Cap'n Bob & the Damsel

Technobabble

R10 Panoramic Mode

Panoramic images have always been an interest of mine. Early on, I used to take a series of adjacent , overlapping images and would “stitch” them together using an old application that did the job. Now, the function has been integrated right into some cameras.

My Kodak PixPro FZ152 has a panoramic function, but it can be kind of picky in the stitching process, and frequently will overlap in the wrong places. Maybe that is due to the way I used it, but regardless, it seemed clumsy to me.

I took the panorama above with my Canon EOS R10 in its panoramic mode. It works much better; all I have to do is press the shutter button and hold while I smoothly pan from left to right (optionally the other way too) to get what my eye perceives as a smooth and seamless image. Click on the image and pan using the image viewer scroll bar at the bottom.

I took the image from our courtyard looking west; the image spans the west leg of the RV drive sweeping from the road across the west cactus and rock garden, mesquite and paloverde trees, the lemon tree to the back gate of the courtyard.

I will try and get some more interesting panoramas as the opportunities arise.

22 Jun 2026 by Arizona Home & Garden Notions Panorama Photography Technobabble 0

Father’s Day and Summer Solstice

Wishing a happy Father’s Day to all the Dads out there. A special wish for our Dads who have passed into heaven.

Also, June 21, 2026 is the first day of summer in the northern hemisphere, so Happy Summer (or below the equator – Happy Winter)! The length of our daylight today (sunup to sundown) is 14hrs 27mins.

Clickable image enhanced by GROK AI.

21 Jun 2026 by Ancestors Environment Family Technobabble 0

Garage Door Opener Repair

After fifteen or sixteen years or so since we built the house, the original garage door opener (pictured, clickable) developed a quirk such that if the sun was shining in the door, the obstruction detector would “think” that there was an object blocking the door and would refuse to close the door. This condition progressively got worse and eventually wouldn’t close regardless of the amount of sunlight. We had to press and hold the indoor control to get the door to close. This was very inconvenient, especially if we were departing, since one of us would have to close the door manually and come out the side door to get into the truck.

Yesterday, enough being enough, I called a repair facility to come out and fix the problem. The technician offered to clean and align the sensors, or to replace them both at our option. We opted for the latter, assuming that zero-time sensors would last longer.

To make a long story short, the tech replaced the sensors in ten minutes or less, and the door worked fine. Same-day service call, reasonable rates and problem solved.

Click on the links below to see the new sensors:

Sensor Transmitter Unit

Sensor Receiver Unit

Bottom line (literally) — stuff is going to wear out in the desert. We already need new exterior paint after only nine years or so. More on that later.

09 Jun 2026 by Arizona Home & Garden Notions Technobabble 0

Potpourri Post

Last week I posted about a cactus flower and this week (am I doing weekly posts now?) I am going to ramble on about a few things going on. First of all, There is plenty going on in our lives these days, some quite boring things and some a little more attention getting. Let me elaborate a bit:

  • We continue to live in a peaceful, tranquil place which does little to generate exciting headlines.
  • There are some background issues (mainly healthwise) that take up a little bit of time to accommodate what with professional visits and other things to do with growing older.
  • Life goes on with the usual business of running a household (max kudos to Damsel) with our flock of dependents (2 dogs and numerous cottontails, squirrels, birds, etc.)
  • The yard and garden are looking good this spring, but there is always some little chore that pops up. If it’s a big chore, we have our Landscape crew deal with it.
  • There are the hobbies and other time-consuming activities to relieve some of the boredom and/or excitement that comes along.
  • Food and Dining are a major item in our lives; we’re both on special needs diets and almost exclusively prepare all of our meals at home.

First, here is a photo I took this morning of a squirrel and a peanut. Note that the animals we consider as “dependent” don’t really depend as it were; we just like to treat them now and then.

I used the Canon SL3 camera for the above photo. Part of the hobby thing mentioned above. Our main cameras (my 2 and Damsel’s Canon T6i) continue to provide us with entertainment and some good photos now and then. Click on the image to enlarge.

I recently upgraded my everyday carry from the one I have carried for years to a new, easier to rack semi-auto S&W M&P Shield 9mm EZ. The old muscles and ability to operate the old Glock were getting to be incompatible.

Tomorrow, we will be taking the dogs for their annual exams and immunization updates. We will renew the County licenses afterwards.

This week, I need to make time to get a haircut. Due to other commitments, I have fallen out of sync with my regular trim schedule.

On Tuesday, I have consecutive visits with the General Practitioner Doctor and the Ophthalmologist, neither of which is other than a regular visit for checkup. I also need to reschedule a checkup with the Nephrologist which I had to cancel due to a conflict.

So, we’re still here doing things that you might expect for “generians” (septi- and octo-) to encounter in our lives. We will continue in this regard as long as it takes.

12 Apr 2026 by Comrades in Arms Critters Entertainment Firearms Food & Dining Home & Garden Notions Photography Retirement Second Amendment Technobabble

Happy Friday the 13th

Hope everyone is having a safe and lucky Friday the 13th. We’re enjoying it and preparing for Valentine’s Day tomorrow.

I looked up Friday the 13th on Grokipedia and found this near the bottom of the article. It is a very nerdy description of how to calculate the date without looking at a calendar. Enjoy, if you’re a nerd like me.

Yearly Variations in Occurrence

In the Gregorian calendar, the number of Friday the 13ths occurring in a single year varies between one and three, with no year featuring zero or four such dates. This limitation arises from the calendar’s structure, which consists of 365 or 366 days distributed across 12 months, resulting in exactly 13 occurrences of the 13th across all months but constrained by the seven-day week cycle to produce at most three Fridays among them.[83]
Years with three Friday the 13ths typically follow specific patterns based on the starting day of the year and whether it is a common or leap year. In common years beginning on a Thursday, the dates fall in February, March, and November, as seen in 2015. Similarly, 2026, a common year starting on a Thursday, will have Friday the 13ths in February, March, and November. These configurations highlight how the alignment of the year’s first day influences the distribution, with February, March, and November forming a common triplet due to the cumulative day offsets in non-leap years.[83]
To predict the exact day of the week for any 13th, including Fridays, Zeller’s congruence provides an algorithmic method tailored to the Gregorian calendar. Devised by Christian Zeller in the 19th century, the formula calculates the weekday as follows:

Where,

  • h represents the day of the week (0 for Saturday, 1 for Sunday, …, 6 for Friday);
  • q is the day of the month (13);
  • m is the month (March = 3, April = 4, …, December = 12, with January and February treated as months 13 and 14 of the preceding year);
  • K is the year of the century (year mod 100)
  • and J is the century (|year/100|)
  • A result of h=6 (mod 7) confirms a Friday.

This congruence enables precise determination of Friday the 13ths for any year by applying it to each month’s 13th, revealing the yearly variations without manual calendar inspection.

Since we’re probably not going to post a blog tomorrow, please enjoy Valentine’s Day with your special ones.

Saturday, 02/14/26 VALENTINE’S DAY: I took this photo of a heart-shaped tree mobile this morning . . .

13 Feb 2026 by Culture Holidays Notions Technobabble

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

I’ve been fooling around with some AI lately and I understand that some users have been using AI to write code. So, I tried my hand at asking it to write a script for a countdown to the new year. I asked for JavaScript to be embedded in HTML and it produced the result seen below. The AI (Google Gemini) produced JavaScript, HTML and the Style Script (CSS). All I had to do was provide the HTML Header and Body and, voila, the counter worked right off the bat. Link to Gemini code.

If you see “Happy New Year” instead of the counter, then It is already (MST) 2026.

I’m posting this some 32 hours or so before the new year so visitors to the site can see the counter. I may (just for grins) change the code to countdown to 2027 after the new year.

So, from both The Damsel and I, we wish you all a happy and prosperous New Year in 2026!

UPDATE: I changed the target to St. Valentine’s Day 2026!

30 Dec 2025 by Cyberspace Entertainment Holidays Technobabble

122nd Anniversary of Powered Flight

Just a quick one here to acknowledge one of the most iconic technological feats in history that occurred in the early 20th century; to wit: the Wright Brothers first flights. I did a detailed post on this topic in December of 2022. In that post, I referenced an old photo, a display replica of the flyer and occupant. I asked the GEMINI AI to colorize and noise enhance it and the (clickable) image above is the result.

17 Dec 2025 by Aviation Classics Technobabble

Categories

Archives