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.

St. Helens Glacier

The St. Helens Glacier. This is the glacier that has been growing on St. Helens since the eruption. It is in shadow most of the year. The temperature at 9500 feet this day was -10 C. about 12 F. If you compare this image with the image in Google Earth you can the the glaciers progressive growth. This picture is taken over the west crater rim looking east. The east crater wall is at the top of the image. The Glacier runs diagonally through the image from top right to lower left with the lava dome in the center right.

Interesting this glacier will be turned into a Lahar and sweep away the I5 bridges (likely) over the Toutle/Cowlitz river when the dome collapses. Every year more water is stored in this glacier and the future lahar gains more force.

Saint Helens Lava Dome

St. Helen Lava Dome. Nov. 11th, 2007. Saturday afternnon. This is looking across the top of the dome from the west. The begining of the crater glacier is on the left side of this image 1/3 from the top. The south wall of the crater is to the right/top in this image.

This is the same area as in the next composit photo taken at an angle from 2 miles to the west.

St. Helens Lava Dome Nov 11, 2007

This is a composit of Saint Helens lava dome taken on Saturday November 11th, 2007. The distortion is reasonably low. If you are interested in these for a science study I can make the complete set of images available.

In this image the north crater wall is to the top. (click on image for a larger version)

The Green Ring of Life!

Got the XBox 360 back yesterday (see previous RRoD post, this blog). I'm kinda shocked since It went out UPS a week ago Monday Nov 6th and returned on Thursday November 15th. The shocking part is it has the same serial number on the case. Granted they could have just exchanged cases and sent me a new internal box but at least it gives the warm fuzzy that you got the same machine back.

This one seems better though ... like it has more cooling air flow than the last one, also included was a month of free XBox Live.

Works great! I'm pretty impressed with the service. Way better than I expected.

A little vertigo for you?

Heres a picture north of Rainer in a left turn to give you a bit of vertigo.

Out and About ...

... on a November Saturday afternoon. Went to St. Helens, Mt. Rainer, Snoqualmie Falls, it was fun. I'd not seen St. Helens up close for quite a few years. The dome has climbed up the south crater wall and the glacier is growing rapidily filling the east and north crater floor.

Thats Mt. Rainer in the background of this picture taken from the North East looking South.

Red Ring'O Death!

Uh-oh ... looks like my 360's got the dreaded RRoD. The support people were pretty efficient though. I couldn't understand the first guy ... he mumbled and I told him so then got mysteriously disconnected. The second time I called they went right through the check list and the box failed with flying colors.

MS is sending me a 360 coffin any day now. I'm feeling withdrawal, plus the dang thing was acting as my DVD player ...