Lilacs

White and purple lilacs against the sky

I went for a walk at noon. This time I remem­bered my water, which was good—it was hot out. I also took my camera.

I love lilacs. They’re my favourite flower. Their scent is one of the trea­sures of late spring. The only down­side is their sea­son is so very short.

I also spot­ted a paint­ed rock along the 34th Street walk­ing path.

A small rock with a sailboat painted on it

Aurora: May 19–20, 2023

Aurora Borealis

It was a love­ly night for the auro­ra. It’s too bad I was stand­ing next to my car, bro­ken down on the side of the Trans-Cana­da High­way, while I watched it.

Thanks to my love­ly wife Kath­leen who came and res­cued me, and kept me com­pa­ny while we wait­ed on a tow truck.

Nerdy details: all the pho­tos were tak­en at 11mm, 5 sec­onds, f/2.8, ISO 3200 and edit­ed (light­ly) in GIMP. The panora­ma at the top is 3 pho­tos stitched togeth­er with Hugin

Aurora, April 23, 2023

Aurora Borealis, April 23, 2023

Last night, Kath­leen said to me, “I hear the auro­ra should be good tonight.” I checked the app on my phone that shows me the auro­ra data. Every­thing looked pret­ty good except the Bz val­ue, which was about +17. (For a good show, you want the Bz to be neg­a­tive. The longer it’s been neg­a­tive, the better.)

Con­tin­ue read­ing “Auro­ra, April 23, 2023”

Lasagna

I don’t know about you, but for me, lasagna[1]Espe­cial­ly the lasagna Flo­ren­tine my dad taught me to cook. is the per­fect com­fort food. When it’s in the house I will hap­pi­ly eat it at every meal till it’s gone.

This time I snapped a pho­to or two before I devoured it all.

Con­tin­ue read­ing “Lasagna”

Foot­notes

Foot­notes
1 Espe­cial­ly the lasagna Flo­ren­tine my dad taught me to cook.

Aurora, March 23, 2023

Aurora Borealis

Wow, that was a show.

The data looked ridicu­lous from the out­set. There’s one para­me­ter, when you’re con­sult­ing the ora­cle (sor­ry, the space-weath­er data), the Bz, that you want to be a neg­a­tive num­ber. I’ve seen great shows when the Bz was around ‑3 or ‑5. The longer it’s neg­a­tive, the better.

Yes­ter­day after­noon, every time I checked, the Bz was around ‑15. Crazy.

And the auro­ral oval looked like this. When it’s yel­low, that’s usu­al­ly a good sign. Red—that much red—is flat-out amazing.

The auroral oval from spaceweather.com, showing a large red patch over central North America
Con­tin­ue read­ing “Auro­ra, March 23, 2023”