Pics
Out and About
Fun Stuff and Weirdness
Out and About I call this "Hazelnut Bouquet", a pun on bokeh.
Those are hazelnut catkins and every tiny flower represents a hazelnut that the squirrels will get before we do.
Chicky Dee at our feeder in March.
"That was a good joke!", said Mr. Barred Owl.
A specimen from along the Pine Creek Rail Trail in PA.
Nicks Lake in Autumn.
Devil's Tower in Wyoming. Familiar to many people as the backdrop of
the movie Close
Encounters of the Third Kind.
It is an impressive sight. The tower is over 800 feet high.
Here we have P-Dog showing us how to do the tricky part.
There is a
prarie dog town at the base of Devil's Tower. Go figure.
Badlands, South Dakota.
Near the summit of Giant Mountain in the Adirondacks.
Also near the summit of Giant Mountain, but opposite viewpoint.
I call this one Giants
Under the Sun. I snapped this from a moving car along
I-80, probably Iowa.
This one is called Hey
hay!. Also snapped from a moving car, I believe along I-90
and probably in Minnesota or maybe South Dakota.
Some elk in Rocky Mountain National Park.
A panorama from Rocky Mountain National Park, somewhere around 11,000
feet up, in June.
Fun Stuff and Weirdness
The question is, what quality of monster can you purchase for only
$225? I can't imagine it would be very monstrous. Especially if it's diesel powered.
This is a gong drum that I built. Not too weird but decidely fun. 20"
Keller maple shell with Tama hardware and 21" timpani head. Entirely hand sanded, color matched to an existing drum kit using a combination of aniline dyes, with spray poly finish coats.
This is a technique that I call "light painting". Basically, it's a long duration exposure in a dark room.
You set the camera on a tripod and open the shutter. Then you illuminate objects with a light source
and/or point small lights toward the camera. Any moving light source will create a trace.
In this pic, the bright, nearly parallel lines are a string of holiday lights. The chair itself seems
to almost glow because it has been illuminated by a flashlight from several different locations,
thus eliminating any shadows, while at the same time, not illuminating any other items.
That is not something that happens normally.
In the summer of 2025 I was finishing a 20 mile bike ride and saw a Google Maps vehicle coming the other way.
It took this photo right in front of our house (obscured by trees). I am now part of their "street view" database.
Nice that they blurred my face, but it looks like my high-viz yellow riding jersey sort of overwhelmed their optics.
A similar thing happened to a former student of mine in Ontario, Canada.
