A Runaway Train of Thought

Random Pictures of the Inside of Flowers and Other Small Things

dbnunley@gmail.com (Donnie) — Mon, 31 May 2010 13:56:00 +0000

Some shots of flowers and new growth on a pine tree. The shot above is of the center of a rose blossom.

This is a dianthus blossom after a rain.

Got a bonus on this one - there's a bug on one of the pistils in the lower right of this rose center.

I don't know what kind of wildflower this is. It will have white petals with a yellow center. The flower itself is only about a quarter inch from end to end.

Bugs!

dbnunley@gmail.com (Donnie) — Mon, 31 May 2010 13:42:00 +0000

I've been learning how to take pictures of very small things like bugs and the insides of flowers. Most of these guys were a half inch or smaller. I got many of them in the Bottom Creek Gorge Natural Preserve in Bent Mountain, Virginia . Others are from my own yard. The spider above was on my back porch with a web between the porch rail and a bush.

The guy above was on the leaf of a day lily beside my front porch.

Another little guy on a day lily after a rain. He was in the sun drying off.

I almost missed this little stink bug because he blended in so well.

I took several pictures of these busy ants going in and out of the ground.

This is a Green Lacewing . I like his copper eyes.

One more spider - a daddy long legs who was watching me as hard as I was watching him.

More Spring Pictures

dbnunley@gmail.com (Donnie) — Sat, 15 May 2010 12:15:00 +0000

Bugs

dbnunley@gmail.com (Donnie) — Sat, 15 May 2010 12:03:00 +0000

I was looking at these tiny star blossoms, no more than a couple of centimeters wide, and noticed the red mites harvesting from them.

The Blue Ridge Parkway

dbnunley@gmail.com (Donnie) — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 01:03:00 +0000

This week I spent a few early mornings on the Blue Ridge Parkway and caught some great sunrises and mood shots. Eileen went with me one morning and was very helpful in getting some nice pictures. It was a beautiful Spring week - I saw raccoon, deer and turkeys and didn't get a shot of any of them.

More Spring Flowers

dbnunley@gmail.com (Donnie) — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 12:45:00 +0000

Spring has Finally Arrived... Not a Moment Too Soon!

dbnunley@gmail.com (Donnie) — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 00:21:00 +0000

I went to Atlanta last Monday morning and it was cold. There were no leaf buds on trees and there were no blossoms. I got back on Friday and Spring had made its way to my house while I was gone. I had to work much of the weekend, so I didn't have a lot of opportunity to enjoy it, but late on Saturday and on Sunday afternoon I got some pictures of some of the good stuff!

I'm looking forward to the end of the work day on Monday. My new Fujifilm HS-10 should have arrived by then!

Sunset Drive on Five Mile Mountain Road

dbnunley@gmail.com (Donnie) — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 23:09:00 +0000

Last Saturday afternoon late in the day I took a drive down Five Mile Mountain Road from Callaway to Floyd County and then came back home down the parkway. It was a beautiful warm day - the second weekend that we'd had temperatures in the sixties. A couple of weekends before this, I had gone up to the parkway and gotten stuck in snow. I didn't expect to see any up there on Saturday. But there was!

There was a lot to see on this road. It starts on Ferrum Mountain road and winds its way up into and around the mountain tops from there almost to Floyd. I got some good pictures and missed some too. It was the right time of day to go because the sun was low in the sky, the light was pretty and the shadows were long. There were a lot of old mountain homes along the road - some lived in and some were not. One old house had a dormer window in the roof with what looked like rotted curtains. When I processed the pictures later I realized that clothes were hanging from a rack in the dormer. For some reason it was kind of a creepy image.

I drove around one steep curve and there on the side of the hill was a 1960 Studebaker Lark. It was dull and rusted but the tires hadn't deflated. I got a lot of good shots on this trip but missed a lot too. It is a trip that I'll make again.

Deer Day in Franklin County

dbnunley@gmail.com (Donnie) — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 22:15:00 +0000

On Thursday there were a set of 4 deer that hung around the house all day. I took pictures of them through the windows all day when I stepped away from my work.

Towards the end of the day, I stepped into the garage and noticed that two of them were standing and munching clover just outside in the front yard. I grabbed my camera and started taking pictures through the window again. The deer could plainly see me moving shades back and they weren't too bothered. So I decided to step out the side door of the garage and see if I could get some shots without any glass between us.

I kept an eye on them through a window as I opened the door. They alerted and looked toward the corner where the door is but, in a moment, went back to eating. I stepped out the door and around the corner of the garage. They were 3 yards or so from me... They saw me and watched me for about 30 seconds as I snapped several shots. I stood completely still and held the camera in front of my face. They finally decided that I was too close to them and they moved about 15 yards away, further into the yard.

I got about 300 shots of deer. I was lucky enough to get a couple off brackets that were good enough to use for HDR processing. The next time I may try to get them to run for some action shots!

Big Sky

dbnunley@gmail.com (Donnie) — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 23:52:00 +0000

Blue Ridge Skyline, originally uploaded by dbnunley.

The past few weekends have had great weather and great opportunity for images with lots of sky.

Saturday was Picture Day

dbnunley@gmail.com (Donnie) — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 00:09:00 +0000

We went to Rocky Mount on Saturday to complete a transaction for baby clothes that we started via Craig's List . Who knew that there was a Craig's List for Roanoke? Anyway while we were waiting in the parking lot of the DMV for the seller, I took some shots of the Armory across the street. Once we had made the exchange, we took the long way home and got some nice shots on the way.

Stuck on the Parkway

dbnunley@gmail.com (Donnie) — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 01:49:00 +0000

Today was the nicest day we've had outside in I don't know how many weeks, so after lunch I grabbed the camera and went up to the parkway. It was about 55 degrees outside the house when I left. It was the second consecutive day that the temps had been that high. All but the most stubborn snow had melted from my yard and I figured that the same was happening on the parkway.

Once I arrived at the entrance from Virginia 221 on Bent Mountain, I headed south. The north direction of the road was closed. The parkway had been plowed and was clear and dry, a big change from the last time I was on it a few weeks ago. I was going to drive down to the next exit, scouting good places for pictures and turn around and make stops on the way back to take pictures.
Well after about 5 or 6 miles, the road went from clear to one lane plowed with snowy spots. Then it went to no lane plowed with snowy spots. Then the paved spots disappeared... I think I got about 10 miles or so before the snow got up to the front bumper on the Explorer and I couldn't go any further. I was amazed that there was still that much snow up there.

So I turned around and headed back, making a couple of stops on the way. At the first there was a big snowy field and a pond that still had some ice on it. On the other side of the field there was a beautiful church - it has a bell tower that looks like a turret. It made a beautiful set of pictures.

Tonight as I've been writing this, Helen has been researching the building. It turns out that it is a monastery, Syon Abbey. The community was canonically established in 1962 and the monastery was built in 2004 and 2005. Helen is so good at this stuff. She found the info from my picture and from my guess at where I took it on the parkway.

Anyway after I finished there, I drove down to an overlook I had noted earlier. None of the overlooks had been plowed but this one had the least amount of snow of those I'd seen. It certainly had less snow than I had just been in further up the parkway. There were tracks through the snow to the overlook parking area where it was clear. I turned right into the snowy drive and went about 8 feet.

I got stuck. The car stopped. The wheels spun. I got out and walked around the car, disgusted that it would be stuck in 6 inches of icy snow. I got back into the car and started to rock it, putting it into reverse and then forward several times. I moved sideways but not forward or backward. I got out again and looked around my wheels. The snow was about to the undercarriage of the car but that wasn't impeding it. I checked my cell phone for signal - 4 bars.

I thought about calling Helen to bring me some sand but I really didn't want to do that. I would have had to live with that for about 10 weeks before it was forgotten... So I took my windshield scraper and started digging out around the tires. I dug a little trench in front of and behind each tire. After about a half hour I had a nice track dug and I got back into the car to try my luck. It moved back just a little. I stopped, put it in drive and jammed the gas pedal and I went forward a little further than I went back. After a few iterations of that routine, I was out of the snow and back on dry land. And I was relieved. I took my pictures and left via the other entrance.

Abraham Lincoln: Destroyer of Vampires

dbnunley@gmail.com (Donnie) — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 02:47:00 +0000

I had no idea that this book was being published until I read about it on io9. I'm going to read it purely on the basis of the trailer they made for it. Who knew Abe Lincoln was so athletic?

Awesome.

Old Farm House

dbnunley@gmail.com (Donnie) — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 00:29:00 +0000

Helen and I were running around on Saturday and on the way back from Rocky Mount, after lunch, we took a turn down Antioch Road. It is a very rural road that looked like it headed right up the side of a mountain. We went several miles and passed by this place after a glance. I think there was one other car on the road while we drove the length of it.

When we decided that we weren't getting any closer to home, we turned around and kept an eye out for this old farmhouse on the way back. Once we got there, I parked the car on the side of the road and pulled out the tripod. I set up bracketed exposures and took these. I processed them through Photomatix software after I got home and this is my favorite of what I got. The second and third got some processing in Elements after Photomatix.

My camera only does AEB shots with 3 shots at +/- 1 EV. Today I figured out I could manually move the EV to -2, take the bracketed shots, then manually move it up to 0, take shots and then up to -2 EV. It takes the range of exposure (I think) from -3 to +3 in 7 shots. I tried some indoor pictures - they turned out much better than the -1/0/+1 brackets I've been getting.

Deer in a Snowy Field

dbnunley@gmail.com (Donnie) — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 01:01:00 +0000

Driving home last weekend, we took the long way and drove past this field full of traveling deer. I stopped the car and rolled down the window to take pictures. The deer noticed and stared at us for a moment then went on their way.

Brrrr Bath

dbnunley@gmail.com (Donnie) — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 00:42:00 +0000

Helen and I were out and about last weekend and spotted these guys taking advantage of the melting snow to bathe and gossip.

Geese in a Field

dbnunley@gmail.com (Donnie) — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 00:22:00 +0000

Helen and I went for a drive today and passed a cornfield full of geese, ducks and crows. When I got out of the car to snap some pictures, the crow and ducks flew but the geese just ambled away.

Hiding Behind My Telephone

dbnunley@gmail.com (Donnie) — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 23:33:00 +0000

Image via Wikipedia

I was in Atlanta last Thursday, at the airport because it was getting ready to snow at home and I was trying to get back before the airport shut down. I was seated next to a young lady at the gate. She was in her middle thirties and looked a little unkempt, kind of tired. She was on the phone during a large part of the time we were at the gate and I couldn't help but overhear her talking to a relative about the recent death of her grandmother in Charlottesville. She was going home for the funeral. We spoke a few words sitting at the gate but nothing of any substance.

By coincidence, after we boarded the plane we were seated together. We had a conversation that lasted for most of the hour and a half trip. She told me a little about her grandmother. She was an energetic woman who was independent until shortly before she died at the age of 90.

At one point, she said to me, "I'm glad you're not a telephone person."

"What do you mean - telephone person?" I asked.

"You know," she said, miming the act of checking mail on a cell phone. "People have lost 'the moment'... in a situation like you and I are, too many people pull out their phones instead of smile and say hello."

"Yah, I know what you mean," I replied. I launched into analytical mode, a fault of mine. "I think part of why people do that is that its an easier way to be shy. A phone gives a person an excuse to pay no attention to other people around them." Thinking aloud now, I said "Its ok to ignore another person if your concentration is on some other business you may have." This time I was miming the phone.

"I think its like an addiction," she responded. "I think there is something compulsive about it. That's why they call them 'Crackberries'." She was smiling.

That got me to thinking. "There may be something to that. What you're getting from a phone is an information feed. The brain is an information processor - that's what it exists for. If you can get an information feed from your phone, particularly if it is information that is relevant to you... well, its easier to do that than it is to start a conversation with someone you've never met."

She nodded her head. We continued talking and our conversation went to different topics.

She was planning to be back in Roanoke on Sunday to fly back home on Sunday afternoon. I hope she didn't have any delays.

Icy Morning on the Parkway

dbnunley@gmail.com (Donnie) — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 22:02:00 +0000

Image by dbnunley via Flickr

On Saturday morning I was on my own and decided to take a drive to the Blue Ridge Parkway, a few miles from where I live, to see if I could get any good pictures in the morning sun.

The elevation of the parkway is (I'm guessing) 150 or 200 feet higher than where I live. We had freezing rain on Thursday night into Friday morning but it didn't amount to much ice. The temperature was into the mid 40s and any ice was gone by noon. I was surprised to see that as I arrived at the parkway, less than half a mile away, a glaze of ice began to grow from everything. The sun was just coming out from behind morning clouds and the world up there was absolutely beautiful. Ice tubes about a half inch wide had formed around the individual blades of grass in the fields. Trees all had a thick semi-transparent coating as well.

As I approached the entrance to the parkway, there were two men with a farm tractor, cutting trees that had broken in the ice. Both of them stopped what they were doing for a second and looked at me, probably wondering why I would be up there on a day like today. As I drove onto the parkway they went back to their work.

The road going north was gated and closed by the park service. I was surprised to see that the road to the south was not closed. I drove a few hundred yards and pulled over to take some pictures. I did this a couple of times before the road moved between two mountain ridges and into shadow. The road suddenly had ice. I turned the wheel and the car kept going straight. I slowed down and turned the wheel and then the car didn't want to stop turning... So I found a place to turn around and headed back out.

Build Your Own Phaser

dbnunley@gmail.com (Donnie) — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 02:44:00 +0000

This may be the best toy I've ever seen. Somebody with too much time on his hands has figured out how to put a working blue dental laser into the shell of a phaser. That's right, a PHASER - from STAR TREK! A freaking working phaser, straight off of the Starship Enterprise! Just unbelievably freaking awesome.

Here is the proof:

This is where you go to learn how to build it.

On Facebook

dbnunley@gmail.com (Donnie) — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 02:01:00 +0000

Image via Wikipedia

This is for anyone who hasn't ever used Facebook. If you've used FB you can keep reading but you already know what I'm going to say.

Back in my youth, well before the end of the twentieth century, I used to play on a Commodore 64 when I wasn't working. Home PCs were just coming out and becoming somewhat affordable and I had a C-64 with a cassette tape deck (later, I graduated to a cd deck) and a modem. This was before the internet was widely available or affordable and the available networks were run by people from their homes in the form of "bulletin boards". You could usually find a list of available public boards at the library or on other boards. These little networks were small messaging systems with subject specific forums for posting conversation, a lot like forums online today but with a strictly local audience. The big deal about them was that you could upload and download content, games and other programs in BASIC or Assembly Language. That was really the main reason that most people got on the boards - to get and trade software.

Then I found out about a new larger network that actually had chat rooms and online games - Quantum Link, the predecessor to AOL. I joined Q-Link and spent more time than I should have playing cards and chatting with complete strangers who also were excited enough about the technology to fork out the 10 bucks a month it cost to use the service. It was interesting to talk with people from around the country with some of the same interests as I had but I didn't really have any connection to them beyond the network.

I was thinking about that today because I've been enjoying Facebook for the last month or two. It is so easy now to connect or reconnect with someone online - someone who you know or have known in real life. Since I've started using FB, I've had contact with people I haven't seen or spoken to in years.

I've had contact with relatives that I hadn't seen or spoken with in ages. I get to have some contact with my nieces and nephews, seeing what they post about their lives. My cousin and I have been exchanging occasional messages. We haven't seen one another since we were 12. I really like the messaging component of FB. Its another version of email, I guess, without the spam.

Old high school friends have friended me (that's how you initiate contact on FB) and now I get some view of what they have going on in their lives. I found out that one old friend who I had lost track of just moved to Alaska. I'm looking forward to having lunch one day soon with another old friend I haven't seen since the early 80s.

I get a kick out of it when I open FB and see that I have a friend request. It almost always means that someone who I haven't had contact with for a while has stumbled into my profile and wanted to say hi. There have been a couple of times that people I didn't remember have sent me a friend request. Those are fun because then I get to spend the next couple of days trying to figure out who they are and how I know them.

The Brown Bear's Den

dbnunley@gmail.com (Donnie) — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 21:38:00 +0000

They will keep your books and help you prepare for the zombie apocalypse too.

Quique the Head

dbnunley@gmail.com (Donnie) — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 13:37:00 +0000

Start 2010 with a laugh:

via AdFreak.com

1983 - A Pretty Good Year

dbnunley@gmail.com (Donnie) — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 01:56:00 +0000

I guess the best place to start a tale is always at the beginning. There were a lot of things that had their beginnings in 1983 .

Microsoft Word was published for the first time in 1983.
Mobile Phones were first introduced to the public by the Motorola company.
Sally Ride became the first American woman in space as a mission specialist aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger. Later in the year, the first African-American astronaut, Guion S. Bluford, went to space in the Challenger.
The Space Shuttle Challenger had her maiden voyage.
The internet was born when the ARPANET changed over to the Internet Protocol.
The Swatch Watch came on the market.
Cabbage Patch Kids dolls and Wacky Wall Walkers went on sale for the first time.
Compact Discs are first released, beginning the downfall of the vinyl record album.
AOL was founded as Quantum Computer Services. They ran the first online chat rooms in the form of a service called Quantum Link. I went online for the first time on my Commodore 64 with Qlink in 1983.
Lotus 123, the successor to Visicalc and the precursor of Excel was published.
The Nintendo Entertainment System was launched in Japan.
The first consumer camcorders were produced by Sony in 1983. They were HUGE shoulder mounted monsters.

The Police, The Eurythmics, Men at Work, Toto and David Bowie were popular artists then. One of our favorite songs that year was "Come on Eileen" by Dexy's Midnight Runners. I forgot they were so funny looking.

The biggest and best event of the year happened in December - our first daughter, Eileen, was born in Richmond, Virginia. She decided to be born in the morning after her mother and I had both had a good night's sleep. We went to the hospital and she was born later that day. Helen and I were both 22, barely old enough to be called adult. It should have been scary but we were too excited and happy to be scared. New grandparents came the next day to visit her and her mother at the hospital and to take turns holding her. She got lots of pictures taken that day.

A lot of things have changed since then

The world population was 4.72 billion people. Today it is estimated at 6.80 billion people.
The average cost of a new home was $82,600. At the end of 2008 the same home would sell for $180,400.
The average income in the US was $21,070. The average income today is about $55,000.
Eileen is now 26 years old, married and living with her husband Andrew in Seattle, Washington - which is a doggone long way from Virginia.

Eileen's birthday is on December 17. It's been a joy to know her for 26 years - she's a smart sweet young lady who is not just our daughter but has become our good friend too. If you see her on Thursday, tell her Happy Birthday!

A Tired Couple of Travelers

dbnunley@gmail.com (Donnie) — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 01:05:00 +0000

Monday morning at about 5:00 AM, Helen dropped me at the airport. I walked into the terminal and got in the rather long line at the Delta counter . The line stretched across the walk aisle and I stepped to the back, leaving a short space for people walking through the terminal to get by.

Shortly after I entered the line, a tired unhappy looking couple walked up to the line and entered it in the aisle space between me and the guy in front. They turned and scowled at me and then said something to the man in front of them. I started to tell them that they were jumping the line but decided they were with the man in front.

In the 10 minutes we waited to get to the gate agents and terminals, I noticed some things about the couple. The man and woman were in their 50's in age. Neither smiled as we stood in the line, in fact they seemed to be in a foul mood. They had a lot of luggage. The lady was carrying a small dog, a Pomeranian I think, in a carrier. About halfway through our short wait I decided that they weren't with the guy in front of them after all. I was a little put off by their poor attitudes and rude actions.

We got to the front finally and I forgot about them when I began the process of checking my bags and going through security. I took notice of the couple again after they started loading the plane and I was seated. I was in row two and could hear the flight attendant greeting the other passengers as they boarded. The lady boarded without her husband and gave a big smile to the FA. She introduced herself to the FA and said that they hadn't given her husband a seat on the flight yet. She asked if he could be seated with her if he got on the flight and then she moved to her seat somewhere behind me.

A few minutes later, almost at the end of the boarding line, her husband came on board and sat down in row 1. He asked the FA if he could sit with his wife but apparently she couldn't make that happen. They spoke for a few minutes and I learned the rest of the couple's story. They had been trying to get out of Roanoke on US Airways to Charlotte on Sunday. Because of ice and then fog in Charlotte, their flights had been canceled. They had been at the airport all day Sunday hoping to get out and were only getting out Monday morning.

After hearing more of their story, I changed my mind about them. I might be grouchy, inattentive and rude too if I were stuck in the airport all day. In fact I sometimes get that way on the Fridays that I have to travel. Ask Helen, she'll tell you.