everyday

I went on a little hike up a trail in Hurkey Park today. The weather was beautiful, the water was cool and I can’t imagine a better way to spend a few hours. I took my dogs, who thoroughly enjoyed the hike as well. I was rather surprised to find a number of California Tree Frogs (Pseudacris cadaverina) there.

NOTE: clicking on the image will take you to Flickr where I have more pictures from the hike.

I took this picture outside of Amoeba Records on Sunset Avenue in Hollywood, CA prior to the release of “Hail To The Thief” (an album from Radiohead). I was just listening to Radiohead and it reminded me that I had taken this picture, which I like.

via: /.

NASA has released a new set of “Blue Marble” images entitled, “Blue Marble: Next Generation“. The new set of images includes cloud free views of the entire earth for each of the 12 months in our calendar. This shows an interesting view of how our planet changes with the seasons.

NASA’s servers are probably being overloaded and will continue to be for a while (a day or two). There are some mirror sites available at the referring link above.

Last week I found a Rosy Boa in my front yard. Well, actually my sister found it, but I caught it. After keeping it for a few days, feeding it a mouse and having it escape once I finally got around to releasing it back in the hills above Nuevo, CA (approximately here Google Map).

These snakes are extremely docile, if you happen across one in your travels, please do not harm it. If you are calm and careful you can easily pick up a wild Rosy Boa with almost no fear of being bitten. If one does happen to strike you don’t worry, they are not venomous.

When I was younger I kept a couple of Rosy Boas as pets, well snakes aren’t really pets, but I did keep them captive. While these snakes are the ideal snake for being kept in captivity, it probably is detrimental to the wild population. Especially if you are keeping a female as you will be removing a viable breeding snake from a specific population. While I am not aware of any specific problems in regards to the Rosy Boas population as a whole, I would assume that the encroachment of human development on it’s natural habitat is having a negative impact. So I urge you to tread lightly!

More pictures are available in the gallery

Tractor with Christmas Lights. Taken in Nuevo, CA on December 23, 2005.

via: Signal vs. Noise

Signal vs. Noise points to a couple of sites that are displaying Olivo Barbieri’s aerial photography. Olivo utilizes a tilt-shift lens to produce some amazing images!

I was walking around a community college campus today, when I came across the above placard. It was not prominently placed, just affixed to the wall in a seemingly random place. It was a mere 6″ by 4″. After I read it, and my laughter subsided, I noticed that there were a number of them placed on the buildings in the area. I found it particularly amusing because it serves no purpose. Should you find yourself inside of this building during a major earthquake, the knowledge that the building is aged and may collapse will probably not ease the terror you will experience when the walls come crashing down upon you. All this sign does is give a person one more thing to worry about while they are taking a test.