At least a less dim one

It has been a couple of weeks of things just not going quite right – not particularly bad, mind you, or at least not all of them, but very, very few things working out as intended, planned, foreseen, or whatever. Even things that I took great pains to try and prevent from going south, which is frustrating to no small degree (and I feel the need to point out that, in most of these read more

Storytime 26


I had prepped this one as a potential illustration for the last composition post, but decided to use it instead for storytime – not much of a lateral shift, I know, but this one bears a little explanation. Taken a few years back at the old place, within the towering pampas grass that we had there, I spotted a very large Chinese mantis (Tenodera sinensis) deep within, read more

Back to, um… the same as before


As I said, it’s now time to resume my regular subject matter, but I’m not saying I’m back to normal because I don’t think I ever was. Meanwhile, I have to squeeze in just a couple more photos for this month, because the winter was so slow and because trying to beat this record is going to take some effort.

Anyway, poking around the neighborhood pond by headlamp very early read more

Storytime 16


So, to the undoubtedly-voluminous number of readers who come in first thing in the morning on Fridays to find the Storytime posts, I apologize – I am quite late today, mostly due to having a really shitty week. But partially due to my subject here, and so this is going to be the most current Storytime post to date, since these images were taken only minutes ago.

I read more

It’s all behind us now

As I said, I have a handful of photos from 2018 that never made it to posts, plus I might add a couple more from even earlier that have just been sitting in that folder – dunno yet, we’re still in the first sentence. And yes, I know you’ve probably had it up to here with all of the “Let’s look back” shit that’s all over the place, but what do you read more

Throwup Monday

I felt the need to throw up some photos for today, but had no idea what to display, until I realized that it’s International Look Back and Wonder What Happened Day, and so I dug up a few photos from this date in past years. I’m not sure what it’s going to tell us, but hey, I didn’t make up this holiday!

One year ago


This Carolina anole (Anolis carolinensis) read more

Let’s play catchup


By about this time in the past few years, I would have posted roughly four thousand mantis pictures. I am definitely behind those numbers this year, so let’s see if we can rectify that.

To begin with, I was super-prepared this spring, having ordered a bunch of Chinese mantis (Tenodera sinensis) egg cases – called “oothecas” if you want to get technical or simply confuse read more

It’s not coming together yet

I have finally gotten a veritable buttload of pics to post, but unfortunately, cannot do so just yet. Between work and student schedules, various tasks around the house and in the office, and sinuses that are wreaking havoc, I can’t sit down long enough to do a post justice, much less a couple or three of them.

I know what you’re saying: “Jeez, Al, work from a read more

Podcast: Macro video, part one I suspect

I wanted to do this one entirely as a video, but the video clips that I had to work with ended up being too short (or, I guess you could say, I was once again too long-winded) to match up audio and video. So it’s both, a podcast covering the main details and a video to illustrate what I was talking about. I’ll get better at this soon. Maybe.

So let’s start with the audio.

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