Sign on Closed Nuclear Power Plant: "Gone Fission"

I had to go to Apollo Beach today for a doctor's appointment, trying to get rid of this damn cough that has been with me for over 3 weeks now, and decided to stop by the Teco Manatee Viewing Center. Manatees tend to hang around the power plant's discharge tubes in the winter since the water is considerably warmer that the chilly Gulf of Mexico or Tampa Bay temperatures. I walked around for a short bit and took a few photographs just to putz around for a short while. I may want to come back here sometime during the evening, if possible and eventually play with some long exposures of the lights or maybe HDR.

Finally finished that dam project!

One of the neat features of the place my father got in Riverview was a creek running through the tail end of the property edge by the river and flowing under the boathouse. It had a flowing spring with a small cavern (I checked and could only squeeze in about 6 feet) right on the property line and just downstream of a dam the neighbor put up early last year. The creek and river are tidally influenced and would fill up and drain a few times a day. The irrigation pump had the intake in the creek and dad already once forgot to turn the pump off and sucked in air so the impeller had to be replaced. He decided to put in his own dam so to better increase the aesthetic value by having not only a constant bit of standing water, but also a waterfall effect as well.

We spent a while getting supplies and designing the dam and worked on it over several weeks. It was a tough, tough project where we had to dig into the banks a few feet and through the creek mud into the hard bottom so to build the foundation. After pouring the foundation and having it set, we came back in to put in the block to build up the rest of it. We had to wait until the early part of the year when there are the longest periods of time between the tides and were still always working against the clock. Finally after the blocks were poured, empty cells filled in with concrete and everything had cured, I had to go in to put in the limestone and slate pieces to create a more natural look. I already designed the dam so there was a 4 inch drain pipe, but I also put in a small 1/2 inch pipe, further reduced to just a small hole drilled into a cap pointing up, so that there would be a fountain effect whenever the tide was low, and a boiling look whenever it was high. Overall I am very pleased with how the project turned out. Whenever the rains return, I suspect there will be a fairly decent water flow through the spillway at times. I got it measured so that our spillway was just 2-3 inches below the spill way of the neighbor's dam so that there would be two flowing waterfalls during periods of high flow.

Excuse me, maam, is that dress felt? Would you like it to be?

Attended the Annual Tampa H3 Red Dress Run today. Since late-November, I really haven't been going to many hash runs, so it was nice to get out and see some old friends. We hit several locations near the old water tower in Sulphur Springs with even a special bus transportation arrange to take us to a dance place so everyone could have some fun.

If the US is a Melting Pot, Canada is a Mosaic.

For the past couple of years I kept meaning to put in an entry for the photography exhibit/competition at the Florida State Fair. This year I finally remembered about the competition and entry deadlines in time and decided to put in one of my favorite shots taken at Mammoth Hot Springs in Yellowstone National Park. In itself I really liked the shot, but I decided to make it different by turning it into a Mosaic.

Originally, I took 5 vertically captured, side-by-side, photos of the terrace-like layers of the springs. I then used a photo stitching program call Panorama Factory to put them together to make one panoramic photo.

Then using only photos I had taken while in a National Park/Monument, I used a free program called AndreaMosaic to generate a mosaic. I tried to get it to only use a photo once or at least as few times as possible with the resulting in the use of about 8000+ of the 15000 photos selected and putting them into a 4960 x 2822 picture.


Kristen was instrumental, with her vast graphic design and photography experience, in selecting the right printing type and backing for the photo. In retrospect, I should have allowed the pictures to be bigger since even up close it was difficult to make out the individual tiles that composed the shot, thus losing a bit of the appeal. I may try the same technique next year or maybe look into applying some HDR techniques to some shots for a different effect. We went to the Florida State Fair and found that my submission had won an 'Honorable Mention' award. I would have like to have conveyed that information concerning the individual tiles and where they were taken, but all that was allowed as a short title and name on the title card.

Roses smell better than onions but make bad soup.

Last year for Valentine's Day my awesome girlfriend got me me one of the most origional gifts I have ever considered, a bouquet of onions; Remember when Potato had an 'E' and we had lower taxes? This year I tried to duplicate it a bit. For whatever reason, just a couple of days prior we talked about onions, so for Velentine's Day I made her an onion bouquet. I got some large red onions from the grocery store and cut them into rose-like shapes with an exacto knife, sttached stems, and made my own vase to support them. As a final bit of garnishment, I went to Outback just prior to closing last night and picked up a Blooming Onion. Not to be a total copy-cat and unoriginal, I also got her a new Lowepro shoulder sling camera bag that was the next size larger than the one she had been using for a long time and loved so much. She mentioned several times that she'd eventually get a larger one now that she had more accessories and lenses, so I ordered one for her and made sure that it arrived before V-Day. I wish I had throught to take a picture of one of my few ever craft projects, but I think it ended up being decent.

Pirates demand your money or your life; women expect both.

Kristen was able to get some VIP tickets for the Gasparilla event and parade, so she invited me along with her mother, father, and best friend. In the previous years I'd always been on the public side of the read. the VIP areas were nice with relatively empty seating, some food and drink, and a lack of drunken people running into you. On the way in we saw the famous Naked Cowboy posing for pictures. The Red Bull flyers were out and the parade was pretty enjoyable, though Kristen of course got the majority of the attention and the motherload of beads that she was collecting to be a part of the 'Relay for Life' event next month for part of the pirate planned theme.