Trivia that matter
Spring is running about three weeks late this year. There still is not a lot of color at the botanical garden, but I found a bit more yesterday than on my previous visit, including the very first blossoms on the last remaining Japanese cherry tree.
If you’re heading to Japan in the near future, here’s the blossom forecast.
For a while yesterday it seemed that spring had finally arrived, with temperatures around 70°F. There even were thunderstorms in the later afternoon and evening, with hail. All that was missing was the tornado warning. It couldn’t last, of course. It’s back to winter this morning, with north winds and temperatures down in the lower 30°s.
While it was pleasant out yesterday, I made a trip to the botanical garden with my toy camera. Very little was in bloom, but I did find some color.
We got about four inches of snow last night. I snapped a few pictures at a nearby steel company this morning. It’s possible that some of it will still be on the ground Wednesday.
On the way to work this morning.
Thanks probably to the cool and wet summer, fall is unusually colorful this year.
Continue reading “This post is brought to you by the color red”
I recently bought a new little go-everywhere camera, a Nikon S3500. The specifications are a bit silly: how often does anyone need 20 megapixels? I took it to the botanical garden yesterday to give it a workout. The pictures are very good overall but not utterly fantastic. (If you want ultimate image quality, you need a DSLR (or better) with a large sensor. (Or better yet, a view camera.) That requires real money.) The camera doesn’t record purples and violets accurately (a problem with every digital camera I’ve ever used), a nuisance but not a deal-breaker for a cheap camera. The surprise is that the “macro” mode actually is useful. The image above is cropped but is otherwise unaltered, and was taken hand-held. Right-click to see it at full size. The flower is about an inch across.
I’ve posted the best of my Winfield pictures at my Flickr site. The photo above is of the old-time band that supplied music for Saturday evening’s contra dance. Roger, the fiddler on the left tapping his foot double-time, took home yet another violin in the old-time fiddle competition earlier that evening. ((You can listen to his performances here.)) Here’s the band late in the dance:
Here’s a panorama from early in the dance.
Update: Here’s a complete dance:
I finally got back to the botanical garden today for the first time since the rains began. I was disappointed to see that the yoshino cherry had been cut down; Botanica is down to one flowering cherry. The Japanese apricot is still there, though, and it looks healthy.
More pictures beneath the fold.
After two summers of desert heat, we now have a summer of tropical monsoon rain. The Little Arkansas River, which runs north, west and south of my place, is the highest it’s been in years. More rain is predicted.
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It occurs to me that comparing Stella etc. to Girls und Panzer is misguided. Yura has more in common with such painfully self-conscious characters as Inu x Boku SS‘s Ririchiyo and Tsuritama‘s Yuki than with with Miho, and the story thus far has been more about Yura learning to play well with others than about girls playing with guns.
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Ryutaro Nakamura, who directed Serial Experiments Lain and Kino’s Journey, recently died. Jonathan Clements’ appreciation is here.
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Jinrui wa Suitai Shimashita‘s Mediator should beware the dangers of undead hair.
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I generally consider “critic” to be a subset of the category “pompous fool.” Here’s an example why.
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One of my pictures was yesterday’s Botany Photo of the Day.
There is an anime music tournament in the works, and the organizers seek your nominations. The following are what I came up with during breakfast this morning. There’s a lot of Susumu Hirasawa, Masumi Itou, Yuki Kajiura and Yoko Kanno. It’s not by accident.
Haibane Renmei — “Free Bird”
Paprika — “Mediational Field”
Azumanga Daioh — “Soramimi Cake”
Noir — “Salva Nos”
Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica — “Sis Puella Magica”
Jinrui wa Suitai Shimashita — “Yume no Naka no Watashi no Yume”
Macross Plus — “Voices”
Paranoia Agent — “Yume no Shima Shinen Kouen”
Bakumatsu Kikansetsu Irohanihoheto — “Kouya Ruten”
Ghost in the Shell SAC — “Lithium Flower”
Shin Sekai Yori — “Wareta Ringo”
Ghost in the Shell SAC — “Inner Universe”
Paranoia Agent — “Shiroi Oka – Maromi no Theme”
Pumpkin Scissors — “Mercury Go”
Level E — “Cold Finger Girl”
Inevitably, I forgot a favorite: “Poltergeist,” from Ghost Hound.
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No one ever visits my photo gallery. I decided to open a Flickr account, so even more people can ignore my pictures. It seems I timed it just right — the Flickr page sure looks pretty, but I have to wait for it to load completely twice before I can do anything there. I joined a few Flickr groups and, again, I timed it just right. It seems that Wichita photographers hang out at Facebook nowadays. Although I do have a Facebook account to keep tabs on family and friends, as a policy I post virtually nothing there. That’s not going to change.
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Satsuma-jima, not far from Kyushu, has been a bit feisty lately. I grabbed the picture above from the JMA webcam (third from the bottom of the list) this morning.
A few pictures from yesterday evening’s expedition. This time I used only the 50mm lens (effectively 75mm on my camera).
Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception III in Wichita
I’m preoccupied with cameras and keyboards these days. Posting will continue to be sporadic.
Some fisheye views from this morning’s ride. Above is James Rosati‘s “Tripodal” in downtown Wichita.
A couple of Wonderduck’s relatives dropped by the botanical garden yesterday.
The usual pretty pictures are below the fold.
The bishop administered Confirmation this Pentecost Sunday at the Cathedral this morning. While he was annointing the confirmandi, a string quartet in the choir loft played the “nocturne” from Borodin’s quartet. I would have enjoyed it under other circumstances, but this was the wrong place and time for the music. I suppose I should grateful that it wasn’t Marty Haugen or the St. Louis Jesuits.
