’m wondering why YOU didn’t figure it out and get insanely filthy rich last year, so YOU get the next level of Hell underneath that one.

If the audio on your ad starts with both, I will break the land speed record hitting the “mute” and “delete” buttons and I will make a voodoo doll of you to make sure that every time you think about sex you get kidney stones instead.

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Filed under Deep Thoughts, Farce, Paul, Video

November 29, 2025 · 23:28

Circumzenithal Arc

We were out putting up more Christmas lights this afternoon and saw what was to me a totally new and fascinating phenomenon, a circumzenithal arc. Technically not a rainbow but a halo, it comes from the sunlight being scattered by high-altitude ice crystals instead of raindrops. It stood out because of its location (directly overhead instead of on the horizon), the fact that the colors are extremely vivid, and the arc and spacing of the colors are reversed or “upside down.” Bizarre at first, but stunning.

(The “Hesperia Christmas Lights 2025 – Day Two” pictures are coming, but will have to wait.)

Given the positioning of the arc relative to the Sun and that band of ice crystals between them, I suspected the connection even if I didn’t understand or remember the math behind the optics. The article referenced above confirms that.

With a wide-angle view you can see the two sundogs on either side of the Sun, with some hints of the very faint Parry arc. One of the things that amazed me was how long the phenomenon lasted – I’m used to rainbows on the horizon only lasting maybe five to ten minutes max, often much less due to the clouds and rain moving around. With this based on high-level ice clouds that are moving much more slowly, we watched this for well over a half hour.

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Filed under Photography, Video, Weather

November 22, 2025 · 23:27

A Murder Of Crows

I was out in the back yard, refilling the bird seed feeders, when I heard a commotion overhead.

Something like 40+ crows milling about!

I think that qualifies as a “murder!”

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Filed under Birds, Critters, Forever Home, Photography, Video

November 20, 2025 · 23:14

Hesperia Owl

As mentioned, I’ve seen an owl out on the cinder block wall in the back yard and on the pergola a couple of times, always when it’s dark or just getting there, but I’ve never gotten any pictures.

Not today!

It was after sunset and raining pretty hard, but not yet dark. There it was, and there it stayed for quite a while.

Lousy quality photo due to the low light and high magnification, but there was some nice video opportunities.

Welcome to the Forever Home, my Great Horned Owl friend! I’m looking forward to seeing and hearing you on a regular basis!

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Filed under Birds, Critters, Forever Home, Photography, Video

October 17, 2025 · 23:52

What A Long Day

I had more dental surgery scheduled to move to Stage Two on this tooth that cracked in half in June and had to be removed just before we moved in July. I wanted to stick with the dental team that started the surgery program, so we were hitting the road early for 2+ hours on the road.

I got dropped off for surgery, the Long-Suffering-Wife went off to visit her favorite salong team. I got done, she was still being beautified, so I got an Uber to meet her there.

When I got there I went to sit in the car, tried to turn it on to open the windows, and:

A two-hour wait for AAA, expecting to get Hissy towed to our old Honda dealership, which happened to be only two blocks away. Instead the AAA driver jump started the car and we drove it over to the Honda dealer, not trusting it for a 4-hour (rush hour traffic) drive home.

Another hour at the dealer, then just under four hours in traffic to get back home.

Today was Friday? I’m so confused, exhausted, and I had my jaw numbed, stabbed, sliced, and sewn, then had to deal with the car shit.

I might sleep in late tomorrow. I think it’s Saturday and that will be okay.

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Filed under Health, Video

October 5, 2025 · 21:56

Bird Butts

I had just refilled the bird seed feeders for the day and wanted to capture the chaos and shennanigans going on with the house finches and house sparrows fighting for spots. (There are lots of spots, four feeders like this one, plus the wires and the beams of the pergola…)

I thought of trying to set up a tripod, but went with uber simplification instead. I just put a chair underneath the feeder, turned the video on, put the phone facing up toward the bottom of the feeder overhead, let it run for a about a half hour, and then edited out the five minutes at the beginning when the birds were still spooked because I had been out there.

In checking out the result, I was surprised to see and hear the iPhone and the chair it’s resting on getting pelted by seeds dropped from above. Don’t worry, the squirrel and the scrub jays will take care of those.

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Filed under Birds, Forever Home, Video