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When I first saw these I focused on the bright areas and couldn’t see much difference. It looks like the scientists were looking at the stuff in the shadow in the lower left. Ice on Mars does not turn into water before it evaporates. It turns from a solid into a gas, like dry ice does on earth.

Spaceweather.com is reporting that some noctilucent clouds were hanging around the British Isles a couple of nights ago. Those things are cool. I saw this last year at about this time. I am not exactly sure of the time, but I think that it was between 10:00 and 10:30 at night. It was dark with the glow of the sunset on the horizon. When I saw them I jumped in car to try to find a better view of them. That ended up being a mistake because they only lasted a few minutes.

I would like to see them again. Next time I’ll grab the camera and shoot what I can as fast as I can.

It looks like Orbit Trap is taking credit for ridding the Internet of the most recent calendar images. I suppose that they could be right by taking credit. I do not know why the calendar web site was modified but I do know why I removed my images from my sites. It was because of OT but not because of their criticism. I can handle criticism. Art is subjective and everyone is entitled to their own opinion. Besides, if it comes from someone that I do not respect, it is easy to ignore.

The calendar images are governed by contract law as well as copyright law. I removed my images in order to maintain control over them. I felt like I needed to do that after OT ignored my 2 requests to remove my image. They are blowing their horn because they think that it was their criticism that caused the removal. I do not know about the calendar website, but for my part this is not the case. OT reminded me that Internet is not a safe place to put property that should be protected.

My backyard hummingbird feeders have been claimed by a beautiful mature male Rufous hummingbird. I have had the feeders up for almost three years and I have never seen one like it until this year. I want to show a good shot of it to you, but the little devil won’t let me get the correct exposure.

That bird is smart. I can tell when it is in the back yard because I can hear it fly from branch to branch. It doesn’t hum like other hummers. It has a distinct whistle in its wings. When I hear it, I grab my camera and get positioned to take some shots at the most visible feeder. I have seen it there before, but it refuses to go there while I am waiting for it. I can feel its eyes on me as it hides in the tree but I sure can’t see it, so we wait, and wait. I have even tried faking it out by turning my back on it, but it doesn’t buy into that. All I have to do is put the camera down and start doing some yard work and it will appear. It must know how to work a camera because it refuses to show itself unless it’s sure that I’ll shoot it with the wrong exposure.

This Rufous has a cousin with a cloaking device. It’s a male Anna’s and it is much harder to see than the Rufous. That’s probably because they hate each other. Even though the Rufous is smaller than the Anna’s, it has the upper hand in a territorial fight, so the Anna’s has to sneak in while the Rufous isn’t watching. 

As far as I can tell, that bird is always watching, so it has been a challenge to capture a shot of the Anna’s.

This shot is proof that this Anna’s hummingbird has a cloaking device. I managed to catch it just before it disappeared.

Here’s the same bird hiding in the shadows behind the feeder.

Maybe I’ll shoot them with a 12 gauge shotgun. Just kidding. I love those cute little spawns of Satan. I am going to keep trying to get a decent shot of both of them. They usually don’t hang around for long so I had better get them while I can.

The Phoenix lander is alive and doing its thing! I wonder what that object is that is close to the horizon on the right?

I have had plenty of hummingbirds buzzing around my yard for the last couple of months. A few days ago I saw a beautiful mature male Rufous at a feeder in front of my kitchen window. It was a golden-brown color with a red throat. It looked a lot like the male on this page. I am going to try to get a picture of one of those but it will be a challenge. The light needs to hit the birds perfectly before they’ll show any color and hummingbirds generally don’t like to pose.

This coming Sunday is a big day for the Mars Phoenix Lander. It should be well worth watching coverage of the landing on NASA TV. Unlike the rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, the Phoenix is landing by powered flight. The rovers used parachutes and airbags.

Around 50% of all Mars missions have failed so it will a nail biter when this one lands. It should be fun to watch.

(NASA’s image use policy)

My car is back! I got a call in the middle of the night yesterday, which I did not hear, but the police left a message saying that the car had been recovered. They impounded it and it cost me almost 300 bucks to get it out, but it is in my driveway now.

The dirty rotten scum sucking thieves didn’t do any damage to it. They just took the gas. They even left my ID badge for work in it. The only ”track” that they left was the smell of cigarette smoke. I don’t have an ashtray in the car so they put the ashes on the floor. That will go away soon. It just reminds me that some dirt-bag was in my car.

You know, that car is an old piece of crap, but it sure is nice to have it back

It’s just a car, right? It was an old ’92 Ford Probe. Nothing fancy, just easy to steal. It has been inconvenient to not have it around, but not too bad. I have another car and my family and I have worked out our schedules enough to get by.

But it was a good car and I liked driving it. The truth is that I am depressed about having it stolen. Some dirty rotten scum sucking son of a bitch walked into my driveway and took my car. My insurance is only liability on that car so I am not getting any comfort from that.

My biggest disappointment is with me. That car has been stolen before, 2 years ago by a thief with a key. When I got it back there was no harm done except for a missing stereo, which was already broken. I didn’t replace the stereo but I did install an alarm. I must have forgotten to activate the alarm.

It has been a week now. As time passes I am beginning to realize that I am going to have to deal with the second lowest form of life on earth, just above the car thief: The used car salesman. I hate shopping for cars.

I have been selected as the Renderosity artist of the month. If you are not familiar with Renderosity it is an online digital art community. It isn’t nearly as large as DeviantArt but it is still a pretty decent sized community. Being selected AOM is quite an honor, but here is the rest of the story…

A few year ago I was a big shot in the Renderosity fractal art community, or at least I thought so. The way it works is that you upload an image and then you have piles of praise heaped upon you in the form of comments on that image. I always got a lot of comments on my stuff so my ego became large. At that time the community was more active, so an AOM got a ton of attention. It was something that you could put on a resumé, and rightfully so. It was a big deal.

With my large ego I thought that I was a good candidate to be an AOM, but I was never nominated by the staff so I never got the chance to be voted in by the community. I confess that at one point I was so disappointed about not being nominated that I deleted several images from my gallery, knowing that doing so would punch a bunch of holes in the Fractal Window Weekly. The FWW is a way for the staff to feature some of the art that was uploaded during the week. I couldn’t understand why I was featured regularly there but never nominated for AOM. That was 2 or 3 years ago.

My ego has changed shape in the last year or so. I still consider myself to be a pretty decent fractal artist but there are many others that are better than me. My priorities have changed. I genuinely appreciate the praise and attention that I get when I upload an image, but I don’t thrive on it like I used to, and I don’t crave it like I used to either.

Besides, lately building fractal art has become more work than pleasure. My priorities have changed.

I am delighted to be the AOM and I am grateful to finally be nominated and voted in, but the timing of it was strange. After a year of hardly building anything new, I am all of the sudden honored as the AOM. It all happened when I wasn’t even paying attention. I didn’t know that I was candidate until I was notified that I was the AOM.

Maybe that’s a good thing.

I tried to build a “thank you” image today. So far I haven’t been able to squeeze anything out and I have yard work to do…