April 21, 2022 · 23:17

Fine Feathered Friends – April 21st

And another rare friend is back! Which makes me wonder if it’s coincidence or I’m just being more observant.

From the back especially, the size, coloration, and patterns on the wings make it look a LOT like a common house wren. We’re hip deep in those! (And they’re nesting and laying eggs and singing like crazy, so soon there will be even more of them!)

But from the neck up? Not a chance that’s a wren. Those zebra stripes really stand out, as does that yellow beak.

Again, I think I’ve seen one here only a handful of times and only gotten photos once, maybe twice. They must not have been great photos, since this is the first reference I can find on this site to them.

Yes! I’m looking at you! Have some more seed and come back to visit more often! Stick around! Stay a while!

Sounds like a plan!

Now, if we want evidence of divine intervention with these rare sightings, let’s keep an eye out tomorrow for the yellow-headed blackbird!

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April 20, 2022 · 22:58

Fine Feathered Friends – April 20th

Today saw the return of a rare visitor!

It’s the spotted towhee!

It’s rather distinctive, with the white breast, black head, sides that look like a robin, and the black and white spots on the back and wings.

I’ve seen it maybe four or five times in the last four years, and this is only the second time that I’ve ever seen it out on the lawn where I could get a lood look at it, and some decent pictures.

Normally it hides off in the bushes, or at most comes out along the base of the fence and rumages in the dirt beneath the bushes.

It was out sharing the bird seed with the mourning doves.

I hope it sticks around, it’s a beautiful bird!

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April 19, 2022 · 23:28

Pizza

Left to my own devices, I would eat a LOT of “comfort food,” full of carbs and sugar and fat. Ice cream, bread, doughnuts, candy, margaritas, cookies, grilled cheese sandwiches, chocolate, chocolate, and then more chocolate, PB&J sandwiches, cheeseburgers, mac and cheese, clam chowder, french fries, burritos, rice, chili, sushi, kung pao chicken, tacos, wine… You get the idea.

And I would weigh 300 pounds, barely be able to move, would have a lifespan from here on that’s measured in weeks, be shooting insulin to stay alive, and be generally incredibly unhealthy.

Thus, the “adulting” shit I do and the highly different diet from that described above.

It’s a question of balance – I do not want to live like a monk, and I won’t. Nor do I want to live like a candidate for a Discovery Channel reality TV show, and I won’t.

Moderation.

Intelligence.

Making mature, responsible decisions.

The tricky part is where to set the balancing point on that spectrum. Sometimes my doctor and I disagree. Particularly in terms of carbs and comfort food.

The measure of success or failure in this ongoing battle is the A1C measurement, a blood test that says how much sugar you’re retaining in your blood from your diet. This can vary as you age and can also vary from time to time as the medical powers-that-be change their mind on what’s acceptable and what’s not. The short version is that for me now I need to be between about 5.0 and 7.0. If I’m over that, my doctor is really going to push hard for me to start insulin to treat borderline Type 2 diabetes. I am really going to push back on that, preferring to control my A1C and blood glucose levels with diet (see above!) and exercise.

It’s a long running “discussion.”

I get my A1C tested routinely twice a year, and with one or two exceptions over the past fifteen years or so, I’ve hit those targets. One of the way I do that, while still maintaining a lifestyle balance that leaves me with the will to live when I finish dinner, is to have periods when I have an A1C test coming up (where I have an extremely restrictive diet) and periods where I’ve just “passed” my A1C and can be a little bit less restrictive.

(To be clear, “less restrictive” is not code for going totally off of the deep end and eating like a lunatic. It more means that once or twice a week, if I have dessert or some pasta or something “bad,” I’m not going to beat myself up over it or lose sleep. Moderation, remember?)

Today, I passed my “spring” A1C test. And tonight I celebrated by having pizza for the first time since December. Nothing fancy, just Dominos.

It was sooooooooooooooooo good!

And yes, I feel like I ate a bowling ball, and no, I did not eat the entire medium size pizza by myself. There’ plenty of leftovers for tomorrow or Thursday.

But the cheesy, saucy, thick crust Carb-o-lisciousness tonight was indeed a celebration.

Tomorrow I will have a banana and egg for breakfast, fruit and raw veggies for lunch, and something reasonably healthy for dinner with veggies and salad. (And some dessert! Maybe wine!)

But tonight, it’s a wonder that this got written and posted before midnight, because I am warm and snuggly in the bosom of a carb coma.

Moderation.

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Filed under Health, Paul

April 18, 2022 · 23:37

Random Old Photos – April 18th

June, 2010. Such a different world it seems.

San Francisco, as seen from near the shore in Berkeley. A couple of careers ago, almost twelve years, a vastly different zeitgeist ago.

That project, that company, that career, that world, all gone. And yet not gone, all now just a little piece of the whole that makes up today’s puzzle.

No matter how much we want to know why, some days we just have to keep moving without an answer. Days like today.

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Filed under Deep Thoughts, Photography, Travel

April 17, 2022 · 21:49

“Clicking” Hummingbird Calls

I’ve a couple of times tried to post audio tracks here of the “clicking” sounds that hummingbirds make. I’m going to try that again today because I think I’ve succeeded in getting some better tools and producing a better product to share.

For whatever reason, tonight the hummingbird “clicking” songs outside in the back were particularly loud and energetic. From inside the house, in the living room at the front of the house, it sounded like that ticking noise you get when the oven or furnace is heating up sometimes, but much faster. When I went back into the kitchen, I could then clearly hear from the open back door that it was the hummingbirds.

I tried recording the audio and video on my iPhone and was pleased with the result. I can clearly hear this high-pitched clicking, and can also hear the loud, lower-pitched “zoom” or “buzz” as they’re flitting around. Another good thing was that it wasn’t just Little Bastard, the very territorial male Anna’s Hummingbird that’s been driving all of the others off. There were four of them out there at once at the two feeders. I don’t know if something happened to Little Bastard and the others were moving back in (it was dark, I couldn’t see their coloration) or if maybe Little Bastard gave in to hormones and now has a harem with whom he’s sharing “his” feeders. Either way, there were a bunch of hummers and that could explain all of the “clicking.”

When I came in and listened to the audio, I could hear everything quite clearly. There’s a dog bark in there at one point early on and one of the house wrens sounding off because I’m standing near their nest (they’re up in the porch rafters over the spare refrigerator) but for the most part you can hear the clicking and the zooming quite clearly. I was very pleased.

Then I transferred the file to my desktop computer. And I was not pleased at all.

I’ve bitched about this at least a couple times in the past. When the iPhone compresses the video to transfer it off to another system, the algorithm used is VERY heavily weighted toward the bass end of the audio spectrum. So the result on the desktop was like I was standing next to a running car or A/C unit, with just a tiny little bit of the high-frequency clicks audibel far, far in the background. This sort of sucked!

***deep, calming breath time***

After a bit of reflection a little voice said to me:

  • I recorded this on what is essentially a handheld super computer, with a gazillion apps available
  • I have desktop systems that are top of the line, also with a gazillion programs available, including some pretty decent audio and video editing utilities. I may not have a lot of experience with them and I may not know exactly what I’m doing, but…
  • I’m a bright guy with a fair amount of at least decent, “advanced amateur” experience in editing and creating audio, video, images, and almost 50 years of computer and IT experience
  • So, in theory, shouldn’t I be able to rip the audio track off of the video on my iPhone, upload that audio file to my desktop, use one of my audio editing programs to re-adjust the equilization to lower the background hum of the bass that the iPhone wants to put in there and bring back out the high-frequency sounds from the hummingbirds?
  • The answer to that would be, “YES!” At least, I think it is.

Try this and tell me if you can hear what I’ve described:

It’s a 25 second clip, with the dog barking at 1.6 seconds and the house finch sounding off at 7.2 seconds. All throughout there’s constant “clicking,” with the “zoomy buzzing” at about 5 to 10 seconds, 12 seconds, and 24 seconds.

Can you hear it? I really hope so. Please et me know.

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Filed under Audio, Birds

April 16, 2022 · 23:55

No Context For You – April 16th

I couldn’t say it better than Qasim Rashid (and you seriously should be following him on Twitter):

Happy Days!

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April 15, 2022 · 22:15

Sneezes & Beezes

These plants & bushes are all over the place here, in this case along the fence line between us and our neighbors.

It’s the time of year when they go from nothing to pollen superfactories in a flash. Very pretty, despite the side effects.

Two things come with their spring explosions – sneezes and beezus. It’s good to see the bees. The sneezes, not so much.

The bees were having no paparazzi today, so while they were buzzing all over the place they would bug out to another plant every time I tried to get close with the phone. It’s not like they didn’t have other options.

So huzzah for the buzzing bees, as well as the Cooper’s hawk that I was originally trying to photograph. It was making quite the racket out there, but it nests down in the canyon so it never got up above the trees where I could take its picture, although I could see it thorough the trees.

Tomorrow’s another day.

Best wishes for those of you celebrating various holidays this weekend.

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April 14, 2022 · 23:47

Former Alligator Lizard

I was stressed today (taxes) so I took a long walk (3.62 miles) this evening, first to get some exercise, and secondly to get the tax payment envelopes to the post office.

In the process there were MANY lizards, almost all of them the six to eight inch long Western Fence Lizards. (Do a search for “lizard,” or “Fred,” or “Bubba” on this site. Pictures galore!) Along retaining walls, in driveways, on the sidewalk scuttling into the bushes as I approached, on the trunks of trees. Once you start looking for them and noticing them, they’re all over the place. Generally trying hard to be where you’re not.

Along a long stretch of sidewalk which was mostly covered in trash, weeds, and bone dry grass that’s ready to go up like a torch when a tossed cigarette butt hits it, I saw ahead of me a much larger lizard, obviously not a Western Fence Lizard, but a California Alligator Lizard. It was stretched out in a nice, sunny, warm spot on the sidewalk and I felt a little bad about disturbing it, but it was right in the middle of my path. But as I approached, it never budged.

As I went by (I was in a hurry, I was feeling the burn, I was still stressed over the taxes) I took a glance and it seemed healthy. No blood, had its tail (they tend to shed them if a predator grabs them by the tail) and all four legs, no obvious wounds.

Huh.

On the way back about twenty minutes later I was on the lookout. And there it was, still.

Despite its lack of obvious cause of death, it was 100% immobile, even when I was within inches of it.

Given how fast these little dudes can move when spooked, I’m gonna stick with the “dead” prognosis.

Nose to back legs it was about a foot long, with another foot from the back legs to the tip of the tail.

Looking around, there was an apartment building right there, lots of kids playing in the parking lot, lots of families, so I’m wondering if a cat didn’t catch and kill it. They’re known to do that a lot. The only thing that doesn’t fit that theory is that most cats won’t kill it, they’ll bring it into the house and release it. Go figure!

The other possibility is that it’s a fake lizard and there was a hidden film crew nearby for a reality TV show and they wanted to see what folks would do when they found a two foot long lizard in the middle of the sidewalk. Me? I took pictures of it! No mystery there.

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Filed under Critters, Photography

April 13, 2022 · 23:19

Evening Stroll

My watch bitches at me if I don’t get up and move around once an hour. I tend to take short walks around the yard, front or back, or down the block a house or two.

Tonight I noticed that the two street lights that have bedeviled my astrophotography and ISS photos for the last four years are both out. With the twelve day old moon 96% illuminate above it’s still easy to see, but for at least a hundred yards or so between working lights it’s strangely NOT like being in the middle of a huge metropolis.

Think what it’s like out there away from the metropolis and all of those working streetlights, porch lights, cars, stadiums, and so on. I’ve seen it, used to live there, but it’s been so long. LA’s pretty at night, Jim Morrison’s “city of light,” but I miss the dark sky and the stars.

Soon. I hope.

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April 12, 2022 · 22:12

The War Continues

Hint – we’re losing.

I remember having gopher & mole problems when I was a little kid in the KC suburbs. My dad didn’t want to use poison, not because of any sentimental reasons for the rodents, but because there were eight kids running around the yard and kids are stupid. Instead, he would hook up a couple of garden hoses and ram them about 20 feet down the holes, then turn on the water for an hour or so until the entire yard had water popping up from all of the holes.

Despite the questions I have about the efficacy of that method, with the price of water in SoCal these days, that sounds like a perfectly good waste of $25,000 worth of water, so let’s give that a hard, “NO!” On the other hand…

CO2 is heavier than air and will sink. This is why folks have died in certain industrial environments when the tank or tunnel or bowl they’re working in gets flooded with carbon dioxide.

I have a couple of expired CO2 fire extinguishers. I can also get dry ice, which is solid CO2, which will turn into gaseous (and heavier than air) CO2 as it sublimates. So what would happen if I shot off these CO2 fire extinguishers into a few holes, following them up with big chunks of dry ice shoved down deep into every hole I can find, then sealing them off with dirt. Wouldn’t that CO2 stay down in the holes and tunnels, more or less, suffocating the little varmints?

Circumstantial evidence would make me think that it wouldn’t work or would have some other side effect, since I don’t know of any professional exterminators who use that method. It seems so easy, and relatively cheap, so if it would work everyone would be doing it, right? Conversely, since no one does it, it must not work? Right?

Or else I just revolutionized the critter elimination industry. Either way.

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