"Snow"

As I mentioned here, the weather has been quite strange lately. I know, I know; people who live in places that get real snow would scoff at this (I used to live in such a place, so I'm familiar with "real snow"). That said, the fact that it stuck at all is remarkable. (I understand this stuff was on the ground until after 2 in the afternoon. 2 PM!!) So, here's how it looked:


When I tried to shoot the back yard, the flash reflected off the falling snowflakes:

Pretty nifty, eh? But not quite what I was looking for. Let's try it without the flash:

Ah, that's better.

A closeup of the back yard:


Here's the front yard. Notice the small piles of snow atop the trash bins at the top of the photo:


My mom captured my shock as I gazed at my snow-dusted car:

The Machines

The day after Thanksgiving, my family and I visited the Palm Springs Air Museum to view their "da Vinci Exhibit." As the name suggested, it was a showcase of replicas of many of ol' Leo's inventions, as well as some copies of his artwork. Naturally, I took my camera along; here are some of the results.

Here we see the main room of the exhibit:

One of the first gadgets I found was the "air screw," da Vinci's idea of a helicopter.

Ever wanted to walk on water? Ever thought of investing in some pontoon shoes?

A set of pulley systems, devised by da Vinci to demonstrate a very useful principle: the more pulleys in a system, the easier it is to lift a given load. Read the accompanying sign (click the photo for a larger version) for more info.

A tank. A crew of men would ride inside to operate both the wheels and the cannon.

A warship called the "Scorpion." The large scythe mounted in the center was designed to make a mess of sails, oars, and anyone who got in its way.
Another war machine, the "war wagon" was meant to be pushed by a horse. The blades would spin as the wheels turned. As if being trampled by a horse weren't bad enough.

The "chamber of mirrors" was an eight-walled room with full-length mirrors on each wall. Not only could a person inside the chamber get a good look at himself, but a small hole in one of the walls provided an outside observer with a full, 360-degree view of anything inside the chamber. I was going to take a picture of the "box," but it was fairly nondescript on the outside. Then I got a better idea:
One of the more complex inventions in the exhibit, this hydraulic saw uses a water wheel to both move the saw vertically and move a log horizontally into the blade.

Da Vinci was a pioneer in the field of anatomy. He made quite a reputation for himself by performing autopsies on corpses to study the workings of the human body. This page from one of his notebooks deals with the other side of human development: an embryo.

The Last Supper, one of da Vinci's more famous paintings

Vitruvian Man

Madonna of the Rocks

And, of course, the Mona Lisa


All in all, a fine exhibit, I thought.

Trip to the Salton Sea, Sept. 2006

(Note: The first 7 pictures (through "birds on a line") were taken from inside a moving car, so please forgive any bluriness.)

Somewhere on the 10 freeway, in the desert of California, there lies an ancient city inhabited by giants.

Notice how the giants tower over the power lines. They're about 60-70 feet tall, and they use their powers of wind-magic to give us electricity.




The Salton Sea, as seen from our car.

Have you ever seen so many birds "online" at once?
A view from my grandparents' balcony.


A somewhat large paloverde tree:

A large (12+ feet), thorny plant called an ocotillo; not something you want to stumble into while working in the garden.


A fine finch feeding from the feeder.

OMG BUNNIES!!!



"Our name is Legion..."



And now for the closeups:






Comments go here.

Fishy Photos

Photos from the 7/12/06 RTB Fun Day trip to the Long Beach Aquarium of the Pacific. As always, click on the pics to see larger views. (Note: In many cases, I was trying to shoot through glass, which made focusing difficult.)

A lighthouse visible across the harbor from the Aquarium:

The Queen Mary, luxury hotel/museum/tourist trap.

A dolphin statue just outside the Aquarium.

At last: the Aquarium Itself!

Upone entering the Aquarium, visitors are greeted by this:
Aww, the statue has a baby!

This rather large fishtank is located at one end of the lobby.

A giant sea bass, one of the residents of the Big Ol' Tank.


The "Tropical Lagoon" (their name, not mine.)


No, nobody lost a doily in the tanks. That's a fish. A very strange, lacy red fish.

A puffer fish.

I nicknamed this tank the "Potential Stars of Finding Nemo 2."

A leafy sea dragon. Which may or may not be the result of crossbreeding sea horses with seaweed (naturalistic evolutionists are very confused).

One of my favorites: the parrotfish. The second picture is of the same fish; it looks a little different because I used a flash.



A lionfish.

A few sharks.



Sea lions.



Various rays.

Several tiny creatures called "blue jellies."


They're popular, playful, they're furry, and they're almost unbearably cute: the sea otters.
A newt, or a peasant that didn't "get better"?

Cute, tiny, and deadly: a poison dart frog.

A sea turtle.



This pigeon was surveying the crowd in front of the sea-lion area as though it were a monarch.


My longtime favorite sea birds: the puffins.






The last exhibit we went through was the aviary, where we walked among a veritable throng of beautiful birds called lorikeets.









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