Pelican (170mm, f/5.6, 1/1250th, ISO: 160)

Earlier this year, we went on a trip to the Galapagos with Linblad (National Geographic) with a goal of immersing our 9 year old son, Roger, in the natural laboratory that is the Galapagos Archipelago.

And, no surprise, one goal was to bring back tons of pictures as it is exceedingly unlikely that we will ever re-visit the Galapagos.

I don’t remotely pretend to be a competent photographer, but I do OK and I have dedicated some time to understanding the science of photography and learning the limits of my equipment. One limit, in particular, was no really long lenses of great quality. The 55-250 is a great lens for the price, but isn’t that long, nor of the world class quality that a world class trip demands.

Thus, I picked up the Canon EF 100-400mm f4.5-5.6L IS USM Lens
. That is, a zoom telephoto L-series lens with a minimum zoom of 100mm @ f/4.5, a maximum of 400mm @ f/5.6 that features image stabilization.

I.e. one serious piece of glass.

All images taken with a Canon T1i
and, obviously, the aforementioned lens.

Juvenile Flamingo (400mm, f/14, 1/500th, ISO: 500)

Of course, with such a long lens, the first question is “How well did it perform in capturing images of things really far away?!?”

In short, the lens performed very well in this regard. The flamingo at left was, maybe, 80 meters away; 200+ feet.

The lens focuses quickly at that distance and the camera + lens generally do a good job of selecting an appropriate aperture and ISO to achieve a pleasant picture (I generally use a fast shutter speed when shooting wildlife that is moving about).

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Mid-Missouri is a hummingbird destination.

That is, these tiny, but incredibly energetic, birds treat mid-Missouri as a destination for breeding and, as a result, are extremely territorial in their presence (I’m still trying to grab a few good frames of the epic battle around the feeder amongst 4 hummers).

Apparently, other hummers aren’t the only territorial species in this particular area….

While watching hummers feed upon the shore line pond flowers, I noticed that the birds were quite commonly being buzzed by dragonflies!

That dragonfly in the upper left followed ever move of the hummingbird and, beyond that, dove in to seemingly tag the hummer regularly. This annoyed the hummingbird considerably and much aerobatics came with each buzz-by from the dragonfly.

We spent a good chunk of saturday wandering about mid-Missouri, touring the various homes and towns of my Mother’s family.

While wondering about Mom’s home town of Jamestown, Missouri, we found Cave Springs Road.

“Road” is a bit of an exaggeration; it is a rather winding gravel/dirt road through the hills and river bottoms of the area. It also happens to pass by one of my Grandparent’s old houses.

While continuing on said road, I caught something out of the corner of my eye and asked my sister (who was driving) to stop the car.

Upon seeing this pond, our cousin from Austria exclaimed, “This pond is being invaded by Doctor Seuss plants.”.

The plants do look a bit Seuss-esque. Especially the seed pods.

They are American Lotus or Yellow Lotus. While considered a native species, they are extremely invasive and can easily entirely consume a pond in vegetative growth within a few years (depending on pond depth).

While “native”, the working theory is that these plants are not really naturally propagated nearly as widely as they are without human intervention.

In particular, much of the plant is edible. As far as anyone can determine, American Indians would carry seeds and/or roots of the plant as they moved about, planting any random ponds to establish a food source if the tribe happened to pass that way again.

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I’ve been meaning to write a proper eulogy for Janis Joplin since we had to put her down (cancer @ 14 years) last fall. But I still can’t bring myself to do so. So, a short story…

While living in Connecticut with my sister Ann’s family, Janis got skunked one evening. Now, the best way to deskunk a dog is some combination of tomato juice and/or vinegar & water.

This led to my sister and my lovely wife Christine heading out to the drug store to pick up several boxes of douche to cleanse Janis’s skunky funk.

Upon returning to the house, Christine proceeded to cleanse Janis’s skunky fur with douche quite a few times, smelling Janis in between to determine how much more douching was required.

Not surprisingly, Christine’s skunk detection skills were stretched to their limits at the end of this and she needed a third party opinion.

So, marching downstairs, Christine asks of the first person she sees, “I’ve douched Janis 4 or 5 times now, can someone please smell her to see if the stench is gone?”

The first person, though, happened to be our cousin Andy. Andy had not, in fact, ever met Janis. Nor did Andy actually know that Janis was a dog.

Andy’s facial expression really can’t be described beyond the popular emoticon:

O_o

Of all of the excursions we took on this trip, I personally found this one to be the one that captured the essence of the Galapagos more than any other.

Life was abundant, the land was harsh, and the contrasts between lifeless and teeming were distinct.

This was also the hike that drove home exactly how harsh life on the islands can be for any given individual animal, while the population, as a whole, thrives. More on that in another post as the pictures are rather brutal.

Isla Fernandina is the most active volcano in the archipelago (and one of the most active in the world).

Thus, it is an island of many fresh lava flows intermingled with the green of new, and sometimes relatively old, growth.

As the rich sea upwellings strike the island, it supports a diverse and rich ecosystem at the shore.

Much of which we were about to see.

Looking across the lava flow and beaches from our Zodiac, it looked like the entire island was covered ancient weathered logs.

Not so! There were hundreds and hundreds of marine iguanas. Thousands, actually.

Piles of them everywhere.

And, oddly, in the late afternoon sun, they largely align themselves in the same direction towards the sun. As mentioned in a previous post, marine iguanas are cold blooded. They regulate their temperature by both pressing their bodies against the hot lava rocks and/or controlling the cross section of their bodies exposed to the sun.

As can be seen in this photo, the iguanas were entirely un-phased by our presence. Actually, the bigger risk was to us!

Namely, after the iguanas spend time feeding in the ocean, they sit on the rocks, warm up, and sneeze out salt water. If you are posing like Roger was in this photo, you run the very real risk of being sneezed upon!! No surprise, Roger spent a bunch of time trying to get sneezed on!

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Not only did we do a Zodiac tour of the coast line and cave, but we also hopped in the water for some snorkeling in the calm, almost bay-like, shallows near the shore of Punta Vicente.

This particular area is well know for the vast number of Galápagos Green Turtle (Chelonia mydas agassisi) that hang out in the water. As there isn’t much in the way of sandy beaches, this spot didn’t really seem to be an attractive nesting grounds.

At least not for the turtles.

The flightless cormorants, penguins and other birds could be seen nesting all over the cliffs and rocky beaches.

Unlike other areas of the world, the turtles in the Galápagos showed no real fear of humans. They were perfectly content to float about.

However, there was one very absolutely strict rule; do not approach or touch the turtles. On the other hand, if a turtle decided to inspect you, that was OK!

And inspect they did!

While Roger and I were diving down to get a closer look at the ocean floor, we turned to our right and this rather grand turtle had swam right up to us for a closer look!

This particular turtle followed us around for a bit, getting within a couple of feet even though we were trying to keep our distance.

While an incredibly impressive creature, this particular snorkeling spot had much more to offer.

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Sometimes, when tracking down a bug, you’ll get a bit of console spew, an exception log, or a crash log that contains a ridiculously large number. Sometimes, that is the result of a memory smasher.

Sometimes, though, it is because of a type conversion problem.

For example, if you see a log message indicating that the value 4294967295 is causing a problem, it is probably because something archived -1 on a 32 bit system and then unarchived it on 64 bit improperly.

This has come up often enough that I like to leave the Calculator app open in Programmer Mode. Then, I can copy/paste the value into Calculator and see both the bit pattern or the hex value (which will often show patterns that base-10 does not).

An aside, I have generally tried to break myself of the habit of relying upon knowledge of magic values (like 4294967295). Sure, I’ll use ‘em as clues, but I focus much more on refining my tools to make recognition of said values unnecessary as there are a slew of different values that look non-obvious in decimal form that become darned obvious in binary or hex.

Dead obvious, I know.

Now, as you look at this particular photo which isn’t that good in the first place, you might ask yourself, “Why the heck has Bill posted a photo of a random outdoor light?!?”.

Well, look closer. See that pile of what looks to be wood shavings or something inside the light?

Yeah. No. Not so much.

You see, that is a gigantic pile of dead bug larva.

I have no idea what kind of bugs they were. Look kinda like ants, but I have never seen white ants before.

Termites, maybe? But why would termites take up residence in a seemingly all metal and glass light fixture!?!

In any case. FREAKY!

The light post is in front of Apple’s De Anza 6 building. The photos were actually both taken with the Camera+ app (using the image stabilization feature) on an iPhone 4. I’m very impressed with the camera. Sure, can’t compete with my T1i. Often, though, the best camera is the camera you have. That it also happens to be a really good camera is bonus!

As we start into the second phase of remodel where we are living in the house, there is the occasion when there are stinky fumes from the work site that I want to keep out of the livable areas.

Enter the Air Mover.

Now that I have one, I’m stunned that I didn’t pick up one before! In particular, our climate is such that it can get really damned hot during the day and still cool off at night. Even with all the windows and doors open, the interior of the house can still take a bit to cool down.

No more.

With the 1600CFM air mover pictured at left, I merely drop it on the picnic table outside our back door and put it on high. Within 20 minutes or so, the temperature inside the house is down to something quite comfortably cool.

Better yet, our garage faces south west and, thus, gets baking hot by the end of the day and doesn’t cool off until after midnight. Again, no more as the air mover does a brilliant job of pushing cool air from in the house, through the garage and out the front.

Brilliant tool. Why the hell didn’t I get one years ago?!

I picked up the one at left from Home Depot for $199 (7/17/2010).

@Ian: We have an attic fan in Missouri, too, but it tends to pull ash out of the fireplace(!!). Of course, an Eichler has neither an attic or a crawl space….

@Philippe: Push air into the house, though I’ll sometimes set it up to pull air through the house, too. As far as pushing dust in the house is concerned, we leave the doors open anyway. There aren’t really very many bugs in California (save for swarms of June Bugs this year) and the dust doesn’t seem any worse with the fan on (i.e. it is still quite dusty around here).

We have had a Miele Incognito dishwasher for quite a few years. Mostly, it is a wonderful machine; does a great job of cleaning the dishes and does so extremely quietly.

It does, however, have a couple of design flaws that I wanted to record here for other Miele owners to potentially stumble across when googling their frustrations.

Recently, or dishwasher would intermittently stop mid-cycle and flash the “Intake/Drain” light, indicating that the dishwasher either had no supply or the drain had failed. When this first happened, cleaning the filter basket was enough to let it complete the cycle (even when the filter basket didn’t have anything in it). Lately, the dishwasher wouldn’t even complete the initial drain cycle (the dishwasher always fires up the pump when first turned on to clear any sitting water).

Apparently, this is not an uncommon problem.

Once the filter basket is removed, there is a bit of wire that holds down the drain pipe on top of the pump impeller. For most with this problem, taking off the drain pipe reveals that the impeller is jammed by a bit of glass, a pit, hair, or other debris.

Not in my case. The drain pipe is actually not just a pipe, but a gravity/pressure activated ball valve. It exists to prevent backwash from the disposer or sink from entering the washer. That ball valve was entirely clogged with debris.

In particular, there was an olive pit wedge behind the ball valve such that the ball valve was barely opening. This led to bits of food being wedged between ball and pipe, quite effectively clogging the drain pipe. Once fully cleaned, the dishwasher works just fine again.

The real problem is that once there is any kind of problem in the dishwasher that prevents drainage, removing the filter basket causes whatever food bits that haven’t settled into the filter basket to end up falling into the pump intake area.

To avoid this, use a shop vacuum out any standing water (and food) in the bottom of the dishwasher before removing the filter basket.

On the inexcusably stupid front, the dishwasher — like most dishwashers — has a filter basket at the bottom of the dishwasher that is designed to catch bits of food and stuff before it hits the pump. The sump filter basket has a hinged bottom so you can open it up and clean it out periodically.

Unfortunately, the hinge isn’t actually a hinge. Miele’s designers cut a corner and the “hinge” is really just a thin spot connecting the door to the filter basket. Obviously, it is cheaper to make a single injection modeled piece than to actually have a mechanical hinged connection.

Expect the hinge to fail every 3 to 5 years. Replacement cost? $135 as of the spring of 2010.