Some cell phone photos from a few days ago:
Sep 012014
Aug 292014
The aurora is, according to Spaceweather.com, doing it’s thing tonight, so I went out to see if I could photograph it. No such luck, though… doesn’t seem to be getting down this far south. But I did get some other halfway interesting night shots.
These two vertical panoramas were taken sequentially and differ only in one being somewhat longer than the other, and by having different white balance. The top one was balanced for incandescent lighting; the bottom one for sunlight. The cause of the orange overall glow in the bottom one is the vast light pollution put out by ATK, not filtered out in the lower shot.
These were taken looking off to the north, hoping to glimpse aurora. No aurora visible, but there is a slight greenish airglow, along with farm lights *miles* away.
And looking west across the neighborhood:
Aug 192014
With the recent cat illnesses, serious dropoff in business and increase in vet bills, stress levels hereabouts have been at near-historic levels. But hey, at least I haven’t yet contracted a life threatening case of bronchitis in 2014 (that’s me, always looking on the bright side). One of the consequences of stress is a decrease in lesser creativity… I might still be able to creatively think myself out of some emergency situation, but art? Feh. Gone.
Fortunately, things are starting to crawl back towards the normal only-slightly-apocalyptic level of DOOM stress, and creativity is starting to slooowly return. So, some updates:
Aug 122014
An entertaining storm system blew through this evening… scads of wind, a whole lot of lightning but only a little rain. I stood on the front deck and watched the lightning to the north when *blammo,* a bolt hit a distant hill and started a fire. It’s hard to be sure, but the hillside is on the order of five miles off. I called 911, but was apparently not the first… they already knew. A few minutes later a whole bunch of fire fighting vehicles went tear-assing past the house, eventually visible *way* off in the distance approachign the scene of the fire. However, before they got there the fire seemed to put itself out. The smoke seems to indicate that the wind kept changing direction, which means it would be blown back over where it has already burned. Coupled with the rain, limited though it was, the firefighters didn’t have much of a job. But every year the Utah news is full of thousand-acre fires started by lightning…
Even though the straight line distance was almost certainly less than 10 miles, it took more than half an hour from the time I saw the fire start to the time I stopped watching, and in that time the flashing emergency lights were still working their way towards the site of the fire. I’ve often wondered why the Utah DNR or some such doesn’t put one or more local cropdusters on retainer. The weather today was not a surprise; the radio has been yapping about it since at least yesterday. So on days like this – hot, after a long dry spell, with a high probability of lightning – have one or more cropdusters stationed at various out of the way airports, their chemical tanks full of fire fighting water or foam or some such. A plane could have reached the site of the fire in just a few minutes. Circumstances need not have been wildly different for that fire, which seemed to naturally snuff itself out in half an hour or so, to have sprung up into a full-fledged wild fire. But if a cropduster had popped up right about then and laid down some aerial anti-combustion whoopass on it, that might have shut it down, or at least slowed it until the ground forces could get there.
Aug 122014
I saw this billboard today. I’m not absolutely certain, I can’t quite put my finger on it, but something about it seems a little… amiss.
Aug 052014
Interesting night…
Jul 202014
Phone photo from a few days back…
Jul 142014
It got above 100 degrees today, which was less than optimal. But the sunset was really quite something, especially when you turned your back to it.
Jul 132014
Timing is everything.
Jul 132014
I wrote this a while back, sort of as a simple exercise. It takes the form of a screenplay, though more what I *imagine* a screenplay to be, rather than a proper one… because I don’t think I’ve spent more than five seconds researching how to write a screenplay. If it ends up in Pax Orionis, it’ll likely be re-written into the form of a transcript of a TV documentary or news piece. A note: it takes place at Dugway Proving Grounds near Tooele, Utah, and while described exceedingly vaguely, is meant to be filmed at one specific real-world spot. A further note: cussin’ and such.
I would appreciate comments/critiques/large sums of cash.