Today marks the day we’ve all been waiting for, and by “we” I mean those of us in the northern hemisphere who don’t like the axial tilt of the planet. Yes, today is the day the days no longer day get shorter from here on out the days will be getting longer. No, that’s not true at all, the days are the
Author: Al Denelsbeck
Odd memories, part 12
Spurred on by this post from The Bloggess, who is a delightfully warped person, I dredged up some memories of christmases past. Part of the reason I don’t put a lot of effort into holidays is not, as some clueless people seem to think, from being an atheist, but from growing up in my family.
Stupid atheists
Jon Rosenberg at Scenes From A Multiverse is picking at scabs (click for complete version):
This… is totes uncalled for! Atheists are level-headed, fair, well-adjusted individuals, and none of them would ever get cranky because a favorite whipping boy turned respectable.
Good thing he hasn’t, then…
Actually, and it’s stupid that I even have to say this yet it’ll be news
Too cool, part 21
So, what is it?
I’ve had this experiment in the back of my head for a while now, and tried it last night. What you’re seeing here is Sirius, otherwise known as the Dog Star or the Dog’s Nose, and the brightest star in the sky. As a quick aside, for some reason many people think Polaris, or the North Star, is supposed to be the brightest, which would be handy but is far from the
I could just tell you…
… but it’s better if you find it on your own.
North Carolina doesn’t really see ‘winter’ as many people imagine it – honestly, it’s pretty boring – but we do get cold spells from time to time, and went through one a few days back, after some heavy rains. Things that had collected water were frozen over, and in some cases nearly solid, so I took the
Perpetually confusing
Infinity is this curious concept, wide open for misinterpretation, but even in its refined sense, it often suffers from one of the biggest problems of philosophy: we believe that since we’ve put a lot of effort into it, it must be important.
To explain the most misunderstood aspect of it, I’m going to steal brazenly from an article in Science ’82, a now-defunct magazine
Listen to that voice
For some unknown reason, I have a desire to capture sunrise on Tycho, the prominent rayed crater on the moon. Since it’s unlikely I’ll be able to afford a trip there anytime soon, I’ve been pursuing this remotely, but what it means is capturing a particular phase of the moon at just the right time. Shown above, we have the moon from yesterday evening and tonight,
It’s a tad humid
I got out the camera to chase a particular subject, which disappeared on me, so while the strobe was still charged I decided not to waste that electricity and went looking for something else to photograph. Yeah, I really do think that way sometimes, though if I do find another subject, I’ll fire off a lot more frames (and flashes) than if I simply discharged the capacitor
The hurdle
With this entry I thee wed tie with 2011 for number of posts made in a year, and everything past this will be bonus content. Or something. It’s nonsense, really – I just vowed to try and do more posts, vaguely motivated by those who can apparently do seven a day (not looking in Jerry Coyne’s direction when I say this, no no.) But
Such efforts
Just playing around the other evening while the holiday lights are up, trying a bunch of experiments. The raindrop on the lights was a subtle touch – while I’d like to do some shots against a nice layer of snow, that’s always an iffy thing at this latitude. I may annoy about half of the people in the country with this, but I was shooting in just a t-shirt (or is