Amusing

I’m a trend-setter

Posted on by Patrick
Sign reading HAPPER YEAST

My sis­ter in Win­nipeg texted me yes­ter­day, on East­er Sun­day, to show me what I’ve wrought in her house­hold. My nephew C. took inspi­ra­tion from my habit of mess­ing with their text sign, and wants to wish one and all a HAPPER YEAST.

Below are some exam­ples of my work over the last cou­ple years. So… am I a bad influ­ence, or the best influence?

  • Sign reading SPRONG BREAK
  • Sign reading MELCOME PAT AND KATHLEEN
  • Sign reading HOPPY MATHAR'S DEY

Wind + Aurora

Posted on by Patrick
Star trails, with faint aurora

It was clear and rea­son­ably warm last night, and there was a rea­son­able chance of get­ting some auro­ra Bore­alis, so I head­ed to my usu­al spot about fif­teen min­utes out of town. I got my tri­pod set up, and retired to the warmth of the car—the tem­per­a­ture was only ‑10°C or so, but the wind­chill was sig­nif­i­cant, a south wind howl­ing along at what felt like about 40–50 km/h—and lis­tened to music for a while.

After about ten or fif­teen min­utes, I noticed that I could­n’t see the lit­tle red light on my cam­era any­more. I briefly won­dered if maybe the bat­tery had died, but then I real­ized that I also could­n’t see the thin dark lines of the tripod.

Sure enough, the wind had tipped it over into the snow. See the pho­to below, which is the ten-sec­ond win­dow when it actu­al­ly fell.

light streaks as the camera falls over
The moment my cam­era pitched over into the snow.

I cleaned the lens off as best I could, then packed it all up and head­ed home, where I gave the lens a more thor­ough clean­ing and then set it aside to dry. This morn­ing it looks OK, so I think I got away lucky.