I admit it: I not only had a lava lamp, relatively recently, I plan on getting another pretty soon. I’m not at all into recreational substances or even strong painkillers, but I happen to like watching the fluid flow defined by bright glowing colors, and it’s a nice way to relax. I stumbled across another by accident, many years back when on a whim I outlined my office
Author: Al Denelsbeck
Podcast: Too much driving
… but, hey, with good reason at least.
As you might have been able to tell from several hints in the past few posts, I recently took a long road trip up north, specifically to Ohio and New York, and engaged in various activities while thereins. Some of it really
Podcast: Off on a rant
This is actually the first of two – both are already finished, but we’ll see how quickly I post the second, since there are incidentals that go along with the audio. This one, however, requires no illustrations and was largely done so I could do the second without rabid frothing sidetracking – that means this one is entirely rabid frothing sidetracking by itself. What fun!
If you’re
Auf wiedersehen, August!
So for August, we’ll have two month-end abstracts, and you can pick your favorite. Both were from central New York, a day-and-a-half and about five meters apart – well, my shooting position at least. The osprey (Pandion haliaetus) above was cruising past in the distance after sunset, with the light low enough that the shutter speed was too slow, yet the lens
Seriously, what?
I just realized that, a year ago, I posted a pic of a great blue heron seen from the underside as it perched in a tree above my head, and I had the image above sitting in the blog folder waiting on my chance to make a post, so I couldn’t let this go by. Is this the start of an annual routine? Well, I guess we’ll just have to see how often such a thing occurs…
This is instead a great
Storytime 35
One day four years back, I was checking out the neighborhood pond and noticed something slightly odd about a tree at the head of one portion of the trail it seemed to have some dry leaves adhering directly to the trunk, which of course is not where you typically see leaves hanging. Had it been anywhere else, I likely would have passed it by without even noticing,
Three moons
Just posting three photos from a recent trip (which I’ll cover in detail a little later on.) I thought the comparison was worth seeing. They are from August 8th, 10th, and 14th.
These are fairly good illustrations of why shooting a moon that is less than full can look a lot more dynamic. You get great shadows and textures from a slightly oblique sun angle, and the results just seem more real.
The
A pattern I haven’t determined yet
Out last night poking around in the backyard, for the first time in days, I came across a green treefrog (Hyla cinerea) – gratifying, because I’ve been trying to convince them to hang around in the region, but curious nonetheless because I haven’t seen one here since early spring I thought the Copes grey treefrogs had pretty much taken over. I didn’t
Storytime 34
I’m not even going to tell you what you’re looking at here I’m simply going to let you puzzle it out on your own, given the visual clues within. Then you can tell me the story behind it.
Oh, all right – since you’ve read all this way, which certainly puts you ahead of most webnauts anymore, I suppose I can fill you in. Except, not entirely, because I no longer remember
August just has a bunch of holidays
Unfortunately, despite this number, I neglected to tell you about them ahead of time, for which you may kick me in the shin when you see me next. But until that assault, let’s take a look at some of the holidays we just passed, shall we?
First off, August 8th through the 15th was Go Without Internet Week – don’t ask me why it ran from a Thursday to a Thursday, because