View allAll Photos Tagged finally
I photographed the same two frog a week ago. They seem to be there every day. Siblings? BFF?
It'll be a shame when that leaf finally decomposes.
Canyon Trail Park, El Cerrito.
CSL SW1500 31 leads a coke train through South Chicago, IL, approaching their yard limits. The CSL, which is not a easy catch at all, is one of the railroads I've been wanting to shoot for a while now.
We have not had water fountains in over a year due to bad piping. For quite a while we have had big jug water coolers placed about the building. These fancy new stations were supposed to be in place this past September. They just opened them this past week. Christmas break begins at the end of next week.
Saturday afternoon up on Froggatt Edge.
This was taken in the other direction to the previous shot, just as the light started to break through. By the time I'd swung the camera round and recomposed, the light really kicked in, and that was it!
Finally, my wife and I finally manage to have a short holiday and headed to South West Scotland for a week. Travelling north to Ayr on the Sunday, I had noted the following working re 1Z92 07.50hrs Stirling to Sanquhar but had no idea what it was, therefore co-incided my arrival time at Gretna Green station when it was due. Not visited the station before had no idea what photo opportunities there were. The resulting effort was this and the train was the 'Royal Scotsman' headed by No 66743 passing the old station masters house located above the train. The best I could do in the circumstances. 11th September 2022.
Copyright: 8A Rail. www.8arail.uk
Over the long march of biological and now technological evolution, we have finally reached a survival gate — we have enough computational power to model the trajectory all Near-Earth Objects (NEO's) that could threaten life on Earth. This was not possible in the year 2000, or any time over the prior millennia. We have made a million-fold improvement in computation in just the past 20 years. So, we can see the future and predict decades in advance of an impact event and then give the NEO a nudge such that it misses Earth entirely.
It’s not like the movies, where you have an asteroid on final approach and try to blow it up somehow (that just turns a rifle into a shotgun blast); instead, you launch a rocket to rear-end it and change its velocity ever so slightly. Integrated over years, that small delta-v makes all the difference. In short, asteroid defense does not end with a bang, but merely a nudge. That is, if you know what you are doing!
The non-profit B612 (with co-fiounding astronauts Ed Lu and Rusty Schweickart) did a webinar and demo of their ADAM simulation tool for calculating asteroid orbit propagation. They gave me permission to share the unpublished work of their Asteroid Institute tech team. Here's an unlisted video showing the sim seen here.
Rusty Schweickart, the first Lunar Module Pilot summarizes: “We live in a remarkable time in history. We can change the trajectory of the solar system, ever so slightly, and protect life on Earth"
Mapping the Final Frontier with ADAM (Asteroid Decision Analysis + Mapping):
The ADAM project runs on the Google Compute Engine to provide a cloud platform for large-scale orbital dynamics. Small errors in the initial velocity vector measurements can expand over decades to very different outcomes, especially when gravitational slingshots around the planets occur. So, they run thousands of Monte-Carlo simulations over an array of starting conditions, creating a distribution of points, as seen in the images here, some hitting Earth (red) or a near miss (green). The distribution of endpoints gives a probability of deep impact. As a heuristic patch to some insane computational complexity, we can calculate a probability for the long term, which narrows like a hurricane forecast cone to a certainly as time advances.
To reach an accuracy of a few kilometers over many decades, it’s not just the complexity of an n-body problem. They had to model effects such as the curvature of space-time due to General Relativity, the non-sphericity of the Sun, the gravitational asymmetry of the planets, moons and larger asteroids, as well as the non-isotropic thermal re-radiation from rotation of the asteroid.
So so the good news: we can do this today, and with each passing year of Moore's Law, we can look further into the future, moving from decades to a 100 years. The further you can see, and the more precisely, the easier the nudge becomes.
For input to the model you just need a series of at least three sample points (but more is better). And we are about to get a whole lot better at that. Starting in 2022, LSST will observe ~600,000 asteroids every night, and discover new asteroids at 10X today’s rate. This will accentuate the computation-bounded problem of using this torrent of data.
There is something poetic about the computational defense of humanity. And something that rhymes with history. The Space Race of the 60s was won computationally, not by brute force heavy-lift, which would have favored the Soviets.
Survival is computational. Intelligence allows us to see the future.
Finally, after 5 long months, the forgotten Leganza has come home to be restored!
It runs, amazingly, and doesn't need a lot of work. The sunroof and interior are the main areas I need to work on, and then after that and a service it's MOT time.
Without question, this will be my first car when I sit my test next year, and I'm so excited and happy with it.
SE02 NYY
Been dreaming of this shot for ages, and finally I got it after a seven hour redeye from Toronto on a British Airways 787. Lots of big name sights of London visible in the shot. Sadly the engine is just barely blocking the Tower of London.
I GOT IT!!!
Well..... kinda. I've been trying to get this pose with at least the last 9 babies I've had. Nothing!! I know it's not perfect... but it's a stepping stone right?!!? LOL
It's funny too... I kinda thought of this pose as something that momma's wouldn't really like... too unnatural, etc. But I still wanted to "conquer it". But when I did it, mom just about started crying cause she loved it so much... Funny!
So much has worn me down health-wise this year & I’ve felt so far from myself because of stress.
I’ve finally been able to verbalize and admit to myself that this has been the hardest year of my life since 2010 when my mother died. I knew selling a home & buying in another state would be stressful no matter what. What I don’t think I could have anticipated was a year like 2024 where we both got Covid for the first time (which had lasting impacts) and the genocide in Gaza ravaging the world. I fundamentally changed and that year left me a different person than who I have ever been. Physically, mentally, and emotionally.
Following that with a year that started with 70 days of varying degrees of headache to all encompassing migraines (leading to an MRI and medical action plans).
Then we started in earnest to do the home dance. Allowing people into my home repeatedly with no real control turned me inside out. My agoraphobia sky rocketed and everything felt impossibly hard.
From the start of the year we’ve had to face a new type of nightmare in our news, US domestic government, and life overall. Everything feels surreal most of the time.
I’ve had such a fog in my mind while I more or less had to shut entire parts of myself down and compartmentalize until I could get through other more immediate needs on my energy and time.
The stress, the uncertainty, the discomfort lead to me more or less giving up on having a human body. I rarely drank water, I stopped moving my body entirely, I spent every moment I wasn’t actively doing The Things I Had To Do™️ (or occasionally taking photos) laying down or crying. I could barely wash my face, brush my teeth, or take a shower. I know my photo stream gives one of those picture perfect storylines of how the last year has gone because I am pretty ok at composition and framing (and admittedly take good self portraits).
The reality is I’ve struggled more overall than I had ever let on.
This week I’ve been sorting photos & found some that dusted my brain off. Photos that reminded me of how even when some years like 2017 (the photos with just my torso) when I had just bought my first house with my ex and realized the relationship may not last because my sobriety hadn’t really changed anything between us. Or 2020 (the photo of me lying down in a Skeletonwitch tshirt and the 3 photo collage) the year of Covid and the year I finally ended that relationship after giving it everything I had for 3 more years while that global pandemic was happening.
Both were unimaginably difficult I was still able to lean into reflection, listening to my body and mind, and working to find the life changes I needed to be a happier and more balanced Nix. The photos feel like a talisman or a magical catalyst to remind me of my power. My routines are returning to me and I can feel the joy they bring. I am waking up.
If you’ve read this far, thank you. This is stuff I usually keep for my online blog, but I was feeling verbose and brave and wanted to share here too. I really value the connections I’ve been making being back on Flickr and the site and the people have been one of the bright spots for me through all of this.
Often there is a motor home parked on this side of the barn so it's hard to get a good picture of it. When I saw that it was gone I parked the car and started taking pictures as I walked towards it. There is a HUGE new home that I managed to hide behind the barn. The sun kept ducking behind the clouds but my patience (which is slight) paid off.
As with a lot of my HDR pictures, this is a blended one. I use the HDR as a base then lay the original over it and using masks, erase through til I get what I want.
It always feels weird complaining that the weather is too nice, but ever since I got to New Mexico, it seems like practically every single day is bright and sunny and clear with a solid blue sky. As a photograper, it is BORING! Today I finally got what I have been waiting for. A crappy day! A couple of days ago, I finally moved out of the Albiquerquee area, and moved down to a town called Ruidoso. It's BEAUTIFUL. Wow, what a difference 150 miles can make. I had been staying in a town called Moriarty. Looking out my window, there was not a tree within 20 miles. It was flat, dry, brown, and ugly, nothing but dead shrubbery as far as the eye could see. Now I'm in Ruidoso. Amazing! It's beautiful. There are big tall pine trees everywhere. So, today was rainy, which is great, because about 10 miles west of here is Sierra Blanca mountain, it's over 12,000 feet high. If it's raining here, it's gotta be snowing there. Hopefully tomorrow I can get some shots of a snow covered mountain.
Went to Savage Mill Trail after work. This time I remembered to bring my B+W ND110 filter. I took nothing but long exposures this trip. I was like a kid in a candy store grinning from ear to ear :). I can't think of a more relaxing way to end the day.
It was extremely hot, the heat index made it 100 degrees. I took a majority of my shots from the shade, gotta love zooms :). The biggest annoyance were all the flies and mosquitoes that were interested in introducing themselves to me. Can't they see that I am busy lol? The fading sun added some interesting light to the water. Due to the light not being consistent across the scene, it made for some tricky exposures, that's why I always check my histogram after every shot and make adjustments from there. Hope everyone enjoys their weekend!
Nikon D5000
ISO 200
f8
15 seconds
Nikon 55-200mm vr 4.0-5.6
It's late day and the clouds have finally moved out on a Sunday afternoon. A westbound CSX intermodal train rushes through town en route to Chicago. (Scanned from a slide)
After a long and late summer.
The two Dogwoods near our front door finally did their thing.
Also, my photostream needed a bit more color, it was looking wan.
We got our first real rain of the season the night before this photo. Then a brief, unexpected, and powerful hailstorm in the afternoon after this photo. Most of the leaves are gone now.
Finally the parts I ordered from Lego arrived, and so now I can create the Mad Hatter MOC I wanted to. I ordered them like 2 weeks ago, hence my anger/relief. Slow service? Yes, but I’m defiantly going to place another order soon, perhaps today—tiles are calling my name, and I want an ass-ton of purple ones badly! Also arrived today, after ordering them only a few days ago (Way after the initial Lego order) are the bunny suit guys I also need for Hatter’s MOC. Anyways check out the cool colored things I ordered and stay tuned for a Mad Hatter Moc later tonight or tomorrow morning/afternoon.
finally managed to get my hair dyed. my wife does a pretty good job of it gas to be said.
we were out for most of Saturday doing stuff as it is my birthday today. 55 all over again. yeah I told everyone last year I was 55. turns I miss calculated.
anyway, just another day. I was going to go out and meet a friend, and just as I left the house, it got cancelled.
that was a waste of makeup lol.
Finally I saw my first 991 carrera on road. This one was a Carrera S. I know it's not a really exotic car but I just love it! I worked almost 1 1/2 hour on this picture and retouched many things. to show you the difference I'll show the original picture : www.abload.de/img/dsc_0006sdy82.jpg
With only two cars to drop at North Yard, its finally finished and time to fly for the CSX M585 as the train accelerates south behind a veteran AC44CW in YN2 paint.
I went to Indiana on business last week. I was walking the streets of Evansville around 7pm and there wasn't anyone to be found. It was like a ghost town in a Twilight Zone episode. I finally came across an old lady and I asked where everyone was? She told me they were all eating and that this was voted the fattest city in the US.