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Category Archives: Dilettantism

Photography, writing and other related pursuits.

Last year I had eagerly anticipated the arrival of the Encyclopedia of Life (EoL). Entries on individual species became viewable on 28 February, a few months earlier than the projected mid-2008 deadline. Coolness! Currently they have twenty-four exemplar species pages, tens of thousands of authenticated (but not detailed) species pages, and ...
Unfortunately, the title of this entry is quite literal: Last week a hawk died in our neighborhood. As the poor thing expired, it managed to take out a transformer and blow a power line —rendering our block powerless until dinnertime. It had (the remains of) a squirrel, so one theory ...
For years we lived with a bathroom that I called the Pink Horror. No ventilation (other than the window and door), a rotten (literally) paint job done by the house seller, and pink tiles. I hate the color pink, and Pepto-Bismo Pink just ain't gonna be an exception. Before bathroom remodel. ...
I know I'll continue my habit of writing lists on bits of paper, but I thought it'd be useful to maintain an online list of the birds I've seen in our neighborhood. I've limited this to visitors to our yards and the nearby park. "Birders, are ye?" Well, I prefer the ...
Eegad, once again I sent off an email with a word missing, making my message sound ambiguous. As well as just plain sloppy. The compulsive ferret in my brain pushes me to send yet another email with the corrections. And so it goes, even with published webpages such as blog ...
In autumn and winter the birds arrive from the north to keep us company. This typically means a lot of White-crowned and Golden-crowned Sparrows around the yard, but my flagship migrator is the Yellow-rumped Warbler. Or, as Simon and I call them, Yellow-butts. For their 2007 arrival, I first noticed ...
This site is about my hobbies. I've posted a lot on food, a little about software, and even a teensy bit about gardening and plants. But I haven't written up much about another big interest of mine: stories. Novels, comic books, animation, and occaisionally television and movies. I just love ...
While picking peas, I've been subject to vocal commentary by various avians. Anna's Hummingbird: Scritchy scritchy complain scritchy... BzzzzzzPINGk! Black Phoebe: Pfee pfee. (Wag tail.) Pfee. Western Scrub-jay: (Insert loud, rasping squawk of choice.) ...And: Chichichi chichi chichi hyeenhyeenh! Hyeenh hyeenh! (Repeat.) Chestnut-backed Chickadees have become our neighbors. Chestnut-backed chickadee during a bath: "Hey! I ...
It's iris time! Maroon PCH iris. [...]
Cute apricot fruitlets have been sighted, about three weeks after the peak of blossoming. The additional foliage has caused an increase in approval ratings from neighborhood birds, including the resident Chestnut-backed Chickadees and Scrub-jays. :-D There are a few more apricot images in the plant album.