3D Color Anaglyph of Cascades, Mt. Phelps

This is the Cascade Mountains east of Seattle. The rock standing up in the mid foreground left is Mt. Phelps and the peak in the background on the right is Mount Hinman on the north side of Snoqualmie pass. I believe that the peak in the center of the picture is Cashmere Mountain just west up the valley from Leavenworth. Cashmere Mt. is the furthest point visible in this picture and is the center of this anaglyph.

This picture taken from about 6000 ft on the south side of Tolt Reservoir looking south east.

Global Warming Is Mass Hysteria

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_hysteria

Mass hysteria, also called collective hysteria, mass psychogenic illness, or collective obsessional behavior, is the sociopsychological phenomenon of the manifestation of the same or similar hysterical symptoms by more than one person.

A common manifestation of mass hysteria occurs when people believe they are suffering from a similar disease or ailment.[1]

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The above definition of mass hysteria describes our collective frenzy of 'Global Warming'. We need to recognize Global Warming as the collective western psychosis it has become and think about what we are doing reasonably.

One of the symptoms of this psychosis is that collectively we don't recognize it as such.

Fortunately this hysteria has only infected the western world and most of the worlds population are insulated from it.

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The picture is the partially flooded Snohomish river valley, near Duvall, after our recent annual flood last week .

Bellevue, Seattle, Olympics from the Cascades

On the way back from the mountains we saw Bellevue, Seattle, Bremerton (can't really make out anything of Bremerton) and the Olympic mountains. Both lake Sammamish and Lake Washington are visible in the picture. The tallest building in Seattle is the Bank of America building (formerly the Columbia tower on the left of the city. On the right of the city, the tall tower (with the ship behind it) is the Seattle Space Needle.

This shot makes the city seem awfully small.

Cascades McClain Peaks

McClain Peaks are on the left, Mt. Phelps is on the right. We just had a major snow storm in the Cascades, followed by a heavy warm rain. Its frozen again today in these pictures with more snow expected tomorrow.
Here we are coming around the north side of McClain. Very steep terrain, cliffs, snow chutes etc.
Swinging around to the west side of the peaks.
Closest approach. This shot is very clear and quite a bit of detail can be seen. It would be a pretty serious technical climb to get up here with feet on the ground.

Sun Shines on Seattle

Sun shines on Seattle today. The flood I was concerned about on the Snohomish will not happen. The flood level not only will not be as bad as last year, it won't even be in the top ten.

I'm happy about that. Doesn't mean we won't get another storm. We typically have up to two a year.

Storm 'Emergency' in Seattle ... Not!

Today our Gov. declared 'A State of Emergency' because of 'massive flooding, heavy rain, and high winds. Granted the wind was bad in some places but, it wasn't as bad as last year when parts of Seattle lost power for almost 4 days. The 'flooding' was bad with some local flash floods but, it wasn't as bad as last year when the Snohomish reached the tops of the levee's in, well the town of Snohomish though it may reach as high as last year again tomorrow, it's been much worse the recent past.

Frankly, if flooding and high winds happen every year in November and December its no longer an emergency its just another monsoon season in Seattle. By the way, we invite everyone to come visit us during monsoon season. We have great coffee and our favorite tour buses are recycled WWII amphibious trucks.

Come to Seattle during the monsoon and "Ride the Duck". We will leave the water fountains running for you. :)

It's not an 'Emergency'. Yes it is a bad storm but it happens every year. Relax already.

Eagle Sclupture

This is a beautiful and thought provoking sclupture on the stairs next to the Federal building in Seattle. It is an eagle in a cage. Symbolically it is quite thought provoking and I stop to look at it a couple of times a year.

One of my Favorite Things

This is one of my favorite things. I'm currently approaching Mount Pilchuck from the south a little east (2 miles) of the peak closing on Bathtub Lakes.

On the panel, clockwise from the top we first have the clock, which I did not set so ignore it. Next is the airspeed indicator which is showing about 115 mph. The attitude indicator shows a slightly nose high attitude. The altimeter reads 6,700 ft. Rate of climb (below the altimeter) shows 400 ft/min. DG shows we are heading magnetic 10 deg (roughly north). Turn coordinator shows no turn.

The Garmin GPS bolted to the yoke shows 97 knots ground speed and 12 deg bearing, there is no way point selected. Can not see the tachometer as it's behind the yoke, it was about 2500 rpm.

Throttle Quadrant, throttle is open, mixture (red leaver) slightly leaned, forward is full rich. Master switch (the red one) is on, axillary fuel pump off, split strobe rocker has tail beacon on with wingtip strobes off, pitotheat (airspeed probe de-ice) is off. To the right of the mixture the carburetor heat is off and the exhaust gas temperature meter 'EGT' (for helping to set mixture) is inoperative.

The engine gages across the middle just behind the yoke indicate, oil pressure green, oil temp green, amps looks like 6 or 7 which, since almost everything is off is ok, left fuel tank obscured by the yoke, fuel pressure good, right fuel tank full.

Starting at the top of the radio stack the com is set to radio one, the top one which is set to 120.20 or Paine Field east runway, Com 1 VOR/ILS radio is off. Comm 2 below is off as is it's VOR. The transponder is squawking VFR or 1200, mode C (alt) activated ('altitude encoding' displays aircraft altitude on aircraft controller's radar screens.)

The last thing is the magnetic compass, on top of the dashboard in the window, which shows a north heading. There is also a temperature gage through the window that is not visible in the picture but was reading zero Celsius at 7,000 ft.

The next three things after clearing the mountain were, setting the GPS course to KPAE, trim for decent and 150 mph cruise, check the PAE Atis and verify tango was still current. Interestingly the decent profile calculation from the GPS (500 ft / min) indicated the decent from 7,000 should start just west of Pilchuck at 145 mph to reach pattern altitude 2 miles from the airport. That calculation was very close to the actual result.

In this panorama are the two Washington Mutual Towers. A new condo project is going up in front of them. You can see why developers would rather not have the Aurora Viaduct along the water front. We could probably replace it with a floating bridge across Elliot bay someday. Building a tunnel would be tough since its on in either Glacial till or land fill along the waterfront. Someday though we will get our rictor 8 and knock the thing down.

Stitched together like this the resulting image above is 4,138 by 3,486 or 14.4 million pixels. It is not saved to that resolution in this blog.

The building on the right is featured in another image in this blog. I still think it is the prettiest building in Seattle.

Mt. Pilchuck

 

Click on any of these for a larger image version.

I realized last night that I took several image 'series' on Sunday that could be strung together for a wider angle view of Mt. Pilchuck. Even though individually most of the images have motion blur, when combined they make some impressive panoramas.

The image above is a wide angle (with fair distortion) of Mt. Pilchuck with the peek on the left and Bathtub Lakes on the right.

This second image is the back/east side of Pilchuck. Bathtub lakes are directly below the plane, the sadle is in the center and the north side of the mountain is visible on the right of the image


This is a good two image combination of 'Bathtub lakes' with low distortion. The dark smudge through the right half of the image is the pilot side vent window.

Mt. Pilchuck on a Late November Sunday Afternoon

Sunday, when the fog lifted, and I'd preflighted everything I could get to, cleaned the oleo gear struts with WD40, washed off the bird dirt, and added 40 gallons of 100LL av-gas.
I soloed her out to Mt. Pilchuck. These are the now frozen 'Bathtub Lakes'.
Two valleys north of Pilchuck is 'Three Fingers'.
This is the saddle area of Pilchuck to the right and below are Bathtub
Lakes, to the top and left is the peak.

The flight to Philchuck took about 20 miniutes, climbing to 7000 ft. Returning to Everett took only eight miniutes using the descent and smooth air to cruise at 150mph.

A Winter Day on Elliot Bay

We don't even need black and white film (or digital settings) to take monochrome pictures at noon in Seattle. Temperature 38 F, overcast with a snow storm coming in. (Rain in Seattle and snow at higher elevations and north of Everett)

Bicycle On Burke Gilman Trail

Five combined images of a bicycle in a trail tunnel on the Burke Gilman Trail in Bothell.

Photoshop is my friend :)

Waxing Gibbous Moon

Playing around with my first moon shot. This image taken tonight.

Bicycle At NIght

Commuting at night on a Bicycle. Image on 8th Ave yesterday night. I was trying to catch the motion, and the danger of commuting on a bicycle at night. This shot came out better than I expected.

No photoshop corrections, this is the raw image. Hand held pan, 138mm (135 equiv), .5s exposure, f/5.6, ISO 1600.

Stereo Seagull

Today I took this stereo pair of a seagull out on the Seattle waterfront. The above image is a Red-Blue 'color' anaglyph. Wear standard Red-Blue stereo glasses to see the 3D. The next image is the right left image pair. Some people (including me) can temporarily cross their eyes and merge them into a 3D view. The lenses refraction artifacts are real and are not post processing renders. The two images were takes about 1/3 second apart.

The Zune, 0.92 years and a Major Software Update Later ...

Well honestly I was secretly hoping for a major software update for the Zune that matched the features of the new models but I didn't expect them to follow through with it. I'm pleased. The device has a better look & feel with the new software. The old features are still there and a few new ones are available. I've not tried out yet the wireless update and wireless song 'relay' between multiple Zunes but intend to use them.

New features I have tried and really like are the better 'video' indexing and the Podcasts index. WooHoo! Much better and I'm not sifting through all my video content for video Podcasts.

Something not mentioned in any of the press releases on this topic is that consecutive song playback seems to be more continious without the brief blank spot between songs on the same album.

I will note here that this Zune has not caused me a bit of problem this entire year. It has locked up occasionally for a miniute and then re-booted but that has been very infrequent and usually happend only after I dropped the darn thing.

Still kinda like it, not to complicated, my mother could still operate it. :)

PS. The user interface highlight 'click-flash' is very cool. I know it's just UI flash but I like it anyway. Thank you!

Mt. St. Helens, Nov 11th, 2007

Approaching Mt. St Helens from the north west. The mountain in the background is Oregons Mt. Hood. The debrie's field below the Mt. has taken on a dark greenish cast because of new growth and Northwest algae growing on everything. Freezing level was about 7500 ft on this day. The temperature at 9500 ft ws -10C/12F.

Mt. St. Helens, Nov 11th, 2007

Mt. St. Helens, November 11th, 2007. The top of the mountain with the lava dome and glacier clearly visible. Temperature at 9500ft was -10C/-12F. The previously all grey vally floor had a distinct dark 'algae-green/dark gray' color to it. As you can see the mountain is starting to get it's winter snow cap.