catching the light

Whoa Nellie, almost ran that light!

Shaking out a blanket before the storm

I've been meaning to stop at the SW corner of Campbell & Sunrise sometime when it was cloudy and take a few snaps of the three sculptures there. The contrast between the dark bronze and the bright sky is particularly challenging for me, and even with today's overcast sky I still had to play around in photoshop to tweak the brightness a bit.

Do you play to your strengths?

Doodle by Lee. The code for this doodle and other doodles you can use on your blog can be found at Doodles.

[I don't usually repost other bloggers material, but I really think this doodle sums up things nicely. It is reposted per the permission guidelines at Nicole's blog. -- Warren]

Butterflies, a cautionary tale

We've all got our concerns about 2009 and the Tucson Botanical Gardens is dealing with a few butterflies of their own this year... I dropped by the gardens today to take a few snaps of world butterflies in their Butterfly Magic exhibition. Click on pics for larger views...

The Tucson Botanical Gardens import crysalids under USDA rules from butterfly farms around the world. The butterflies then emerge and live out their lives in the controlled greenhouse, full of lots of plants and nector.

...including carnivorous plants like the one above (yep, you could see some butterflies down inside). Lucky they are plants, otherwise they would really have some butterflies in their stomachs.

Quite a few seem to hang upside down when resting... Less effort to just let their wings hang down?

Impressive colors! Neatly coiled proboscis.

Here are some of the crysalids in the window of the "nursery" being unpacked and setup for eventual emergence. I had no idea that they come in so many colors.

Wandering around out on the grounds to cool off after being in the humid & hot butterfly greenhouse, I found a few blooming flowers such as the iceplant above.

Its been a number of years since I last visited the Tucson Botanical Gardens -- I like it and will be back much sooner. I stopped for lunch at their little cafe and had a Mediterranean chicken salad which was quite good and reasonably priced.

One of the impressive things of note with the pics above is that they were taken today with my Canon G9 P&S camera which was fully submerged in over a foot of water on new year's eve -- sigh.

I was sitting above one of the fountain pools listening to a cool psychobilly band called the Mission Creeps. While juggling a hot chocolate, sweater and program guide, I somehow managed to knock my camera soundly off the edge and into the fountain below. Since I didn't have the shutter set to "bulb" (smile), the camera promptly sunk to the bottom. Not good, not good, not good at all.

Usually when I've heard of folks having this kind of accident with a P&S camera, the results are catastrophic & repair not worth the delta with a replacement camera. I assumed the worst, tried not to make matters worse by kicking myself for my carelessness, and chose to stay downtown for the rest of the celebration (hence my missing event pictures). When I pulled the soggy camera out of the fountain, the front green focus assist beam was on, even though the camera was off. Hmmmm. I pulled the battery, memory card, and poured as much water out of the soggy camera as possible.

When I got home I decided that since things were pretty grim anyway that taking action was probably slightly better than not. So I shook out more water, blew some compressed air around in the battery, memory, and usb slots and ... [WARNING -- I DO NOT RECOMMEND taking these actions as they could certainly make things much, much worse; I'm just describing the procedure/risks that I chose to take.] ... put it in my clothes dryer.

No, no tumbling. My dryer came with a removable shelf that could be inserted in it for, I think, drying shoes? Never used it before. So I put the camera on the non-moving shelf and set the dryer for its delicate lowest temperature setting. I checked the temperature inside after 5-10 minutes and it seemed reasonable; after all, our cars get really hot in Tucson in the summer.

After about 90 minutes of this, I pulled the camera out. Hmm, a little too hot I think. Outside was certainly dry, nothing melted (!), but the rear LCD screen had either a condensation fog or the LCD had crystallized from the temperature... Still, not a lot more to lose, so I popped the battery that had been in the camera back in and powered it up (another not recommended to do so soon after soaking in case there is still water present). The front lens opened and, no surprise, there appeared to be some condensation inside the lens elements somewhere, God only knows what happened to the sensor. Rear LCD display showed image, but very hazy from the fog mentioned above. Ok, well that was pretty much what I was expecting anyway, one last sigh and time for bed.

In the afternoon yesterday, New Years Day, I checked back on the camera and powered it up again. To my amazement, the internal lens condensation had cleared, leaving a couple of faint water marks on an internal element. Slightly less surprising, but a bet I wouldn't have made, was that the rear LCD display was now also looking normal. Hmmm. Out to the yard to take some test shots to see how bad those dried water spots would affect images. Not bad. The sensor seems to be undamaged, amazing.

So today, rather than taking my older S400 to the Botanical Gardens, I took my formerly waterlogged G9 and took the snaps above. Can you say lucky? I have the distinct impression that if I was to repeat the accident and my twisted recovery method multiple times, more often than not I'd end up with an unusable camera...

I've still got to give some thought on the trade offs of contacting Canon to pay for full refurbishing versus continuing to use as-is and eventually move it into a back up camera role for more at risk activities (like bicycle mounted time lapse videos). One of the wild cards is not knowing what was in the water and what that might do over time... Thankfully this was not a DSLR, in which case I'd have been simultaneously contacting the manufacturer and my bank.

I've heard other people say this many times, but I obviously wasn't practicing it -- "when around water, camera around neck or firmly around wrist". Lesson learned.

Sorry for the long story, but I thought I would suck up my pride and share my story. Had I known I was going to blog about this I would have taken some pictures that would have been truely disturbing, from a camera owner's point of view.

Oh, did I say those were butterflies above? Those are hummingbirds... (smile)

[2009 new to me #1, successfully dried out a water submerged camera; #2 visited the Butterfly Magic exhibition at TBG.]

First First First Night Celebration

I went down to Tucson's first, First Night celebration New Year's Eve. At 5 pm things were just warming up at the La Placita Village Courtyard above, one of five downtown venues providing family-friendly and alcohol-free entertainment while counting down to the new year. I really enjoyed listening to a number of different groups -- my favorite was a Latin fusion dance band named La Mezcla playing a lot of lively music to a full house in the Leo Rich Theatre (CD / audio sample here, check out "Heart Full of Salsa") . They are from Bisbee, AZ and I'll certainly keep my eyes open for when I might hear them in concert again.

The organizers did a great job for Tucson's first First Night. I hope to see this grow and continue as a new annual community event.

Well, that wraps up 2008 and here comes 2009 full steam. I'm going to continue the informal "new to me" pursuit in 2009 as a way to keep my eyes open to new opportunities, things to try, and forks in the road.

Thanks to everyone who has followed my blog over the past year -- I appreciate your support!

Wishing you all a safe, healthy, and happy new year!

Getting a head in this world

I have today off work, so what better to do than stand outside in the rain watching the move of the Tiki head from the old Magic Carpet miniature golf collection of custom concrete creatures. The Tiki head was fortunate to find a new home down on 4th ave. It is large, concrete with an internal staircase to the top, and never really meant to be moved, so they had to do a lot of work to weld a support frame of steel beams around it in order to move it.

Here sits the head, already removed from its shoulders. They have added huge steel girders behind and under it, and welded smaller beams together to form a support that can be lifted and reclined. The bull is confused.

more welding to do minutes before loading on the transport

One crane lifted the head and moved it over the trailer. The second crane was then attached to the bottom of the support frame to pull the bottom up and recline the head, facing skyward, and then lower it onto the trailer.

Its always interesting to watch crane operators -- very impressive how accurate and well orchestrated this crew was, this is a custom move and yet you would never know that they hadn't moved hundreds of these heads before. Impressive.

Changing times, memories...

Its sad to see friends move away that you have been around for years.

What's next?

Never seen the sky from this angle before..

Leaving home to see new places and people

This is a video showing the first crane lift to get the head positioned over the trailer.

Kudos to the steel workers, crane operators, police escorts, businesses and everyone involved in saving this piece of Tucson history, well done! I'll try to get a picture of it in its new home when I get a chance.

[Links: ok, I know some of you are getting all the snow you ever wanted and then some... But only our mountains around Tucson have snow, so some of us still appreciate snow pictures (smile). Lynette has posted some great snow pictures from Portland, OR and Kim has posted some great snow pictures from Ohio/Michigan.]

losing our head on the eastside...

Back in April I posted some pictures of the defunct Magic Carpet Golf sculptures taken during a fundraiser to try to find new homes for some of the unique pieces. I noticed today that they are preparing to move the very large Tiki Head by building a steel frame around it. Last I heard the head was headed down to 4th avenue somewhere... Nice to see it being saved instead of 'dozed.

Winterhaven House Lights

Here are more pictures I snapped while wandering around Winterhaven Sunday night.

My pictures don't do this house justice -- it was decorated like a big aquarium, very 3D.

Blue plastic over the front of the house, hanging fish around the yard

Santa can't ask for better directions to a chimney

very peaceful

The cast of Family Guy, including "Evil Monkey" in the window

Simple and very nice, I really liked it.

You have no idea how much pressure Santa is under these days...

This dog really decorates his doghouse for the holidays!

A real, full size house, gingerly decorated

This house was decorated like a beach down in Mexico... Santa's dug himself into the sand and is relaxing; the other side of the yard had a very large blue tarp on the ground with fans blowing it so it rippled like water.

I had to try the "artsy" purposeful blurring of Christmas lights shot.

playing with fire

Snowmen roasting marshmallows. Very clever.

I took a lot of pictures of house lights in Winterhaven tonight and will be posting them between now and Christmas. Winterhaven is a Tucson neighborhood with a long standing tradition of decorating houses for the holidays. Its a very popular area to walk through, or take a ride on a horse drawn wagon.