Friday, January 29, 2010

Using the New Tehnology

Now that I have a "smart phone," I get to play around with it to see how well things work. This is kind awkward to compose blog post with, but it can be done. The field in blogger used for text input doesn't play nice with Droid. Text editing is a joke, but web browsing and email work out pretty well. Also, the 5 megapixel camera is decent enough for basic stuff. I'll try to attach a sample picture.

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Sunset Flight


Sunset Flight, originally uploaded by Gerald5970.

Just a glimpse of the happenings at sunset.

Tempe Sunset


Tempe Sunset, originally uploaded by Gerald5970.

The dams have been re-inflated and the reservoir has been replenished. Things are still closed, but at least the water's becoming thinner and there are fewer dead animals left to be skimmed off. The state has pronounced that the flood is officially over, so we can go back to our usual calm lives now.

Saturday, January 23, 2010

I was going to call this "An Update," but I realized that just about everything is an update, so I'll just figure something out.

Talking About the Weather Again



The weather here is good now, but we had days of torrential downpours steady rains that saturated the soils and caused some massive flooding and flash flooding. The Rio Salado (rhymes with Salt River) threatened to reclaim its basin from Tempe Town Lake, the south runway at Sky Harbor (rhymes with PHX) and various developments built on the floodplain. Anyway, things have returned to normal in town, and people are organizing to rebuild in various mountain valleys where streams used to run free. Many reservoirs in the area were threatened by the unusual rains, and many experienced incredible rises in water levels.


Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Reality Check, Please!

An open letter to Mr. Bigshot Beamer

Hi,

I'm the guy you just tried to clip at the intersection of Ninth and Mill, in Tempe. I was walking westbound across Mill Ave. when you, breaking at least three traffic laws, came within inces of a vehicular homicide charge. Do you even remember who I am? Maybe I should refresh things a bit.

Here's the intersection, including the crosswalks, and I can even see the shadow of your stop sign.


View Larger Map

First, I'm wearing a white shirt, light blue jeans, and a backpack with huge expansive reflective stripes. Maybe if you had your headlights on, it would've been possible for me to see you, and for you to have seen me. I waited until my crosswalk was protected by red lights both to the north and south so that I could safely cross. I was most of the way to the west side of Mill Avenue, and to relative safety, when you, in your black BMW, came barreling through the stop sign without even slowing, whipping violently into a right turn through the space I was walking through. You kinda skidded to a stop, in the middle southbound trafic lane, and putting your phone down a bit, you yelled, "Hey, ass-wipe, learn to use a fucking crosswalk!" There was some more, but with the way you were going, I was pretty sure you could buy your way out of the aggravated assault charge you were woking toward, so I ran out of there. So let's tally things up now:

One: you had no headlights.
Two: you were talking on your cellphone while driving.
Three: you completely ignored the stop sign.
Four: you failed to yield to a pedestrian in a marked, signed crosswalk.
Five: your assault definitely counts as disorderly conduct, and forcing me to leave the scene for my own safety is just not cool.
Six: In the state of Arizona, covers that obscure your license plate are illegal.

So, to you, all I can ask is that you go to driver's ed, and if you fail that, you forfeit your license to drive. There's a lot more I'd like you to face, but, with just AKJ-7 from your plate, there's absolutely nothing that can be done. For the most part, I'm just really annoyed that you get to break a bunch of rules, and yell at me for doing so. I'm going to be prepared if there's a next time, I'm getting some caltrops.

Monday, January 11, 2010

Trying new things


DSC_0323, originally uploaded by Gerald5970.

Trying new things can lead to fun.

John Drums


06418_DSC_0168, originally uploaded by Gerald5970.

Saturday, January 09, 2010

E to S


E to S, originally uploaded by Gerald5970.

Here I go, finally showing the panorama work. This is the first section, from Turtleback mountain, past Elephant Butte, and passing McRae Canyon. This was what New Year's Day brought to the sailors of New Mexico. Flat, mirror calm waters let me take a panorama instead of trimming the jib on my mom's Etchells.

NE to E


NE to E, originally uploaded by Gerald5970.

Curving now from the southeast up to the northeast, we see Kettletop, the mountains and the end of Long Point.

WNW to NE


WNW to NE, originally uploaded by Gerald5970.

The southern shore of Long Point, as seen from the water.

Thursday, January 07, 2010

Another Update

Yeah, I'm trying to quell your anxieties.

After that last post, I'm sure that all of you frequent visitors are getting antsy to see the results of using a little point-and-shoot to create a panorama from a moving sailboat. The parallax errors threw the computer for a loop, and I had to break it into three eight photo pieces before I could put things into one cohesive pano. It still was giving me distortion issues, so I went and just uploaded the three pieces to flickr. Well, unfortunately, in the reformatting,  resizing and uploading, they were throughly scrambled.
Now, I'm back to internet and ready to try again, but I'm the pano sections are on different hard drives, from the one I'm using tonight. So, I can try to upload later from a slow machine on a slow (rhymes with dial-up) connection, or I can wait some more and show up with the right machine or a drive that has those panos.

Saturday, January 02, 2010

Uh, well, hmmm…

After some frustrating sailing, I do have some good coming out of it.

Since there wasn't much wind, I used the little camera to grab a series to use in a panorama. Standby while stitching goes on.