Look Ma, No Roots!

The plant in the crook of this giant oak is a Tillandsia Utriculata, or the Giant Wild Pine Epiphyte (and it took me an awful long time to find out the name...). These plants live up in the crowns of trees, drawing their food and water from the air around them, catching whatever happens to fall in their direction. They grab onto a branch with root-like structures, but those structures provide no nourishment to the plant like normal roots. This particular plant started out in a small tree off to the side of one of the buildings here at work, but was blown down during one of the hurricanes. I put it in the tree where you see it now about 8 months ago, where it has thrived ever since. There is a large spike visible in the picture above, coming out of the top center of the plant, which means the plant is about to bloom. After it has finished blooming, it will die. Actually, the picture above is several weeks old. The spike has nearly tripled in height now, and is starting to branch out at the top. I don't think they ever produce actual flowers, but I'm hoping we might get lucky.

Blastin' From The Past

Things just get stranger and stranger. For those of you who are still checking my blog, here's a little golden oldie from 1988. Graduation day at the Lakeland Civic Center for Lake Gibson Senior High School. Naturally, I'm the one in white (I graduated second in my class), while the other guys in the picture (L to R) are Lex Little, Tiki Bakshi, errr, Steve something, his last name escapes me, and Shawn Reynolds. I barely remember it...

Oodles of Doodles XIII

Lucky number 13 is another western scene, this time from Gordon MacRae-Cowboy's Lament (Capitol T834, 1957). I figure these doodles were popular because they could be cheaply printed, saving those almighty dollars for the bigwigs back at the tower. But they are still quite attractive, even if they were only a way to get out of having to pay for full color printing.

Superiority Through (Last Year's) Airpower

I bragged a little about getting better pictures at last year's Airfest, so I figured I'd best put my money where my mouth is. Here are a couple of choice shots from 2004. (2004 was the first airshow they held after 9/11, so they really pulled out all the stops.)

This display of WWII and modern firepower was very impressive. The prop plane had to fly for all it was worth, and the two jets had to throttle back to something close to stall speed, but they were still able to hold formation for several passes.

Last year's show featured the Blue Angels instead of the Thunderbirds, which was a little odd since the Blue Angels are Navy planes, and Macdill is an Air Force base. but whatever. I managed to get a single shot of one of the times they flew directly at each other. The closing speed between the two planes was over 1200 mph! Talk about your lucky shots...

PS-In the not-too-distant future, I hope to make it up to the Pensacola Naval Air Station, and their museum. I went there once a long, long time ago, and I remember enjoying it then. I'm sure I'd enjoy it more now that I have my camera. Stay tuned...

Superiority Through Airpower X

Sometimes, the best shot is of the people on the ground instead of the planes in the sky. (Except for that one guy who seems strangely uninterested in the spectacle taking place above him. Hmmm...)

Superiority Through Airpower IX

The grand finale of the airfest was a performance by the USAF Thunderbirds. For most of the day, their planes sat out on the tarmac, eight of them all in a row, just hinting at what was to come. Around noon, they fired up all of the planes just to give a little tease of the demo that was coming. Not long after the checkout, they towed a few of the planes off, leaving only the six below. You can see the cockpits are now open, waiting for the pilots to climb back in.

The photo below is a closeup of one of the planes on the ground. I don't know why the plane number is upside down...

Finally, the planes made it into the air, and what a show. When you see a show like this, it's easy to understand why America is still the greatest country on Earth. The sheer power and grace exhibited by these planes and their pilots is amazing. Look closely at the photo below, and you'll notice that one of the planes is right side up, while the other is inverted. (I took lots of pictures of single planes flying inverted, but it's not impressive since it looks like I flipped the picture over...)

The biggest part of the Thunderbirds show was their tight formation flying. They did passes with 2, 3, 4 or all 6 of the planes flying together. They sometimes had planes flying straight at each other at speeds over 600 mph, only for them to turn at the last second and fly straight upwards.

All in all, it was an amazing show, and one I can highly recommend. From a photographer's point of view, it's tough to get good shots. You have to be super quick on the shutter, and even then you won't get a lot of shots. From the ground, these guys are always backlit, and moving at speeds that mean they can move in and out of focus in an instant. I caught plenty of blurry images, as well as shots of empty blue sky.

Oodles of Doodles XII

Today's doodle is from the back side of Jackie Gleason-Presents Lover's Rhapsody (Capitol H366, 1953). It's the first doodle we've presented that comes from a 10" LP. The liner notes claim that this is Jackie's second LP. I'd never seen it before, so I picked it up, and was happy to find a lovely doodle of a lovely lady on the back. There are several photographs on the front of a Ms. Jane Easton, so I'd have to guess this doodle is also of Ms. Easton. No hint as to who the artist is, though.

Superiority Through Airpower VIII

OK, one more quick Airfest picture before I call it a day. Those of you who live here in Florida may be familiar with hurricanes. No, not the University of Miami football team, the giant storms that menace us during the summer. The plane above is the one that NOAA sends out to check on the storms, the one they talk about on the news all the time when hurricanes threaten. Imagine being in that relatively small plane, and flying through a storm with winds of 150 mph...

Why does it say US Department of Commerce on the side? I think that NOAA is a divison of the Department of Commerce. What you can't see on the side are the little stickers with hurricane icons on them, each marking a storm that this plane flew into.

Tri-Motored Heron

One of the more skittish birds I try to photograph is the tri-colored heron. Whenever I spot one, they are usually on the wing, trying to get out of camera range. But this fellow was nice enough to pose politely for a few moments atop a dam at Red Bug Slough Preserve in Sarasota.

Other than this birdy, there wasn't too much else to see. Maybe at a different time of year, you'd be more likely to see interesting things. I saw quite a few of the flowers below, which are sort of pretty, and I have no idea what they are called. They seem to sprout up from some sort of grass, and the flowers look almost like nothing more than some bird poop on a long grass stem. But closer examination reveals this not to be the case, as you can see in the detail below.

Oscar (Not Grouch)

Some of you may be getting tired of the pictures from the airshow, so just for a change of pace, here are some pictures from my trip out Sunday. I visited Oscar Scherer State Park, which is just south of Sarasota on US 41. Not sure why I'd never been, but it may have had something to do with the $4 cover charge. But once I got in, there was plenty to see and do. The shot above is the beautiful blossom of the coral bean plant. They are absolutely gorgeous when they are in bloom, but the rest of the year they are the sort of thing you hire lawn people to get rid of. They are composed of long thorny stems that will hurt you if you are unlucky enough to run into one. But those flowers...

The caterpillars above seemed to be really enjoying the fern they had just devoured, crawling up and down each stem to make sure they hadn't left anything edible behind.

They say that beauty is where you find it, and also in the eye of the beholder, so that may be two strikes against this little scene. What you are looking at is the aftermath of a forest fire on a palmetto bush. The fire killed part of a new frond that hadn't emerged from the stalk of the plant yet. That's the brown part of the fan. The green part you see survived the fire. Then the whole thing sprouted, and voila! I think it makes for a nice picture, with the juxtaposition of the two colors like that.

Superiority Through Airpower VII

One of the more anticipated events at Airfest was the flyover of the B1 bomber. We were told over the PA that it was only going to make one pass, and then they started telling us how far out it was. Slowly but surely the distance to fly-by got less and less, then there it was. No time to take more than a single picture, so what you see above is all I got. It was almost flying across the sun when I got my finger on the trigger, so I apologize for the rather interesting coloration. Macdill was one of 6 airshows this stealthy baby was visiting that day, and they made a big deal about how it was a 'training mission', not a joy ride to half a dozen airshows. Yeah, right.

Last year, we were treated to a double flyover by a B2 stealth bomber (it flew one way, then back the other way...), as well as a series of demonstrations of the F-117 stealth fighter. They even had a F-117 on the ground that you could get fairly close to, but not so close that you could touch it. It was also very well guarded, so you couldn't have laid a finger on it if you tried.

Superiority Through Airpower VI

Now that's power! You wouldn't want to be standing anywhere near these things when the pilot fires up the turbines.

Superiority Through Airpower V

Sometime towards the end of the day, people at the airshow started gathering on the flightline to watch the final act of the day. But the guys above had the best seat in the house, out on the wing of this cargo plane. I asked them how much it'd cost to get one of those prized seats, and they said about $78 million. I tried to get them to accept my Visa card, but I guess those big planes don't come equipped with POS terminals. Oh, well.

Superiority Through Airpower IV

No airshow would be complete without skydivers, and this one was no exception. These guys were jumping out of their perfectly good plane before I could even get into the main gate. When they spun around and formed this little heart, the crowd around me made a loud collective "awwwwww" right on cue.

You'll notice that I continuously compare this airshow to last year, because last year was my first trip, and I think it really was a better show. For 2004, they had several groups of skydivers at different points throughout the day. It sort of made for something a little interesting, and at a more human speed. Too many rapid turns of the head to watch a 600mph fly-by can be hard on the neck. These skydivers did a lot of twirls and dips and spins, but they weren't moving at a neck-jarring pace.

Superiority Through Airpower III

This WWII vintage B-25 was a big hit with the war bird crowd. She made several bomb runs over the airfield, each time triggering a smoke bomb on the ground to explode and make a lovely show. The name of this plane was Panchito, and it had a lovely graphic painted on the nose. I didn't get a close-up picture of that graphic this year, but I think I have one from last year of the same plane... Here it is:

This was the only warbird they had this year. I guess there are plenty of specialized shows for those at other times of the year. I'll have to try to get to one of those in the near future.

April 2005-Week Three

The calendar page for this week features an unnecessary close-up of my cat, Baby. She's intently watching the world pass by outside the window, wishing she could be a part of it. But she's an indoor cat, and she'll have to make do with attacking electrical cords and what-not.

Superiority Through Airpower II

I know I promised more pictures from Airfest today, but it doesn't look like I'm going to get to them. So to hold you over, here's a group shot of many of the different airplanes I photographed.

Oodles of Doodles XI

Our latest doodle is quite a doosey! From the flip side to Peter Palmer-Presenting Peter Palmer (RCA Victor LSP-1736, 1958). Peter's claim to fame seems to be performing as Lil' Abner on the stage at some point. There's a bunch of blah-blah-blah on the back of the LP that I can't be bothered to read, mostly because I'm missing the Simpsons, but also because I have lots of stuff to post. So you'll have to look this one up yourself.

Superiority Through Airpower I

OK, I just got back From Macdill Airfest 2005. What a day! I will probably be posting pictures from this event all week, but I wanted to be sure and get something up tonight, just to let you know I made it up there. Getting in and out was much easier this year than last year, mostly because I knew what was going on. The shot above is a quicky from the over 800 pictures I snapped. (Don't worry though, I won't post all of them. There are quite a few that are nothing but blue sky. You'd be surprised how fast those jets fly sometimes!) Anyhow, I was pleasantly surprised when I saw this shot, since I didn't think I'd captured the effect. If you look closely, you can see vapor streaming off the wing tips, and also off the wing itself. That's not a smoke effect, that's due to some sort of shockwave that I need to learn more about. I could see it happening from the ground occasionally, but I never dreamed I'd capture it on film, as it was pretty fleeting when it occurred.

Anyhow, lot's more pictures coming, so please stay tuned!

The Sky Is Falling

The universe nearly came to an end today as the sun was partially consumed. Either that, or the moon just happened to pass in front of the sun for a few minutes. Since I'm still here and writing this, we'll have to assume it was the latter. As you can see, it was only a partial eclipse for me. It didn't even get noticeably darker, and I doubt anyone would have noticed it if they weren't looking for it. I had to borrow a welder's lens from work to be able to block out enough light to shoot. It's pretty rare that there's too much light in any shooting situation. There's no discernable detail in either the sun, or the edge of the light/dark line. My camera is at full zoom (both optical and digital!) to capture this, and it still doesn't record very much data.

I'll have to post my pictures of the last lunar eclipse on here sometime. They are much more impressive, as you can actually pick out details on the lunar surface. They're fuzzy, but they're there.

The Real Wayback Machine

You might not find Sherman & Mr. Peabody there, but this is the closest you're going to find to their Wayback Machine. The Internet Archive Wayback Machine is a giant repository of snapshots taken of the entire world wide web any given moment in time. They can explain it better than I can, but if you spend a few minutes looking around their site, you'll be amazed. I'm sorry I don't have a cool picture to show you, but you can see an old picture of me on the old company website here. (Or maybe you can't. I don't seem to be able to get that particular picture to pop up. So I'll stick it in here. Darrin Otten took the picture, to give credit where credit is due.)

Keep On Truckin'

The truck you see above is one of the delivery vehicles we use here at work. The unique thing I wanted to point out was that I took the picture of the welder used in the graphic on the side. There are three of these trucks running around, one in Bradenton, FL, one in Lakeland, FL, and one in Twinsburg, OH. It's kinda neat to see some of your work blown up bigger than life and plastered on the side of a big moving billboard.

Set the Way Back Machine to 1983!

It seemed pretty cool at the time, but appearing in the paper can leave traces of you that might be better off lost to the sands of time. But it's still pretty cool, I guess. The picture above is from the Lakeland Ledger, sometime in either late 1982 or the first half of 1983. I was in the 7th grade at the time, that's my big head on the right. The guy in the center is Matt Hilliard, and the fellow to the left is Lex Little. Lex was the one who sent me a copy of this photo sometime last year. He found it while putting together a slide show for his parent's anniversary party. I've lost track of Matt, but I still see and talk to Lex every once in a while. That game you see us playing was a blatent ripoff of Stratego that we developed in a gifted class. I had that game under my bed for years and years and years.

Flutterby

A friend of mine (Hi Jess!) got a new laptop, and she asked me for a picture she could use as her desktop wallpaper. Normally that's not an odd request, but this is one of those fancy new laptops with a wider-than-normal screen. So I had to look for a picture that could be cropped to the proper dimensions, and still maintain some interest. The little butterfly above is what I found that I thought looked best. I think this was about the fifth or sixth picture I sent to her, but as soon as I saw it, I knew this would be the favorite. Now she wants a new picture every week...

I believe it's a viceroy butterfly, but I'm not sure. They are known for the way they resemble monarch butterflies. I shot the photo at my parent's house last Sunday. Well, I looked it up, and I don't think it's a viceroy. I'll keep looking...

Aha! If you go here, you'll see that it's a Gulf fritillary, or something like that. I've been calling these by the wrong name all my life. (Probably because I'd have a hard time saying fritillary.)

Oodles of Doodles X

I know what you're thinking. You've seen these bears before. They seem to be pretty popular. I think I first saw them somehow associated with The Grateful Dead. However, that's not where I got 'em. These guys hail from the back of Allan Sherman's Allan In Wonderland (Warner Brothers 1539, 1964). Whether this is the first place these bears show up or not, I can't say. It's hard to search Google for something as generic as "bears" and expect any meaningful results. More updates as events warrant.

They Thought They Had It Bad

The little icon above is from some inner sleeve that I've long since misplaced, but I remember it came out of a UK LP from the 80's. At the time, the recording industry was sure that cassette tapes were going to destroy the record industry. It was thought that people would record their music off the radio, or from their friend's records, and they wouldn't be able to sell any new albums. I think the upshot of that fear was that a small piece of the purchase price of blank cassettes goes to the record industry to help cover their losses. I believe the same thing is true of music CDRs.

Obviously, they didn't realize how easy they had it back before Shawn Fanning (or Seth Green, perhaps) broke the whole industry wide open with Napster. Ernie recommends Soulseek to help kill the music industry.

Ernie Not On The Web

Well, this entry was supposed to point you to an online article about the Hillsborough Inlet Lighthouse for which I supplied the pictures, but as I search for it, I discover it's no longer available online. The photo above should give you an idea about it though. The lighthouse is on a Coast Guard base, and is rarely open to the public. Several times a year they arrange tours, and I was lucky enough to catch one of them. I had to drive over to the other coast the day before (it's a four hour drive), and stay in a hotel overnight. Next time I'll make reservations before I go... After joining the lighthouse association, I boarded a boat, and off we went. It was my first time seeing this lighthouse, and it's very interesting, but unfortunately, it's on a very developed stretch of coastline in Boca Raton. Getting a picture of just the lighthouse without a condo in the frame proved to be a little tough. After spending all morning there, I drove down to Key Biscayne and saw another lighthouse, then spent the evening shooting the Miami skyline until well after sunset. Then the long, long drive back home. It was a great trip, but the sky was overcast almost the whole time, so I didn't get the beautiful pictures I'd hoped for. The link I had hoped to share was for a Coast Guard publication with an article about the tour I took, written by the gentleman who was stationed at the top of the light for the tour. He had requested copies of my pictures after he saw how many photos I was taking, then asked to use them in his article. I've got a copy of the article somewhere, and maybe I'll share it here someday.

Oodles of Doodles IX

The innocent young tots above come from the flip side of The Sound Of Children by Hugo & Luigi With Their Children's Chorus (RCA Victor LPM-2159, 1960). The career of Hugo & Luigi seems to go way back, and then forward into the disco era. We won't hold that against them, though.

Flower Power

Another destination last weekend was the Exotic Plant Festival at Tropiflora Nursery. It's not a long trip, since it's about half a mile from the condo, but it's like stepping into another world, where pineapples bloom in purple, and aloe is red instead of green. The shot above is the blossom on one of the thousands of bromeliads they had on display. They had specimens in just about every color of the rainbow, save blue. Well, I suppose there's a little blue in this flower spike, so they had all the colors covered.

The flower above is a Faux Bombax. The closed flower does look a little like a real bombax, but the flowers are worlds apart. Just trust me on this. I'll show you a bombax flower some other time.

It's sort of like an aloe plant, but it's red. If real aloe heals burns, I'd be nervous about slicing this one open and spreading the goo inside on my skin...

I should have bought this little cactus, with it's delicate spirals of blosooms. But I was afraid that it was one of those plants that dies after it blossoms. Maybe next year... If you look close at the picture, you can see little bits of potting soil stuck in the spines. That may give you a sense of scale in this photo.

Air Fest! Air Fest! Air Fest!

Macdill Airfest 2005 is this weekend! You gotta go to this if you care at all about planes. I spent 8 hours last year looking straight up through the lens of my camera. Oh, and four hours looking straight out through the windshield of my car at the massive traffic jam at the exit. That was just about long enough for my neck to start feeling better, and more than long enough for my butt to go numb. And don't get me started about the sunburn...

April 2005-Week Two

This weeks' calendar page is a spectacular sunrise over St. Armands Key, with the city of Sarasota in the background. You have to get up mighty early to capture sunrise, but more often than not, it's worth the trouble.

Oodles of Doodles VIII (My Three Suns)

Our official doodle today is from The Three Suns-Having A Ball With The Three Suns (RCA Victor LSP-1734, 1958). This doodle is actually signed and it's readable. Lou Myers is the fellow to whom we owe the honor. I started flipping through my records by The Three Suns, and an awful lot of them have little doodles on the back, so I'm sure we'll revist the Nevins boys (et al) again and again.

The Mouse

One of the places I visited this past weekend was Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World. One of the benefits to knowing an employee up there is that you occasionally get the opportunity to go into the parks for free. It's a lot more fun that spending $50 some odd dollars. You can go late in the day after the crowds have thinned out, and the lines are much shorter on the rides. We walked right onto The Haunted Mansion and Mickey's PhilharMagic. We also rode the new Stitch ride that replaced Alien Encounter (which itself replaced Mission To Mars years ago). But I've got to tell you, it stinks. Well, if you've been on it, you'll think that's a joke, but really, it's lousy. Little kids may like it because they get to see Stitch, but as a ride, it gets the big thumbs down. Strange they didn't ask me what I thought before they invested millions of dollars in the refurb...

I never go anywhere without the camera, and Disney was no exception. We didn't arrive until well after dark, so all I got were hand-held night shots. Thankfully, they illuminate the castle pretty well, and my camera has some built-in tricks for getting decent shots at longer exposures. I don't think the shot of Walt and friend above in front of the castle is too bad.

Tower Of Song

Well, it's sort of a doodle, but it's more like a line drawing, or even an architectural drawing, so we're throwing this one in on it's own. It's the Capitol Records Tower on the corner of Hollywood and Vine in SoCal. The LP is by various Capitol artists and is called Full Dimensional Sound From The Capitol Tower (Capitol W9031). One side is labelled Popular Selections, the flip side is Classical Selections. This tower shows up on all sorts of LPs from Capitol over the years. I've got one right here by Ray Anthony called Jam Session At The Tower (Capitol T749, 1956), which claims to be the first recordings made at the new facility. Even today, the website for Capital Records is called Hollywood And Vine.

Whenever I hear Leonard Cohen's Tower Of Song, I picture it as taking place in the Capitol Tower. Hank Williams is way up near the top, and poor Lennie is a thousand floors below him.

Tie Me Up

Another weekend, another tie. This one is a little older than the last, I think, and claims to be hand painted. Wish I could come up with one of these every weekend, but after fifty years, they tend to get a little bit hard to find.