New Photo Up

Posted a new photo to eighteenpercent.net.

I spent a few hours at Huntley Meadows park in Alexandria just after sunrise on Sunday morning. I unfortunately didn't see much wildlife. (The story is that the beavers who maintained the dam (which created/preserved the marshland) have moved on due to lack of food in the area. Their old dam has washed away, so the marshland has drained. As a result, 99.9% of the bird life around there has moved on. It's actually really sad. You would think the park service would construct some kind of man-made dam (but keep it natural looking) to allow the marshland to build back up. After all, what's the point of a park based on marshland, if there's no marshland? You got a park with a boardwalk through the grass. Not too exciting. But I digress...).

Anyway...the one bit of interesting nature I saw was a bigass spider who had caught a full sized cicada in it's web. I set up the tripod and spent something more than 2 hours shooting the morning meal. I used every combination of lens, 1.4x teleconverter, and tripod position I could. Obviously, the nice 200mm lens produced the best images. The 200mm with TC the next nicest, crappy 300mm the worst (tho not at all bad). I was pretty surprised with the quality of the crappy 300mm and TC. Not great. Probably not even "very good". But not horrible. Definitely good enough for making small WWW shots. And it's 672mm (35mm equivalent) when you add up the digital crop factor and TC. Pretty long.

As a size reference, this flavor of cicada is about 2.5" (via this page), including wings. Which makes that the biggest spider I've ever seen around here. Ew.

The Name Game

For lack of better content, I think I'll start a list...people (in the news) who should be given a free pass to change their names. All expense paid. For they were not responsible for what their parents did to them. The first two names on my list are:

Ms. Michelle Biatch

and

Mr. Rick Shaw

Rick was interviewed on one of the news programs about Katrina. Poor little Michelle (maybe 10 years old) was featured in a newspaper article a year or two ago. She's gonna have a traumatic middle/high school experience, I'd bet.

Mapping goodness (or badness, as the case may be)

Google Maps have updated their New Orleand data with post-Katrina images. Zoom, click, drag to see what there is to see. Note the red "Katrina" button on the top right side of the map. Fascinating stuff. You can see pre-Katrina images by clicking the "Satelliet" button for comparison.

Dark Days

Farewell, Gilligan. Actor Bob Denver died last Friday (damn hurricane getting all the attention) at age 70.

I don't have many memories of growing up. Not sure why. I'm not repressing anything (that I can remember, heh). I just don't. But one of the few memories I do have is watching Gilligan's Island (reruns, by the time I saw them) with mom way back in the day. So I've always had a soft spot for that show, along with MASH and Hogan's Heros (for the same reason). So the day Gilligan checks out is a sad day indeed.

Other people's brushes with fame

Props to Spearman on having his "Big Meats" drawing published in the "Reader Art" section of the latest Dirt Rag (issue #116). See the image here (since I can't find it on the DR web site).

Further props to RickyD on being the "Readings" poster boy. No matter how disturbing the picture may be.

Another brush with fame

Ok, so "fame" might be a bit strong of a word, but one of my submissions did get picked up for the Image Of The Day over at The Cellar.

The end is near

Another harbinger of the end of humanity as we know it. If we, as a society, need to be told things like this, we don't deserve to exist anymore.

As seen on the trash cans at a rest stop along I95 in MA or CT (I forget which):