Fluid Flow

Point Lobos Magazine - Fall 2009

Picture Perfect: Phony wildlife photography in magazines, books, calendars, and posters is giving people a warped view of nature. By Ted Williams

(Via Incite: Audubon Magazine.)

When I first saw the image of a mountain lion at Point Lobos, I was in awe. I know that there are big cats in the area and the photographer who took the shot spends enough time there to get great wildlife shots.

But cats are so elusive that getting a shot like that is like winning the lottery. I was extremely lucky to get my bobcat shots at Point Lobos a few years back.

How do you get a shot of a mountain lion on the beach?

You hire the mountain lion. In this case the mountain lion, named Kona, was brought to the Reserve to film part of a National Geographic production called “The Secret Big Sur”.

You can read more about the shoot and other movies that have used Point Lobos as a location in Point Lobos Magazine - Fall 2009 (pdf 17 Mb)

In light of the Incite article, I am not certain that it is a good idea to use our State Parks in this manner. I don’t know how or whether the resulting DVD will fully disclose that they are using a captive animal.

Without full disclosure you may generate a false impression of what wildlife is like or as is in this case what our State Parks and Reserves are like.

For example, story has it that a visitor to the Reserve saw a copy of the Point Lobos magazine with the mountain lion on the cover and immediately got in their car and left the Reserve.

Thanks to G. Dan Mitchell Photography for the link.

That is how I described my first memory upgrade on my Mac SE, 21 years ago.

I don’t recall how much of an upgrade it was, it was probably doubling the memory from 1 to 2 megabytes. But it required cracking the case, removing the motherboard, and a stiff drink.

It was an ordeal. Mostly because I had never done it before and, while I was somewhat fearless, I was mucking with the most expensive thing I had ever owned.

Flash forward.

Today, I doubled the memory on my Macbook Pro, from 2 to 4 gigabytes. It was a two minute outpatient procedure. The installation took less time than finding the necessary screwdriver.

I think we have made strides here.

Antidunes on the Toutle River, 1984

Geologists find a way to simulate the great Missoula floods: “Scientists use detailed computer simulations to get a play-by-play look at how the great floods unfolded thousands of years ago.”

(Via Oregon Local News.)

Supercritical flows seem likely across the scablands, at least until water backed up at the entrance of the Gorge. Similar conditions probably occurred at the Gorge outlet near Portland. There you had expanding flow that could have produced and preserved some very large antidunes. It all kind of depends on the sediment load of the flows.

I am trying to imagine my little beach experiments blown up a few thousand times. Impressive, to say the least.

Remembering the Frisbee inventor and his simple sports innovation / The Christian Science Monitor - CSMonitor.com

Walter Fredrick Morrison, the Frisbee inventor, died this week. His simple sports innovation – a plastic, aerodynamic disc – has become one of the most popular toys in American history, uniting beachgoers, college kids, and competitive teams for half a century.

(Via Christian Science Monitor.)

There was a time when I flung and caught the disc with some magic. So today we raise a glass to the memory of Walter Fredrick Morrison.

Thank god I downloaded the trial version and didn’t purchase the upgrade.

Aperture 3 provides over 200 improvements. Notably, Faces and Places have been called up from iPhoto. While my photography doesn’t lend itself to Faces, Places is important. It took me a little while to figure out how to use Places, but once I did, it was easy to geotag my images.

Unfortunately the location data was not included when I uploaded photos to Flickr using the new Flickr uploader.

The Flickr uploader is a treat. It forces you to place images into a set. It gives you the option of setting the size of the photos as “Web Images”, “Optimized Images” and “Actual Size Images”. It doesn’t explain what this means.

I think that I could understand this behavior in iPhoto, but this is Apple’s Pro-level photo software. Don’t you think the user might have a better idea of how they want to present their images online than Apple?

All Apple had to do was purchase the exceptionally fine FlickrExport plugin and add its capabilities. But no, Aperture 3 comes with its own marginally useful uploader (hopefully the plugin will still work - I haven’t tried that).

The new brushes are helpful. I also like the full screen browser (and the fact that full screen mode doesn’t black out your extra monitor).

But I am left wondering if this upgrade is worth it. Does it really provide enough enhancements to cover the upgrade costs?

I am not sure, I am going to have to play with it a bit more. But my initial reaction isn’t good. I don’t see that the upgrade is that much better than what I have with Aperture 2 and plugins. I would have thought that Apple should have come up with something superior.

The Big One is inevitable. Catastrophe is not.: “The message for Southern California from the horror in Haiti should be — but probably won’t be — to prepare for disaster.

(Via L.A. Times - California | Local News.)

I actually started this post before this LA Times article came out. But it is an easy post to work off of. While we don’t expect a natural disaster will turn our cities into third world countries, we must expect it.

There is a difference between a natural disaster and a man-made one. We make man-made disasters by being unprepared.

I pulled out the ten photos that I like best of the thousands that I took this last year. At current count, I have over 78 gigs of photos from the year. I am having to clear disk space to add new photos. Tomorrow, I start a new year and new photo library. But today we look back into last years library.

There is no implied order:

I never really considered this one until an artist asked for permission to use it as a reference photo for a painting.

The Tour of California arrives in Paso Robles. Mark Cavendish is set to win the stage.

My miniatures entry. Two sibs separated by pane of glass. There but for the grace of the angels…

Great White Shark at the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

Snowy Plover at Moss Landing State Beach.

Swell reflections at Point Lobos.

Carol hiding.

Snow on Fremont Peak. It was very short lived, but I got the shot.

David Quinowski, one of the few baseball photos I got this year. This was David’s first game after missing a season.

Wondering why?

You can view the rest of my Best of 2009 shots here.

Should Earth Scientists Take a ‘Hippocratic Oath’?: “Earth scientists should take a do-no-harm oath like doctors do, suggest two researchers, in light of climate change and proposed massive geoengineering projects.

(Via Wired News.)

Wow, what a brilliantly stupid idea. After hundreds of years of helping plunder the planet for monetary gain, we all should step back and say “my bad! I’ll go climb under a rock now”.

To get to the position of where you can say to others “You will do no harm”, you have already done harm.

UserLand Software appears to have gone off-line without a word. There is no response at most of the UserLand websites including www.userland.com, manila.userland.com, docserver.userland.com. Interestingly radio.userland.com is still running.

I guess this means that most of the servers were taken down, but the dns records are still pointing to them.

I was alerted to this situation by a potential client who had a couple of manila sites hosted by Userland. Their sites went down last week and they are scrambling to find a new manila hosting service. They would also like to get their Manila sites from UserLand.

I would like to help out by providing Manila hosting to these folks. If anyone knows anything about the situation, please drop me a line.

Thanks.

Lab worms are stunned by ‘phaser’: “Scientists show off an effect not unlike that of ‘phasers’ in Star Trek - but it only works on tiny worms called nematodes.”

(Via BBC News | News Front Page | World Edition.)

I really think I should have gotten a job writing headlines.