Category: weather

Hot.

July 15, 2006

A 12V PC case fan hooked to a benchtop power supply and blowing on my face. Yes, it’s hot here today.
(Click for more moblog photos…)

Ah. That keeps me a little cooler while down in the basement…

When I was little I had a bunch of 120VAC chassis fans salvaged from various bits of AT&T telecom equipment. I used to hang them in various places around my bedroom in order to make it cooler. Up in doorframes to move cooler air into my room, etc.

Also, yesterday after visiting Erma’s with Danielle I was forced to launder some money. At least it’s better now.

Inwood Hiking Trails in Snow

December 11, 2005

The path leading from points ‘E’ to ‘F’ in the Inwood Hiking Trails
(Click for more…)

As I tend to do lately, I headed out to the Inwood Hiking Trails yesterday to go wandering around. I haven’t really been hiking in the snow before, but I figured that a not-too-cold day after a nice snowfall would be a good time to wander around one of my favorite local hiking places.

Well, despite almost falling through some ice and ending up with frozen solid pant legs afterwards, it really was a nice walk. It turned out that everyone else who had been there since last week’s big snowfall had turned back after only going a few hundred feet into the park. That meant that all of the trails were covered with nothing more than animal tracks and nice, fresh, powdery snow. At one point I even came across both foot and wing prints from where a bird had landed and what appears to be signs of a small animal being dropped in the snow then running away. Perhaps from a bird or something?

The only part that had me somewhat worried was this pathway which, in the snow, seems innocent enough. However, if one looks at it in the summer time it’s pretty obvious that there is a bunch of marsh and other wet badness which one would not want to accidently fall in. (Although comparing the two pictures, I wonder if they are the same walkway, or similar ones.)

Anyway, it was a really nice time wandering through the woods. The only problem is that my calves, knees, and hips are horribly sore. I’ve realized that walking through 4″ – 6″ snow for a few hours, including up and down a number of relatively steep hills requires one to walk differently. And that walking differently puts a rather unique load on one’s body.

Oh and I also scanned in all four ‘pages’ of the flyer which is distributed near the entrance to the Inwood Hiking Trails: 1 · 2 · 3 · 4

Based on the map of Inwood Hiking Trails I walked about 3.4 miles in the snow. Figuring in little bits of back tracking, wandering a short ways down other trails and other meandering, I’d figure I probably did a total of 3.5 miles, by the end of which I was far more tired than if I had done seven miles on dry ground. Wow.

moved from livejournal outdoors weather

Let’s do the time warp again…

December 9, 2005

Okay, so from last night around the time I got home until today just after I got home, I captured 2762 individual frames in an attempt to make a stop motion video of last night’s snow storm. One frame was captured every ~30 seconds, then those were all squished into a video running at 30 frames per second, making each second of cover 15 minutes.

The video is available here if you would like to see it:

08 – 09 December 2005 Snow Storm Timelapse (~12MB, H.264, 640 x 480 @ 30fps)

I apologize about the screen in the window, but it is non-trivial to remove it. Also, it appears the window is much dirtier than I thought, but I was having a hard time telling that last night, so I just ended up shooting through the dirty window. Ah well, at least it’s kinda nifty.

I’m sure there will be plenty of other snow storms this year. Next time I really want to have a camera that can be controlled by Apple’s Image Capture and have each photo taken automatically downloaded to the local machine. Now that could make for some nifty time lapse video.

making things moved from livejournal weather

Snow!

December 8, 2005

I am trying out an experiment. If things go according to plan, I’ll have a timelapse movie of tonight’s (forecasted) massive snowfall. At the same time, the image up above should update with the current captured frame. We’ll see how that goes.

Oh, and yes, that is the best image I could get without a bunch of CCD noise. And no, I don’t have an easy way to remove the screen, and the only window I have without a screen (the doorwall) doesn’t have enough light outside of it for one to be able to see the snow. Ah well. :)

If you want to view this on it’s own page refreshing every 30 seconds or so, visit http://www.nuxx.net/webcam.

moved from livejournal weather

+++ATH0

March 1, 2005

Wow, what a beautiful morning. While the drive to work wasn’t the quickest, it really was beautiful. Only an hour and fifteen minutes… I wish I was off work today so that I could plod through a park taking pictures of the snow hanging off of the trees. It’s just heavy enough to stick to absolutely everything, and the wind isn’t really blowing so the snow is tending to stick on things. (Snow!)

Also, the 40GB iPod Photo I ordered fully charged last night, so I synched it and started using it today. I must say, the display is much easier to read, especially while driving. It just looks a lot smoother, and more text can fit on the screen. The album art is also a nice perk. (Photo) Now I just need to get the old one cleaned up and ready to be sold on eBay.

Tonight I’m supposed to head over to my parents house to do some work on their computer. I also need to bring the TiVo so it can do it’s first round of guided setup which (for some unknown reason) absolutely requires an analog phone line. Yet after that you can use the device with an ethernet connection… Hopefully the snow won’t put a crimp on these plans, because I’d really like to grab the latest episode of Frontline. Tonight’s episode is called A Soldier’s Heart and addresses mental issues that soldiers can experience after battle and various other bits of military service and training.

Worst case I’ll just watch it live, but the TiVo service has been activated, so the device should be as well.

Shows like Frontline are the reason I picked up the TiVo. I almost always miss them, and while I hate scheduling my life around a television show, shows like this are really worth watching. Actually, a number of the shows on PBS restore my faith in television journalism. With all the AOLTWMSNBCBS soundbite-based crap, it’s very refreshing to see a detailed, well-documented story. And no, { Discovery Channel | History Channel | Learning Channel | Whatever } doesn’t hold a candle, because they all seem to be stuck on ‘Big Angry Shop Rats’ or yet another ‘Hitler the Drug Fiend’ or ‘Aliens: The True Story’.

Curiously this morning someone had arranged for Panera to bring in trays of bagels, and there was a espresso-based coffee cart in the cafeteria, all for free. I’m trying to eat less so I skipped the bagel, but a nice double shot of espresso was a nice change of pace from the normal work-provided crap-coffee.

acquired things moved from livejournal weather

Ice!

February 14, 2005

Clicky for more…

Well, as most people in the Detroit area know, we had some mighty freezing rain tonight. Well, on my drive home from ‘s wonderful Big Sonic Sunday, my car picked up quite a bit of ice. In fact, it was so much ice that I figured I had to take some pictures of it…

Shiny ice pictures include…
· Ice on antenna
· Wind blown ice on driver’s side fender
· Crooked whole-car shot
· Icy windshield wipers

The driving really wasn’t too bad, except for the people who insisted on doing 50% of the speed limit, even if the ground was just wet. Ah well, I’m home safe, and hopefully everyone else made it just fine too.

Goodnight!

PS: Yeah, those definitely were quick snapshots… Depth of field is waaay bad. Ah well… Now I sleep.

automotive moved from livejournal weather

Winter Morning in Michigan

February 2, 2005

[Crossposted to and .]

Click for full resolution…

While this wasn’t taken with a dSLR, I figured some people might be interested in it. This was taken Monday morning, just out in front of my condo, showing a nice February morning in Michigan. The density of ice fog just amazes me, and with the sun just barely up, everything had a wonderful blue glow to it.

For what it’s worth, this was taken with a Nikon Coolpix 5400 and hand held. I wish I’d gotten more shots that morning, but I’ve only got the piece of demo CF that came with the camera. With any luck the new 1GB piece will be here tomorrow. I should have had it sooner, but Amazon delayed half of the order… < grumble > Fortunately ZipZoomFly has the same Lexar Professional 80x 1GB pieces for $100, with free second-day FedEx.

moved from livejournal weather

!

July 17, 2004

Click for more…

Wow, we just got nailed with an absolutely amazing storm. I managed to get some pictures as the pea-sized hail was falling. At one point there was a crack of lightning which made me jump and left my ears ringing. Wow.

Photos Here.

moved from livejournal weather

beefcake

February 23, 2003

Okay… So how was tonight you ask? Well, everything started off great… More dinner at Pete and Michelle’s place. Mmm… Anyway, for those of you that aren’t within 100 miles of Detroit, this area got hit with snow tonight. Hit hard. We’re talking about 6″ – 10″ on the ground. This is *not* an exaggeration, I was just out in it.

That’s where the problem started. I left the Ferndale area at right about midnight. Except for the obviously slow conditions, the drive was very uneventful. I stopped on the way for a bottle of water and a candy bar, no big deal. Quite a bit of slipping, problems leaving stop lights, etc, but everyone who braved the roads seemed to be driving safely.

Anyway… I get home, well, no, back up a bit. I get in to my subdivision, right to the end of my driveway, and get stuck. See, I live on a court with a rather long, slightly hilly, driveway off the main subdivison road. I try to go up the hill, I get stuck. Not stuck as in ‘my car is stuck in a ditch’, but stuck where my car couldn’t continue forward, as the road was too slippery to continue. I think this was compounded by the hard pack snow underneath the fluffy stuff, but I digress… Anyway, what ended up happening was that I had to shovel ruts down to the pavement for three to five feet, use that to get my car going, continue until I stopped, lather, rinse, repeat. This snow ranged in depth from six inches to drifts that were over a foot deep. Needless to say, it sucked. Anyway, after all the fun with that there was another two foot drift in the middle of the court, and a four foot drift in front of my garage door. I snowplowed through the two foot drift and shoveled away the four foot one. Oh, and I just looked outside, here’s the plows. Uggh. Ah well, at least I got a workout.

To detail the shoveling distance I grabbed random satellite photo and drew some lines. The yellow line in the road is where I originally got stuck, the red line indicates the distance that was shoveled. You know something is seriously wrong when you can detail the distance you shoveled on satellite images.

automotive moved from livejournal weather

:(

January 27, 2003

Also, WeatherBug says that it is 0°F outside right now. I’d confirm this, as about an hour ago I was buying gas somewhere in the 9 Mile and Woodward area and I was just standing there, shaking, being amazed at the stillness of Ferndale and how crisp and dry everything seemed. At those temperatures snow is almost like gravel. It’s no longer slippery, it’s almost like the dirt on a freshly plowed country road, crunchy, blowing in bizarre egg-dipping-oil-like patterns across the highway.

moved from livejournal weather