The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning
Ed Nisley's Blog: Shop notes, electronics, firmware, machinery, 3D printing, laser cuttery, and curiosities. Contents: 100% human thinking, 0% AI slop.
Taking & making images.
They only come out at night:
Two raccoons took turns at the feeder, but I only caught one in the act:
Apparently they enter torpor, rather than hibernate, which means they’re getting hungry right about now.
Taken through two panes of 1955 glass with the Sony DSC-H5, using an LED flashlight for focus assist. Both culprits oozed off the far end of the patio when I opened the door…
A few more weekly snowstorms refreshed the patio tables mounds:
The spire under the square table nearly reached the cross brace:
That spire comes from snow falling straight down through the table, with a bit collecting on the struts:
Holding the camera over the table shows a thin glass rim around the edge of the hole:
I wouldn’t believe it, either, if I hadn’t seen it!
A licensed bird rescuer gave a talk before a showing of Pelican Dreams in Rhinebck and presented some of her patients…
A Red Tailed Hawk with a broken left wing, just out of its bandage:
A Barred Owl who, despite having a left eye that no longer dilates, rapidly acquired weapons lock on my camera’s focus assist light:
And a pair of insanely cute Screech Owls, both with eye damage, atop their padded perch:
Most of her patients arrive after collisions with automobiles; it seems carnivorous birds don’t look both ways before pouncing on prey near the roadside.
Contrary to her impassioned claims, however, wind turbines kill essentially zero birds, at least compared to windows, HV power lines, and cats. Some reports with actual numbers that, obviously, won’t convince anybody who already knows what the results should be:
Low light, no flash, long zoom, handheld, good-looking subjects.
OK, I’m a sucker for sunlit solid water:
They’re hanging from the gutters over the patio. The house has six-foot soffits back there and nearly three feet elsewhere, plus the roofers installed rubber sheets along the walls, so we’re not worried about leaks…
Having repaired these once before, I wasn’t too surprised when this happened:
Evidently the “titanium” has fatigued, because the repair lasted barely nine months.
Rather than try to fix them again, I sent my new prescriptions halfway around the planet and, a bit under two weeks later, had three glasses: normal, computer, and sun. This time, I went with 38 mm tall lenses, a heavier nose bridge, and traditional aviator sunglasses.
For the record, the regular prescription was:
Tweaking that by +0.75 diopter on the sphere puts my far point focus on the monitors across the desk and backing -0.75 diopter from the adder keeps the same near-point reading correction:
They’re all no-line progressive bifocals made from 1.57 high-index plastic with anti-reflection coating, for a grand total of $135 delivered.
That being only slightly more than the estimated cost of fixing one broken Silhouette frame temple, Mary will try living in the future, too.
After the January snowstorm, everything above the water downstream of the Red Oaks Mill dam featured a snow cap rimmed with ice:
The jet emerging from a deep notch in the dam breast on the near side of the ice sheet chewed through the concrete-and-rubble structure:
Upstream, graceful curves in the ice highlight the flow streamlines:
Yes, that was on the same walk when we found the severed head…
Two snowstorms in a week converted our patio tables into gentle sculptures.
If you could flip the round table upside down, the mound might match the snow shadow underneath:
Snow falling through the 2 inch hole in the middle of the square table produces a large cone below:
Leaving a much larger caldera in the top:
Yes, I’m easily amused…
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 