The second wave of beautiful plumeria flowers continue to open. This is the latest of about a dozen new ones enjoying the Southern California mid October warm spell.
Catalina Channel – 180° View
After a horrible three weeks on Wall Street and another demoralizing day today (especially for conservatives), I’m going to just say woooo saaaaah and divert my creativity to these nerdy panoramas. In the top image, on October 11th, I stood at Del Cerro Park near the top of San Pedro Hill on the Palos Verdes Peninsula and snapped eight separate images in sequence from left to right. I used the Canon Zoom Browser Photo Stitch utility to assemble this 180 degree view of the Catalina Channel on a nice clear day.
The second image is an experiment – The normal mode for panoramas is to center the horizon vertically in the image and pan the camera. I wanted to get a panorama of the coastline from Del Cerro and to get the foreground to blend into the picture as well. I am pretty pleased with the results I got. I took the series by trying to keep the horizon ‘horizontal’ in the viewfinder. I took six such images going from left to right. I had to post-process the pictures using a parallel scan setting on the stitch tool to get this ‘fish-eye’ sort of panoramic rendering. Both the foreground and the distance are rendered in perspective – just the effect I wanted to get.
Click on either of these images to view them in the image viewer.
Crashing Waves in Avalon
This was such an unusual happening, the local Fox remote Catalina camera got these shots of heavy surf in the normally pond-like Avalon Harbor. I took these shots of the TV yesterday morning as the waves were happening. None of the usual open air putt putt cars seemed to be going up and down Crescent and Via Casino as normally is the case.
A Look Back to Catalina
Damsel took a lot of photos last Saturday when the air was exceptionally clear here in Southern California. We spent quite a lot of time shooting photos along the coastline, but when it came time to climb back over the hill to our side, we stopped at a scenic overlook and took this panoramic look back towards the coastline and Catalina Island in the distance. Click for the full-size panoramic image in the viewer.
Range Report for 10/12/2008
Our trip to the range today was a lot of fun. When we got there, the place started getting really busy. We were glad to see the activity pick up after the usual summertime slowdown. We saw families shooting together, but not as many kids as we have seen in the past.
Firearms Inventory
- Glock 30 .45ACP
- Para Warthog .45ACP
- Glock 26 9x19mm
- Smith & Wesson 908 9x19mm
- Smith & Wesson 686 .357 magnum
- Remington 870 20 gauge
- Remington 870 12 gauge
We generally start out with the handguns and finish with the shotguns. Today, we just mixed it up with the handguns and switched off between the 12 and 20 gauge. I didn’t count the number of rounds we shot, but it was on a par with our usual, I’m sure. For sure there were 100 rounds of .45 ACP through each of the Para Warthog and the Glock 30. We finished with 25 rounds through each of the shotguns.
As an aside, when I dismantled the 20 gauge shotgun for cleaning, I really hacked myself up getting it back together. Damsel did 4 band-aids of first aid on my fingers and hands. My fingers are just a little big for the 20 gauge – I have no problem with the 12 gauge even though the edges on the receiver are just as sharp.
California Brown Pelicans Soar over the Cliffs
On a clear, beautiful day on the Southern California Coastline near Point Vicente, I took over two hundred fifty photos. This is one of several that stood out as exceptional. These are California Brown Pelicans soaring in the updrafts over the cliffs on the south side of the Palos Verdes Peninsula. Santa Catalina Island can be seen across the channel in the background.
Click on this image for the large size.
The Brown Pelican (Pelecanus occidentalis californicus) is the smallest of the eight species of pelican, although it is a large bird in nearly every other regard. It is 42-54 in (106-137 cm) in length, weighs from 6-12 lbs (2.75 to 5.5 kg) and has a wingspan from 6 to 8.2 ft. (1.83 to 2.5 m).
House Democrats Push Climate Tax
While the financial fires are distracting everyone from ‘business as usual’ in Washington, House Democrats Push Climate Tax While Negotiating Fiscal Bailout. Never mind the man behind the curtain, Dorothy . . .
From Senator Jim Inhofe’s EPS blog:
During a week where Americans were focused on perhaps the greatest economic challenges this country has faced in over a generation, House Democrats released a set of principles on October 2nd that outline an aggressive plan to cap greenhouse gas emissions. The plan could be even more economically restrictive than the failed Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act, which would have cost $6.7 trillion dollars, according to the bill’s own sponsors. That $6.7 trillion cost would have been passed on to families and workers across the country in the form of higher gas prices, higher electricity and heating/cooling bills, more expensive consumer goods, and higher workplace costs.
As we learned during this past summer’s debate on the failed Lieberman-Warner global warming cap-and-trade bill and with the recent victory on offshore drilling, the appetite of the American people to unlock America’s affordable energy resources is very strong. When it comes to being in touch with Americans, the House Democrats need a reality check. The current financial crisis only reinforces the public’s wariness about any climate bill that attempts to increase the costs of energy and jeopardizes jobs.
There is much more, including links to some very interesting information at the EPS Blog.