Category: Photography
June 25, 2008
Cool Polyphemus Moth on Our Door (Updated)
He barely moved around while I was taking pictures, even with the flash. Using a macro, I was easily under an inch away at times. It's hours later and he's still there, too.
The slideshow here is from my Picasa account, but the Flickr image set can be found here. I wish Flickr could do the same sort of thing so easily without any additional tools. Oh well, this works well enough. He was too boring to take video of and he didn't even open up his wings.
The other night, up in our top-floor office, we had one of these flapping around in a window. At first we thought it was a bat because of the size, but we quickly realized it wasn't. It, or one like it, visited us on subsequent nights, too.
I looked up what moths eat because I was hoping maybe big moths would eat things like mosquitos. Sadly, it doesn't work that way. If anything, they absorb moisture through their long tongues. Many adult moths don't eat at all and some don't even have mouths. I guess that means they aren't terribly long lived in their adult form. As a caterpillar, though, it can apparently eat 86,000 times its weight in just two months. Too many of these can strip a tree naked.
Still, it's neat. It's also so amazingly furry that I kept wanting to just try to pet it. I didn't. I was worried about hurting it or simply scaring it away. Trying to pet it without touching it's wings would be pretty hard. Speaking of wings, you can see in one of the images just how furry it's wings are, too.
Anyway, enjoy the pictures. :)
Update: These moths natively exist across all of the US and Canada except Alaska, Hawaii, Arizona, Nevada, and Newfoundland. This particular moth is male because of it's large antennae. They're used to detect female pheramones. This site has much more information.
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(0)April 30, 2008
Nokia N95 GPS Tip on AT&T
Do you have a Nokia N95? Do you want to use GPS? Does the GPS seem very slow? If so, check out these couple of tips to see if you can speed it up. Mine is fast now, and works indoors.
First, check what your current settings are for positioning. These are found pretty deep down in the menus at: "Menu->Tools->Settings->General->Positioning->Positioning Methods". Is GPS on? Is assisted GPS on? What about Network Based?
Network based will work much like the iPhone currently works. It'll get you the general area, and might be close by accident. GPS is the true GPS. Assisted GPS, however, is what didn't work for me. Until I added Nokia's positioning server. This setting is under Positioning->Positioning Server->Server address. I made mine "supl.nokia.com" and now I can get a very accurate position indoors.
If your phone didn't need this or already had a setting, let us know what it is. Mine, which I just got from Amazon a week ago, didn't have any of this set up at all.
Also, if you want to tag images in a lighter way than ShoZu, try out Nokia's beta application, Location Tagger. The site implies this will eventually be in the firmware, but for now it's a beta application that runs in the background.
March 16, 2007
South Africa: In Retrospect
We left our friends in Kenya when we headed off to South Africa. They were to spend another few days there and then head either to South Africa or back home. We weren't to meet up with them again, so the rest of our trip would be just us.
I was probably most impressed with South Africa. We were originally only going to be there a few nights to do some wine tasting, see some of the area, and go shark diving. That got extended due to last minute notice of the coup in Thailand and the media black-out while we had to make our decision.
I have a number of good memories from South Africa. We had this great little VW car that had an amenity list that included seat belts and head lights. It had no air bags, no radio, no fuel injection, and pretty much nothing else that you might find in a car these days. And yet, it was a brand new car, although certainly not legal in the US.
Our meal at the top of a hill had a fantastic view and lots of really good meats and foods to eat. It was a bit cold and windy, but it certainly was memorable. I was a little surprised at how empty the restaurant was, but it was a weeknight and not anywhere near town. It looked like it could serve really large functions.
Our drive over to the coast took us through a great pass that was scenic and rocky in much the same way that my drive over Highway 17 in scenic and full of redwoods. It wasn't all that much higher or longer of a pass, either, especially if compared to taking Highway 9, instead.
The coast I recall as being absolutely wonderful and very much like our own coast here in central California. The coast road is windy with lots of great views. Every stopping point has a view south of vast openness of water filled with whales and dolphins. Our own view occasionally has a whale; we've seen one while we've been here, but we've never seen a dolphin from the coast.
The jackass penguins were really quite fun. You walk on boardwalk over their area while they are right under and around you. The only thing separating you from them is a fence with fairly narrow slats. These slats are too narrow for a foot but not too narrow for a penguins beak. I got pecked by one!
Naturally, one of our strongest memories was sitting in our hotel watching TV within about 18 hours of our flight to Thailand. Flipping through the stations, we saw mention of a coup in Thailand! There wasn't much information about it and while we were watching for more information we got word that Thailand had cut off media communications from inside the country. That meant we wouldn't learn any more about it. So, we quickly contacted our travel agent, had our flights moved, and contacted a place Laurie had stayed in her first trip to South Africa, Phantom Forest eco-lodge in Knysna. All of our changes went off without a hitch and instead of heading to the airport the next day, we drove farther our towards Knysna.
This turned out to be convenient since our shark diving trip had been cancelled and possibly pushed off to a date when we wouldn't be in the country because of rough weather. So, we got to stay at the wonderful Phantom Forest that will be my best memory of there. The huts are on a steep hill and partially up in trees. It makes for a very private, very in-the-forest feel. It was very pleasant and truly wonderful.
Our shark diving trip turned out to be shark watching, which still got me seasick. The waters were still filled with silt and had maybe a foot or two visibility. People who did go in the water couldn't see anything where we could see all of the action from the top deck. It was really quite something! I hope to go back sometime and actually get in the water with the sharks. (Hopefully when I go back I'll have figured out my motion sickness issues.)
After our wonderful time in South Africa, we were off for a long journey to Beijing.
March 13, 2007
Kenya: In Retrospect
Following the post on Egypt, I'll be talking about some of the major items that I remember about Kenya, both good and bad. Six months is a relatively long time for remembering details, but they stick around longer on particularly special events.
Many of my best memories still come from the Mara Bush Camp. It was our first stop and our most rugged one, too. It's a real, moving camp that gets set up in a different location yearly. There was no power to speak of in the tents, except for a battery to keep some LED bulbs powered for night use. This probably helped give it some lasting impact.
At the end of the day, we often all gathered in a lounge in the dining tent (there were some power plugs there) and all had either Tusker or Amarula. It was one of the few times during the day that we could actually just relax. Outside of that, we were usually out and about taking pictures and roaming around on the dirt roads, keeping an eye out for critters. This turned out to be particularly tiring. That's part of why there weren't daily blog entries from that time.
During one of our outings, we had a great encounter with a number of baby lion cubs. There were lots of other vehicles around, but that didn't seem to bother any of the lions. They pride had various lions about to watch for food and threat, but the vehicles clearly weren't considered a threat. They walked right in the middle of the autos and even very close to us. They were so amazingly cute. Laurie got some great pictures and we may have even gotten some good video (sure, it's been 6 months, but that doesn't mean we've had time to go through all of our media).
After the Mara Bush Camp, we headed over to Fig Tree, which wasn't far away and allowed us similar routes during our drives. Sitting in the tree patio drinking Tusker, avoiding the monkeys, and watching animals out on the plains are my main memories here. In fact, I almost forgot about them before I went looking through the pictures again.
After we left the Masai Mara, we stayed in Amboseli. My main memories of here were of lots of elephants and mosquitos. It was very odd that our previous camp, which was right on a river, had no mosquitos but in a permanent structure, there were tons of mosquitos. We got to see lots of elephants, including many baby elephants.
Our next adventure was a high-speed convoy between Amboseli and Tsavo. Supposedly, there had been previous conflict in the area which led to a weapons build-up. We weren't allowed to leave Amboseli without being part of the convoy. For most people, this wasn't a problem since they weren't driving themselves. We, however, were the only people who were self-driving. Although it was worth it and no one bothered us about it, it wasn't normal.
The drive itself was uneventful until we missed our turn-off to Finch Hatton's and got ourselves in to some sharp volcanic rock that we could have avoided. This gave us a flat that we had to deal with at the gate. Some people tried to help us with the jack, but it wasn't until someone came up that was familiar with how to fix a dust-caked one that we got it working. It worked as we thought, but being front mounted it got the brunt of the dust and thus got all muddle up. Everyone was very helpful though and gave us better directions to backtrack and get in to Finch Hatton's.
Finch Hatton's itself was absolutely wonderful and is probably my best memory of the whole trip even though we were there alone. It was certainly the best place that we stayed. Our tent was right over a water hole with lots of hippos and crocs. We're hoping to return soon. ;)
The final memory, which still lingers on many of our bags, was the massive amount of dust that was kicked up in many areas. Even with all of the windows and hatches closed, the car would not seal and would fill with dust that got all over and inside of absolutely everything, including out lungs. We can see the color of the dust on many of our bags still. It was truly permeating.
Unlike our feeling for Egypt, where even now we don't want to go back, we've been wanting to go back to Kenya since. That said, we never truly felt all that well while we were there. We were taking all the various medications and such, but whether it was from different food, too much dust, general fatigue, or something worse, we were always not feeling quite right. Maybe next time we go we can spend longer to get more adjusted to the climate and food.
March 12, 2007
Egypt: In Retrospect
It's been six months since we took our honeymoon around the world, going through Egypt, Kenya, South Africa, airports in Malaysia and Thailand, and China. Overall, the trip was absolutely great. We tried to blog through the whole trip, but a number of things got in our way, not the least of which was simply fatigue after keeping busy all day.
The farther away you get from a memory, the more those memories seem to consolidate on just a few moments in time. This time in September, we'd already left Egypt and were in Kenya.
I thought I would share some of my strong, lasting memories of Egypt and perhaps along with a new picture or two. That doesn't mean I'm going to go over everything I remember, but just some of the big, important items. Laurie has also posted her memories of the Egypt part of our trip on her blog, Naturally Speaking.
My main memory of our visit was that everything was very dirty and dusty. 
And by dirt, I mean that there was garbage everywhere, in particular, in the streets and where one walked. This was particularly notable in the markets where you literally had to walk on refuse while looking up out of the throng of people at old, crumbling buildings that look like they would collapse at any moment. The waterways, although covered in filth, also had many egrets in them, as can be seen here.
Also, don't trust what anyone says on the streets. We got convinced to go off in one direction, only to find out they just wanted our money for a camel or horse ride. We didn't want to comply, so they sent us further along only to find out we (supposedly) weren't supposed to be there. On our way back out, guards and others were cracking looks and probably laughing. It was not a pleasant experience but we fully learned that flat-out lies were expected. (And that's isn't of the misleading type of, "Buy this, best quality, real," that we would become so familiar with at the other end of our journey.)
Within the Citadel, I happened across the filthiest restroom I'd ever seen. It was also probably the oldest. Scary, too, was the fact that locals were filling up their water bottles. From the looks of it, it would have been safer to fill up a water bottle from a puddle in an overcrowded cow pasture. I didn't have any small notes on me at the time, so the tip I gave to the attendant was a bit larger than normal (by about 20x), but was barely $2 US. After he realized what it was, he came running out when I was already 100 feet away or so thanking me profusely.
A while after that, we got to hear the call to prayer while overlooking the city. That was an absolutely amazing experience. The sound and enormity of it was profound. It's just not possible to miss the right times with that sort of announcement. Naturally, off in two directions groups of pyramids could be seen through the haze, too, which just added to the mood of the view.
The last impression was the absolute chaos at the airport on the way out. I wrote about that before, so I won't go in to much detail now. Suffice it to say, if there had been a panic from real or a false threat, people would have died. It could have been from being knocked over and trampled during a brief break in the crowd wide enough to fall in to. It could have been from one of those metal luggage carts being dropped, since they would be handed over people's heads when they were in the way. It didn't help that there were absolutely no other white people in sight. We felt very out of place and a bit disturbed by the whole experience.
However, it should be noted, that the people who actually did work there were actually all nice. Sure, they had to deal with the chaos, but we never had any problems with them giving us a hard time, either going through the entrance security, checking our bags, checking our passports, or even at the gate security where Laurie kept setting off the metal detector. (Eventually they let her through after asking if she had a knife or gun because they couldn't wand her because they had no female staff. I suspect if that had happened here and no female was available for "wanding" she would have been held until someone was found.)
Those are my main memories that help remind me that if we ever do go back to Egypt we'll skip out on Cairo and head off to the other sites. Hopefully they'll be a little more official and organized than the pyramids. I'm not counting on that, though.
June 29, 2005
Aerial Kite Photography
Actually, it's KAP as these guys call it. Taking photos with a camera attached to a kite. These guys come up with all sorts of ways to get the shot they want, from luck to attached X10 video cameras. It's all very cool and something I'd want to try sometime. Just not with our current cameras. ;)
Here's a link to the groups slideshow on Flickr. Do check out the ones of the whales just at the surface of the water. It's very cool.
April 30, 2005
Open RAW and Image Management
Adam Talks about OpenRAW.org over at his site. I think this is an absolutely necessary thing to take place. However, I don't think it's just about getting the camera guys to document their formats. I think it's also about getting the camera guys to use a single, well documented format. For instance, Adobe is trying to do that with DNG. The reason this is important is so you don't have to wait for your favorite software to add support for your latest camera.
Along this topic, though, I've noticed that Google's Free Picasa 2 supports CRW and CR2 formats for Canon DSLRs, such as the Digital Rebel and 20D. This is great, but Picasa is a little quirky in some ways. For instance, after apply effects you have to "export" the files before you see those effects on the file system. Interesting in that it doesn't seem to modify the original image, but annoying in that you basically end up with another copy for anything you do. It's nice to have the choice. In any case, it's nice to see some free software that supports the RAW formats.
tow.com » blog » OpenRAW and Digital Media
OpenRAW - Digital Image Preservation Through Open Documentation
February 19, 2005
Fun with macro photography
The following two pictures are the same picture, with the second one being a crop of the first one.
The image was taken with a 75-300mm lens with a 1.4x teleconverter with 57mm of extension tubes to make it all macro. The pepper shaker was about 18 inches away from the end of the lens.
The image was sized up with Adobe Camera Raw from 8 megapixels to 24 megapixels. The cropping is just under 4 megapixels. In one variant of this, I could see Laurie sitting on the couch next to me in the reflection. Quite amazing consider that the actualy size of the metal part of the shacker is barely 1/4" across.
Click on both of the following images for the full size version.
