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).

Dolphins (400mm, f/5.6, 1/1000th, ISO: 250)

Of course, less than 100m is still pretty close. One morning, we awoke at about 6:30am to find the boat completely surrounded by dolphins swimming, jumping and doing the occasional tail walk.

However, the dolphins weren’t coming any closer than more than 1/2 of a mile away!

The 100-400mm let me capture several great photos of these magnificent creatures going airborne.

One neat advantage that I hadn’t thought of initially was that the lens acted as a very good quality auto-focusing 400mm (640mm, really, with the compact sensor) binoculars with the ability to quickly save anything of interest!

Stilt (375mm, f/5.6, 1/1000th, ISO: 1600)

The T1i performs well at high ISO. Certainly, many times better than the Rebel XT (my prior body). Combined with the 100-400mm, I was able to frame and capture photos in low light quite effectively, too.

While I would rather have the luxury of taking such photos with the 300mm or 400mm f/2.8 lenses, they are both heavier and significantly more expensive than the 100-400mm.

And it isn’t like the 100-400mm lens is any kind of a light weight. At ~3 pounds, I was definitely feeling the weight of hiking all day with said lens hanging at my side.

Aside: I used a Luma Loop throughout the trip and will never ever use any other strap. It is the perfect strap, leaving the camera hanging comfortably in the most natural reach-and-grab position I could imagine while also staying out of the way when shooting. Brilliant addition to anyone’s kit.

I actually didn’t bring a tripod, knowing that we would be moving around on a regular basis and it would just be a pain. The combination of excellent image stabilization with the high ISO performance of the T1i meant I could get away with it.

Moon (400mm, f/5.6, 1/80th, ISO: 200)

One night, I was standing on the top deck of the boat under the moon and asked, “I wonder if I can photograph the moon”.

So, I grabbed my camera and did.

This image was taken from the top deck of a moving ship with a handheld camera.

Unbelievable. I’m still amazed that the technology has evolved so much that someone with relatively little clue can pull off an image like that.

Note that when shooting the moon, I have found that you pretty much have to put the camera in full manual mode. Lock the ISO at 200, go for about a 1/80th of a second exposure and leave the aperture as wide open as possible — the moon is relatively flat from N bazillion miles away, after all).

Fly Catcher (275mm, f/5.6, 1/1000th, ISO: 250)

The 100-400mm lens can both focus closely enough and is sharp enough that it can be used as a sort of long range macro lens or long range portrait lens.

This little Fly Catcher (maybe 4″ tall) was pretty far away, hanging out near the top of a tree. It let me grab one frame in this pose before flitting off somewhere else.

The result is pretty darned good! Sharp, with pleasant background blur.

And that particular image was a crop of about 1/5th of the original frame.

All in all, the Canon EF 100-400mm f4.5-5.6L IS USM Lens worked flawlessly on the Galapagos trip and enabled me to capture many wonderful and memorable pictures that I wouldn’t have gotten otherwise.

Since the trip, the lens developed a fault with the image stabilizer. The IS would kick in and make the image “jump” every second, eventually crashing and causing the camera to show an error. Canon is repairing it under warranty and I’m entirely confident I’ll have a fully working copy of the lens back shortly.

Alternatively, the 70-200mm f/2.8L
lens is absolutely fantastic (and one that I’ll get someday) and combined with the 2x extender
, it probably would have performed well, though not as sharp as the 100-400. As I have the 100mm f/2.8 macro, I already had a “fast” lens in that range that works exceptionally well. Having the longer reach of the 400mm and the larger aperture in the mid-range of the 100-400mm was ultimately the deciding factor. That and also that the 70-200 + extender would have been nearly $1,000 more expensive!

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.

Growing up, my Mom remembers collecting the dried seed pods each fall. The pods were used as decoration in wreaths and table decorations.

I remember Lotus pods in table decorations for Thanksgiving, Christmas and other family gatherings while I was growing up. When dried, the pods make wonderful natural rattles that seem to keep tiny tots happy for a good bit.

My Mom wanted to plant some lotus on our new pond at our new house in the ’80s, but everyone said it was a bad idea. Just a bit of research confirmed exactly why.

Lotus is an incredibly invasive plant. It will dominate a pond entirely, completely covering the pond in all areas where the water depth isn’t too great. Because of the vast amount of vegetation created by this plant, it will also quickly fill in the typical shallow farm pond to the point of taking over the entire surface.

It is, though, an exquisite and useful plant.

There is a bit of swampy area on the property that could easily be dug out to form a mini-pond. It would be an ideal (i.e. isolated) spot for a Lotus infestation.

I could easily imagine painting little eyes on all those seeds for a halloween haunted house…

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!

No surprise, the Sally Lightfoot crabs were ever present on this island, too.

This one is demonstrating one of their primary roles on the islands. The crabs are the cleanup crew!

This crab grabbed a dead fish from a pool and had dragged it up on the lava rock for a fine meal.

With food in claw, a crab was one of the few critters that was actively wary of us. Given the tug of war that other crabs demonstrated over much smaller bits of food, I can certainly understand why said crab was feeling a bit possessive!

Punta Espinosa was also home to tons of sea lions, including many pups.

This particular photo reminds me nothing more of a puppy looking for a treat!

This particular bit of rocky beach was also home to many flightless cormorants.

Many were sunning away, warming up their stubby little wings in the late afternoon sun.

But, not all.

This pair of cormorants were in the midst of a courtship dance.

It is interesting to note just how low in the water the cormorants swim! Almost their entire backs are submerged most of the time.

By contrast, your average North American duck sits with almost its entire body out of the water.

I conjecture that the evolution away from flight in a tropical clime also included an evolutionary change away from the exceedingly efficient lightness of being that flighted birds must maintain.

In the midst of the walk, we took a moment to have a sit on the beach and enjoy all the wildlife going on around us.

Hrmm…. big still things that are atypical. So, of course, the wildlife came to check us out.

It was like a parade of sea lion pups!

Each one would wander up in front of me, check out me and my camera, then wander off to their next task at hand.

In some cases, it felt like they were posing. “Check me out! This is my good side!”.

In this case, I turned around to snap a photo of Roger looking at something interesting and this particular sea lion stuck itself right smack in the middle of the picture!

I had no idea I had snapped a picture of roger with the sea lion until I downloaded the image to the computer.

Yes, in fact, I had been photo-bombed by a sea lion!

This was another one of those photos where the naturalists expressed some surprise. The lava lizard was eating a crab. Long rumored, but never really confirmed. When Roger and I first found this scene, the crab was very much still alive. We called the naturalist over and he was both surprised and excited to have confirmation that the lava lizards are potentially predatory, a behavior that had not been expected.

Note also that the lava lizard has a bit of dividing line right down the middle. It is the middle of shedding and, thus, the front half is relatively new skin while the back half is still in the process of shedding.

Much of our walk was across gigantic slabs of ropy lava. This is much of what the fresh lava flows look like.

“Ropy” is an apt description. I cannot imagine the fluid dynamics of the millions of tons of red hot molten rock that would lead to such consistent ropy pattern across the surface. Amazing.

More amazing,though, is that such a terribly hostile surface can be worn down to support life.

In particular, the Lava Cactus is one of the first to colonize the lava flows.

After the wind blows over the lava long enough to create surprisingly small pockets of sand that provide just enough purchase for the roots of the cactus.

I would assume that birds eat cactus seeds and then drop them on the lava.

The cactus are often eaten by an endemic rat. In any case, their remains fall and rot, creating more soil for more cactus or other species to gain a foothold.

For a photographer, one benefit of the incredible abundance of generally fearless creatures is that you can find those animals that are willing to pose (much like this brown pelican).

Out of the thousands and thousands of marine iguanas on this particular spot, I found these two individuals that, somehow, struck me as having just a bit of something to make ‘em interesting subjects.

Maybe it captures a bit of the magic of the Galapagos. On the one hand, you are immersed in this incredible science lab that illustrates the evolutionary brilliance of our planet better than any class ever could. Yet, stepping back from the science, you are surrounded by both sheer beauty and, upon closer study, those one in a million individuals that, due to sheer circumstance, happen to strike a pose.

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.

Fortunately, Roger was with me and was acting as spotter. Roger has an incredible ability to spot critters where no one else would ever notice.

In this case, Roger tugged on my arm and pointed to something hanging just below the surface of the water. I saw nothing and asked him what he was pointing at. “A fish, dad, there is a fish right there!”, Roger said.

Uh, no… I just see some floating seaweed. Until I looked closer.

Sure enough, there was this little tiny bulbous fish.

I wish I had a better capture, but this was as good as it got. This little Frogfish was floating a couple of inches below the surface and was tiny; less than the size of a dime!

When I asked one of our ever-friendly naturalists for an identification, she responded with great excitement and immediately grabbed a couple of her colleagues! Turns out that she had been looking for this particular fish for nearly a decade with no luck!

Though his reputation was already pretty well sealed, it was from that particular find on that pretty much everyone came running when Roger would said “Hey! Look what I found!!!”.

Of course, while snorkeling in these rich waters, there was a pretty steady stream of birds swimming or flying by as they hunted down dinner.

While snorkeling, one of our party made commotion behind us and pointed. When Roger and I turned around, there was a Cormorant quite literally directly between us! That yellow bit in the background is Roger’s floatation vest; Roger was maybe three feet away.

The swimming feet photo reminds me of this song.

The critters weren’t just amongst the rocks or right at the surface.

We ran into this particular Pufferfish (Tetraodontidae) several times while snorkeling in this area.

What isn’t apparent from a still picture is that some pufferfish are quite adept at changing their skin color to match the nearest background. In this case, Mr. (Mrs?) Puffer has assumed a rather flat coloration. As it approached the bottom, the back would become dark enough that the spots would almost disappear!

This particular spot was just full of life. A whirlwind tour follows….

There were, of course, plenty of the green sea urchins. Nowhere near as many as we had or would see in other places, but ever present, certainly.

While looking around the various tumbles of rocks, I spotted (one of the very few that Roger didn’t spot first!) this Galapagos Reef Octopus hiding under a rock.

I bet that is a magnificent creature when out and about.

Octopus, however, are largely nocturnal critters.

Roger did find this crab.

Neither of us could figure out if it was alive.

We both agreed that the bright crab against the dark volcanic sand made for a stunning image.

Like the sea urchins, the king angelfish were quickly becoming ubiquitous companions in the water.

In this spot, they were huge and there were many.

When Roger and I were about ready to climb back into a zodiac to head back to the boat, we heard a loud splash and saw a stream of bubbles literally within a couple of yards of our faces.

A blue footed booby had dove into the water from great height and descended to about 40 feet below us!

The bird then surfaced, wolfed down its caught meal, and took off. While I couldn’t snap a photo of the dive (silly bird actually surprised the heck out of me! I was in no condition to take a photo!), I did grab this snap of the bird heading off into the distance with the Endeavor in the background.

A fitting end to a great morning of touring this spectacular and magical spot. Morning?! Yes. Still only the morning! There was still another rather epic adventure ahead after lunch!

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).

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.