Scattered Thoughts . . .

A s I wrote yesterday, I had done a relatively small roof repair on our neighbor's roof yesterday to repair damage done by part of our spruce tree falling on it.  I do some light physical therapy everyday for my spinal injuries but this was the first time in months that I did anything physically strenuous.   Just finding the strength to get up and down the ladder was grueling by the time I did it about a half a dozen times.  Doing anything on a roof does no good to anyone's knees and ankles and I already have significant problems with my knees (always have) and working on the roof did not help at all.   I just remembered something else...  I had roof cement all over my hands and needed to use paint thinner to remove most of it.  Using any solvents on my hands always results in my health crashing.  I don't know if it is due to what is absorbed into my tissue or if it is the fumes but I know that my health crashes after cleaning up my hands wit...

I had previously written that the top section of one of our trees (a tall spruce tree) broke off during a little bit of wind we had a few nights ago.  The section of tree that fell on our neighbor's roof had rolled right off the roof.  All that was remaining on the roof was some boughs that were about the size needed for making wreaths so I though the roof was fine.   I should also mention that our neighbor's house is unoccupied at the moment.   The other day, the temperatures were up around 60 degrees so I went outside to pull those boughs off our neighbor's roof.  I grabbed the roof rake for pulling snow off the roof and attempted to pull down those boughs...  they weren't moving and the roof rake was getting caught up on something.  I immediately knew what the roof rake was hanging up on...  some of the branches on this section of tree must have punctured the roof.  Now I wasn't too happy and I knew I had some work to do ahead o...

T here is a way to sort of simulate shooting in medium format or even large format (those old large wooden cameras with a bellows on a big, heavy tripod with a cloth draped over the photographer's head) by shooting many images (side by side, high to low) with a wide aperture and then stitching the images together.  This provides a wide view compared to just a single image using the same lens but also will provide a very shallow depth of field.  I've never tried this before but the idea of this technique always intrigued me so I tried it this afternoon in our living room. A shallow depth of field simply means that what is in focus in the photo is just a small slice of the whole scene...  what is in front of the slice of focus is blurry and what is behind the slice of focus is blurry...  the only thing in focus (hopefully) is the subject.  This type of shooting is most prevalent in portraiture or still life photography to eliminate distracting backgrounds and/or e...

W e have a tall spruce tree in our yard that hasn't been doing too well in recent years.  It was a beautiful tree up until about ten years ago when it developed some sort of disease.  Now, every time we have a bit of wind, branches fall off this tree.  Yesterday, I watched the top section of this tree break off in the wind and crash down with a big thud on our next door neighbor's roof! Most of the time, the falling branches have been no problem since we can always use firewood.  Plus, the boughs can be used for making wreaths for Christmas.  Yesterday, however, the top 12 feet of this tall spruce was blown off and it fell directly on our next door neighbor's roof! As you can see in this first photo, below, the top section of the tree is now missing.  Also worth noting is how much the tree has thinned in recent years.  There aren't many branches left on this tree! The top 12 feet of the tree fell right on our neighbor's house and then rolled off the ro...

I dream just about every time I fall asleep.  That isn't so unusual though because I think everyone probably dreams every night.  What is unusual is I almost always remember these dreams as though they happened in real life whereas most people don't even remember dreaming at all.  My dreams are often vivid with sounds, sights, colors, touch, smells and real life references.  This is great, for the most part, but I do have to say that the overwhelming realism in these dreams often leaves me feeling completely exhausted when I awaken in the morning.   As most readers should know by now, I am disabled and have been for the past 27 years.  As such and as one would expect, I can't do most of the things I did when I was younger and healthy.  On the positive side, this sudden disability was fairly easy to accept (after some grueling and painful therapy to walk and learn to live my daily life again) because I always had this nagging voice in my head tell...

A fter our experiences with this new Whirlpool refrigerator, I am left feeling that these refrigerators are typical US-made garbage and not a day goes by that I don't swear at this piece of junk appliance. Two years ago, we needed a new refrigerator as soon as possible since our previous refrigerator suddenly bit the dust and was unrepairable.  Unfortunately, finding anything during the pandemic that requires circuit boards for manufacture was exceptionally difficult.  Our best option at the time  (pretty much our  only  option)  was to purchase a Whirlpool side-by-side refrigerator and I have regretted this purchase every single day since it arrived in our kitchen. We didn't want a Whirlpool refrigerator.  In fact, we didn't even care for this Whirlpool refrigerator nor was there a single feature that attracted us to this cheap product (cheap refers to quality, never is it an adjective for price) .  It is a rather generic refrigerator but at...

W e have a total lunar eclipse occurring in our area next week so I've been preparing for it.   I decided it would be best to shoot photos of this eclipse through my Explore Scientific APO 102mm refractor telescope.  I'll mount this telescope on my good tracking mount so the telescope will track the moon through the night.  I also decided to use my best camera...  my Sony a7RIIIa. I set up this combination of equipment in the living room this morning so I could test everything.  I set this up early because I wanted to know if I need any extension tubes to get the camera to focus.  It turns out that I actually needed to remove an extension tube.  It is more convenient to get all of this out of the way before I'm outside in the dark and cold.   Below is a photo showing the view through this telescope using this camera.  This is the ridge of a mountaintop quite a distance away (2-3 miles away?)... Unfortunately, all of this is likely ...

L ate at night over the past month or two, on those nights when I've felt up for it, I've been working on a painting of Cincinnati.   We're booked for a trip to Cincinnati and Dayton, via Manhattan and Washington DC, in June with Lukey and Kenzie in tow.  In preparation of this trip, I've pulled out some of my photos from past visits so I can show the kids.   We're all pretty excited about this trip but, considering what is happening with the Federal government now, I'm not too sure we'll be able to go on this trip.   So much is being carelessly cut that I worry about funding being cut to Amtrak.  I'm worried about Amtrak long distance routes being eliminated (as has been threatened).  I'm very concerned that my disability pay will be cut, interrupted or completely taken away.  I'm worried that my retirement pay will be eliminated, temporarily or even permanently.  And, of course, if there is a significant uptick in civil unrest in...

M y goal for yesterday was to get the cockpit seat for the new biplane built, painted and installed.   As I mentioned in a previous blog entry, this biplane is for our garden railroad.  This plane is approximately 1:24 scale which is slightly smaller than the 1:20.3 scale of the trains.  Since this biplane will be positioned over tall plants a few feet over the garden railroad I figured being slightly smaller in scale was a good idea for getting just a little bit of forced perspective.   I needed to make a seat for the cockpit mostly so the pilot could be positioned correctly and not fall into the fuselage of the plane.  This wasn't about modeling an accurate seat but more about a sturdy place for the pilot to be mounted in the cockpit since the seat is not visible with the pilot in place.  If the seat was visible, then I would have spent more time making it look like it belonged in the open cockpit of an old biplane. I had already made one seat f...

A fter our recent visit to the annual train show in Springfield, I thought it would be a cool idea to add an airplane to our backyard garden railroad.  I figured it would look good swooping down right over the tallest of plants.   I haven't fully worked out how I'm going to do this but my first thought was to have a long, tall wood stake hidden in the plants.  I'm thinking that the top 12 inches or so could be clear acrylic.  Then the acrylic could be somehow inserted into the bottom of the plane.  I know I'll come up with some way to mount this plane over the plants but, at the moment, I'm not completely certain.  My timeframe for this railroad is the early 20th century so I decided that a biplane would be ideal.  Finding a biplane in the right scale turned out to be fairly easy (I found one at Wayfair).  Once I had the biplane, I realized that, since it has an open cockpit, I should also find a pilot to purchase. I found a pilot figure on e...