Mike Kullen weblog

Raptor Project

2009-05-11T07:35:33-0700

This past week I went to see a birds of prey presentation by Jonathan Wood of The Raptor Project.

Compared to the last couple of raptor presentations I've been to (both at Hawk Mountain), this one was much more of a retail bird *show*, rather than just a nature talk. Jonathan was not shy about setting up good photo ops and making everything up close & personal for the audience.

And the "personal" side didn't end there. Jonathan seems to bring equal parts naturalist, comedian, preacher, and political activist. Not your average science show & tell. In any case, he's very enthusiastic and has some amazing birds.

The Raptor Project is sponsored by Nikon, so when Jonathan saw my Canon camera, he came over and said "Here, let me show you something," and he led the Harris Hawk to fly right up to me, glide past my shoulder, and land behind me. I wasn't quite ready, so the bird flew right by before I had the shot set up.

"What's the matter, didn't get the shot? If you had a Nikon, you would have had the picture. OK, I'll give you and your Canon a second try."

Then he sent the bird up & back again, and this time I got it.

Many, many thanks to Jennifer, who told me about this event. I had a lot of fun, and got tons and tons of pictures at this 2-hour event. It was also a good learning experience with our new camera, trying to catch glimpses of fast-moving birds in low light indoors at night.

My favorite photo from that whole night was a shot of a white Gyrfalcon from Iceland, with a bald eagle in the background.

Now for next time, I just have to catch this same show outdoors, in daylight. :)

Money Shot

2009-02-23T07:36:52-0800

Last Monday was a holiday, so naturally I went down to Conowingo Dam to take pictures of bald eagles. It was my first day out with a new camera, so I was pretty excited to go.

It was a fairly quiet day, with only about a dozen eagles around, but there were some bursts of activity. Right when I was driving into the parking lot, I saw two eagles fighting over a fish in mid-air directly over the driveway. I knew it would all be over by the time I got the camera out, so I just sat there and enjoyed it while it was happening.

Later in the day, the main focus of attention was a nearby tree where two adult eagles were just standing around on adjacent branches. All of a sudden, one of them hopped over to where the other one was, and there was some squawking. Looks like another fight, but then, oh, no, that's not a fight. That's something else.

So there it is, my first ever photo of bald eagles mating in the wild.

I got some other pictures too, but that one was definitely the highlight of the day.

Valentine's Day miracle

2009-02-14T23:38:46-0800

It's Saturday night, Valentine's Day. It's lightly snowing outside. I'm in my Neon, in the parking lot behind Cascata Caffe. This being perhaps the busiest night of the year for restaurants, the lot is packed, so I'm parked way back in a dark corner near the trash dumpsters. The Chicken Parmigiana is on the floor of the front seat, getting cold. It's about 8:30pm, and I've been trying for nearly an hour to get the car to start.

The remote starter is a tricky thing. It's a great convenience when I need to give the engine a little lead time to warm up before I get to the car, and also when I want to pop into a store for just a brief moment without cranking the starter an extra time, and without leaving keys in the car. But every once in a while, it adds an element of mystery where I really don't need any. Case in point, why won't the car start? Not with the key, not with the remote, not with various incantations that might activate or deactivate the remote, etc.

Kathy had gone off in a different direction to pick up dessert while I was out picking up dinner, so I call her, and she arrives, bringing the instruction manual for the remote starter. I try everything I can think of, but still no luck. No start.

I don't think it's the battery, but I've got jumper cables, so I try jump-starting from Kathy's car. Still no luck.

Just as I'm about to call a tow truck (which could entail sitting out here for another hour or two), Kathy prevails upon me to leave the car parked here overnight and sort it out in the morning. One problem: the car is not in a real parking spot, and it's blocking the trash. As we have already established that the car is not starting, this means we're talking about pushing the car. And I know that my 5-months-pregnant wife isn't going to be out pushing a car, but the alternative still leaves her at the steering wheel, which has no power steering when the engine is off. And I mentioned that it's starting to snow, right?

Commence 10 minutes or so of this sequence: set the emergency brake, set the steering wheel to the right direction, go around to the end of the car, have Kathy release the brake, push for a few steps, tell Kathy when to yank the emergency brake again, go turn the steering wheel again...

Fortunately, the car is on relatively level ground, so the pushing isn't too bad in either direction. Eventually, we get into the proper parking spot that has opened up right next to where I started.

So we're done for the night. It's looking bleak for the morning, but we've got to get past that. Kathy puts the car in park. She pulls at the ignition key, but it doesn't come out right away. "Oh well, it can't do any harm to give it one last try," she mumbles, as she gives the key a twist.

Crank. Vroom.

"Sonofa...", I mutter.

That was it. Car's fine after that.

I have a theory about how this happened. I think the gear shift (which has been a bit dodgy before) was just on the edge of park, and when the car thinks it's out of park, the starter won't crank at all. Not with the key, not with the remote, etc. But there's no visual display to explain that. I think the pushing of the car was only important in that it gave us a reason to shift out of park and then back into park, so this time the car really knew it was in park.

Or, to put it another way... I tried everything I could think of for over an hour, and the car wouldn't start; Kathy gave it one twist and it worked. I always knew she was made of magic.

Happy Valentine's Day.

Streaming audio, Rube Goldberg style

2009-01-20T12:27:07-0800

I just finished listening to President Obama's inaugural address.

I'm not home, so I didn't watch it on TV (not yet, anyway, but I do have it recording at home). I thought I could watch it on streaming video over the Internet, so I didn't bother to bring a portable radio or anything to work.

But then the streaming video wasn't working. I'm not sure if it was overloaded at my end, overloaded on the server end, or something else, but the video stream kept cutting out over & over until it just wouldn't start up at all.

My old cell phone used to have an FM radio tuner built in, but my current one doesn't. The only radio I had nearby was the car stereo, but I wanted to stay at my desk, rather than sit out in the car for a half-hour in the middle of the work day.

The minutes were ticking by, and there wasn't time to go out and *buy* a radio (although I did ever-so-briefly consider it).

Eventually, I solved the problem.

I called from my desk phone to my cell phone and left it connected. I went outside & turned the car on (just to the Accessory position, not running the engine) and tuned the radio to NPR. I set the cell phone on speakerphone, and laid it on the front seat. I left the key in the ignition but locked the car doors with the remote control. I went back to my desk and put on my phone headset, and listened to the whole speech over the phone, with sound quality that I can only compare to a tinny old Depression-era radio.

At least I didn't have to miss the moment.

American Imagery Day

2009-01-18T15:41:58-0800

Yesterday Kathy, Bruce (who's visiting from London), and I had a day of exploring different images of America.

In the morning we went to Wilmington, Delaware, to see Barack Obama. The President-elect was on his way to Washington DC for his inauguration, so we stood out in the cold for a few hours to catch a glimpse of him on one of his train stops. We got there about an hour and a half before the announced start time for the event, and we had a much better view than I had expected. We were way up front in the crowd, but it was hard for me to tell from there quite how many people had piled in behind us.

A little boy standing next to us couldn't see any of the activity, so Bruce picked him up to give him a better view. The boy said he still didn't see Obama, but Bruce figures it was just because he thought all the people on stage were just boring adults.

After the Obama event, since we were already in Delaware, we drove another half-hour down to Maryland to watch some bald eagles at Conowingo Dam. It was cloudy and gray and cold, but it was my first successful attempt to drag other witnesses to Conowingo, so I was happy about that. We didn't stick around very long, but we got to see 4 good flyovers in the few minutes we were there (including 2 soaring low over the car as we drove over the dam - love that panoramic sunroof!).

After all those images of hope and majesty, we needed to achieve some balance, so (joined by Jose) we finished off the day by watching the downfall of a president in the movie "Frost/Nixon".

All in all, a very enjoyable day in America.

Raking leaves for Obama

2008-11-03T14:20:48-0800

I've often heard church-going friends of mine say that they were reluctant to put any overtly religious symbol (e.g., Jesus Fish) on their car, because it would add all this extra pressure to be a kind & courteous driver, to best represent their group.

I have felt similar pressure about our Obama yard sign. Elsewhere in our town, there are plenty of campaign signs (about 3-1 Obama over McCain), but on our quarter-mile stretch of road, ours is the only presidential sign at all. And our local polling place is in a building directly across the street from our house.

Thus it was that at 8:30 last night (3 hours past dark), I was still out in the yard, raking leaves, until the whole yard looked presentable. Have to display the sign with pride.

So if Obama wins Pennsylvania by a couple hundred votes, and it all traces back to 100% Obama votes in my little precinct, you'll know who's responsible.

You're welcome.

Snow in October

2008-10-28T13:12:33-0700

It's October 28. It's snowing. Something ain't right.

Welcome back Kim!

2008-09-19T06:47:06-0700

Speaking of people who recently resumed their blogs, it looks like Kim is back too. Cool...

Kathy for Obama

2008-09-17T21:58:06-0700

Kathy has a new special blog all about the current presidential campaign. You can find it at http://obama.kathichelle.com/. So far she's covered war, religion, abortion, health care... you know, just some little stuff.

Check it out.

Hawaii 2008 - a few photos

2008-06-10T07:47:25-0700

Back in May, Kathy & I took a trip to Hawaii, this time visiting the Big Island. It was somewhat quieter than Maui, and somewhat less lush & green than Kauai, but there was a lot to see, especially with wildlife and volcanoes. There were several excellent snorkeling spots, including one right next to our hotel, so we could just walk over with mask & fins and take a swim anytime.

As usual, I took tons of pictures (a little over 3,000 I think), and as usual, it's taking me forever to sort through them and post the keepers online. For now, I have a handful of photos (and one video) posted on Flickr, including turtles, eels, molten lava, and a rare Hawaiian Hawk (even thousands of miles from home, there's no escaping the hawk photos).

Besides the wildlife that we caught on camera, we also saw an endangered Nene (Hawaiian Goose) and a Hawaiian Owl, though we didn't get pictures of these (we sped past the Nene on the highway, and the owl flew across the road at night). It's definitely true what they say about Nenes grazing by the side of the road and nearly getting run over all the time.

For our trip, we had the mixed blessing of lots of volcanic activity at Kilauea (the only active volcano in Hawaii). The upside was that we got to see molten lava splashing & steaming at the ocean's edge. The downside was that the fumes were blowing everywhere, shutting down some areas of Hawaii Volcanoes National Park (to avoid exposure to poisonous sulfur dioxide), and also casting a gray haze in the sky for almost the whole week that we were there. Breaks of blue skies were rare, but we definitely enjoyed them when they appeared.

It was definitely worth the trip, and there was plenty to see. But I think our next visit will be to either Oahu or Maui again.

Update (6/14/2008): I also posted a few more of the photos from our previous Hawaii trip in 2005. I'm sure I'll catch up eventually.

Tuesday Night Raptor Club

2008-04-30T16:18:47-0700

On the way home from work last Tuesday, I noticed one of our local red-tailed hawks was perched in its usual spot on top of a cellular phone antenna tower. I had been looking for another opportunity to try out the new telephoto extension on the camera, and the best test is to use it on a subject I've photographed before, to see how much closer I can get under similar conditions.

So, the same as I had done a couple of times last year, I drove into the parking lot near the antenna tower, snapped a few photos of the hawk perched on the antenna, and then more as the hawk got spooked & flew away. Fortunately, the flying away involved some circling around overhead first, so I had plenty of opportunities to take some in-flight shots.

The only downside was that it was cloudy and getting close to sunset when I did that last week. Then last night (another Tuesday), I saw the hawk was there again, on a brilliantly sunny afternoon, with vivid blue skies. The hawk followed much the same pattern again, taking off a few minutes after I arrived, but this time I had much better lighting, and more time for in-flight photos before the hawk disappeared beyond the tree line.

I put all the new photos in the existing Flickr set from when I visited the same spot about a year ago. You can tell that the recent ones toward the end turned out a lot better than the early ones from last year.

Losing the lower-left corner

2008-04-23T07:24:51-0700

To celebrate primary election day in PA yesterday, I went back and took the Political Compass test again. It was so sad. Apparently, a year and a half of home ownership must be taking its toll on my "lower-left" principles - instead of being negative 9-point-something, I'm now barely negative 8-and-a-half on both axes:

Economic Left/Right: -8.62
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -8.56

For comparison, *all* of the credible presidential candidates for this year (even Dem ones) show up somewhere in the upper-right quadrant. The only Dem candidate (dispensing with the label "credible") who's with me on the lower-left is Dennis Kucinich, with roughly -2.5, -2.0. Next closest is John Edwards, at about +2.5, +1.5, giving me about a 10-point spread. Not too long after that is Obama, at about +3, +2.

Of course, at our office, Bruce is still the standard bearer, at -9.75, -9.79. If I believed in authority, I'd say he was one.

The secret to rock-hard abs

2008-04-16T09:54:11-0700

Here's what you do.

Catch a respiratory virus that gives you a persistent cough for 10 days (so far). And I mean persistent - I cannot overstate this point. Even after a full dose of NyQuil (or more), you should lie awake in bed for hours, unable to stop. Convulse with the effort of coughing out every last bit of your breath, then take a big gasping inhalation (sometimes only halfway in), before falling back into the next cascade of coughs. Repeat "n" times.

To slim down & better show off your abs, it would also help to accompany this with a sore throat that makes you completely uninterested in eating (or ideally, unable to do so).

I'm not saying that my plan is actually yielding any beneficial results, but hey, it's only day 10. And at least I have a plan.

Anniversary Plagues, round 3

2008-04-11T08:30:25-0700

This is getting ridiculous.

On our first anniversary, Kathy & I took a trip to Jamaica. We both got really sick, and had a miserable journey back home.

Then last year for our second anniversary, we stayed home in Philly. We had snow (in mid April), an overturned car in front of our house, and I again got sick from something I ate.

Our third anniversary is coming up in a few days. So far this week, I've had a sore throat (so bad that I would wake up out of a sound sleep just trying to swallow), a cough that's keeping me up all night & giving me muscle strains from the contortions, and just last night I added pinkeye to the mix.

Either I've got some bizarre curse, or I just happened to spend a whole afternoon with a toddler last weekend, and picked up every possible affliction that's going around at his daycare group.

Flickr video!

2008-04-09T21:30:34-0700

I just found out tonight that Flickr now supports video clips as part of a photo set.

I'm starting with posting a video of the bald eagles, which I had originally posted on my own web server.

I'm sure I'll have more soon.

Trying Atom again

2008-03-06T18:36:52-0800

Almost exactly a year ago, I did some experiments with using Atom to replace the old RSS feed from this site, but I didn't actually put that into production until now.

Behold the new Atom feed, with all the delightful images, links, & formatting: http://www.salubrio.com/mike/index-feed.xml.

Enjoy it in Firefox, Thunderbird, Bloglines, etc.

Update (3/7/2008): I changed the filename to not include "RSS" since it technically isn't RSS anymore.

More Australia - Walkabout at You Yangs & Serendip

2008-03-03T06:43:21-0800

As promised last week, I've now posted the wildlife photos from our Walkabout tour at You Yangs Regional Park & Serendip Sanctuary, two wildlife parks outside Melbourne.

This set includes all the koalas and kangaroos, as well as lots and lots of Australian birds.

YABEPS

2008-02-23T13:25:02-0800

Yet another bald eagle photo shoot.

I went to Conowingo Dam again last Monday (my 3rd visit so far). The weather was supposed to be Mostly Cloudy, but we ended up with blue skies for most of the day. A fog had just lifted when I arrived, and rain started falling just as I packed up to leave, but in between was mostly beautiful, warm weather.

This time I was using our own camera (instead of the one I borrowed last time). I was trying out a new telephoto extension for our camera, which gives some extra zoom and also collects more light, which makes it easier to get a quick, focused shot.

I didn't get so many overhead flight photos on this visit, but there was one particular spot, on a low branch in a nearby tree, where two different bald eagles posed for close-up shots. First an immature eagle was feasting on a fish there, and then an adult eagle bullied that young one away from the perch, and proceeded to stay there striking poses for over an hour.

Best of all, I happened to have the camera running in video mode right when the adult chased off the juvenile, so I got a video clip of the whole event.

All in all, a nice, satisfying visit.

More Australia - Melbourne

2008-02-23T13:05:21-0800

I've finally gotten around to sorting through more of the Australia photos, so we now have the set from Melbourne. This includes a game of Australian Rules Football, a van tour around the city, a visit to the Immigration Museum, and some general wandering around town.

Next up, I should have some more of the wildlife photos from You Yangs Regional Park & Serendip Sanctuary soon. Update: Got 'em.