Slick

Sunday, November 04, 2007

Comet Holmes visible to the naked eye!

I just found out yesterday that a comet recently became visible to the unaided eye. See Sky and Telescope online for sky maps and more information. I just now went outside to take a look, and even from our house, where the sky is not particularly dark, it is easy to see. To the naked eye, the comet looks like a moderately bright, fuzzy star. In binoculars, it looks like a fuzzy ball- obviously not a star. With my new 10" reflecting telescope, it looks like a really big, glowing globe, with the edge on one side not as well-defined as the other.

Comets bright enough to be easily seen in our light-polluted skies are very rare, so it's well worth taking a few minutes to look for it!

On an unrelated note, this is my first blog in a while, and I'm pleasantly surprised to find that Blogger's text editor is no longer running unbearably slow on my computer. Maybe I'll blog more often now that it's not a painful chore.

posted by Slick 8:53 PM

Monday, June 25, 2007

Carrie and I just got throught watching the TV series "Firefly" on DVD, all 14 episodes, followed by the movie "Serenity". Thanks to Ned for the loan- it was a great show by Joss Whedon of "Buffy" fame, and it deserved a much longer shot that what it got- canned in less than one season in 2002. At least they got to follow up with the movie and tie up a loose end or two. I highly recommend it, and suggest you watch the series before the movie. It says something that Carrie really liked it, too, and she doesn't like Star Trek or much else sci-fi. In other words, it's just a really good show!

The more I think about, the more depressed I get that Firefly didn't last longer. It left me wanting to see more, and that's not something I can say of anything else on TV or the big screen these days. I wish I'd seen it on the first run. Obviously, Fox didn't give it a chance to build an audience before killing it. I guess it's really gotten a following on DVD, thus the follow-up movie- which was really good, too.

posted by Slick 6:11 PM

Friday, May 11, 2007

Lots of bird happenings at home this past week or so. We had seven rose-breasted grosbeaks at the feeders, and I heard and saw four warblers in the yard: Cape May, Tennessee, blackpoll, and yellow. Two hummingbirds, a male and a female, showed up on the second. A mourning dove has been sitting on a nest in a cedar along the driveway for a few weeks now, and the house wrens have built a nest in the nest box.

Unfortunately, the new Blogger interface still runs incredibly slow on my computer, with multi-second delays every few seconds. It's extremely frustrating.

posted by Slick 7:10 PM

Tuesday, March 13, 2007

At long last, the new LCD albumn is out: Spacemen from Outer Space. It's hard to believe it's been over three years since their last, From Here to Providence. Crack open a beer, turn it up, and enjoy!

Meanwhile, spring is arriving. The weather was sunny, mid-seventies today. Birds are singing. The woodcock is back, calling from across the road, and six sandhill cranes flew over the house on their way north. I planted a few native wildflower bulbs today- jack-in-the-pulpit, dutchman's breeches, and wood poppy. I look forward to seeing them come up.

posted by Slick 9:08 PM

Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Old Greg, the full saga:
Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8I4BcyGe4tI
"When the hoodoo trance gets me, that's the way I go."

Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLhApuXGoPA
"I'm Old Greg!"

Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=he70x3xFk-k&NR
Simple farmer Bootsy Collins finds a visitor from outer space and is changed forever...

Sorry for not formatting the links, but Blogger keeps messing it up. And the Blogger editor runs waaaaaaaaay slooooooooow on my not-so-old computer. It really sucks to try and edit this when there is a multi-second delay for simple things like backspacing.

posted by Slick 6:45 PM

Saturday, February 17, 2007

Old Greg, mother licker!

posted by Slick 10:24 PM

All I wanted to do was to comment on the excellence of The Departed, which I just watched on DVD, and to do so I had to create some damn account with Google that I don't want or ever intend to use just to be able to login to Blogger again. Well, piss on Google and the dotcom punks that are now millionares from selling out Blogger. There are millions of people starving in the world, and you're living like kings because of some computer toy- which still has a crappily slow interface. You suck.

"Okay."

posted by Slick 10:11 PM

Wednesday, December 13, 2006

Carrie and I had a neat encounter with an owl this past weekend. We took the dogs for a late afternoon walk at Jackson Creek Park, a small park just up the road from our house and not far from Ned's. While we were walking, Carrie wondered if the fields and woods in the area might not be a good place for owls. Well, sure enough, as we were loading up the dogs a little after sunset, Carrie spotted a great horned owl flying in to perch in a tree in the woods across the road. We had a good view of the owl silouetted against the twilight sky, including its "horns", and even heard it hoot several times. How cool to see an owl so close to home!

Work at the land trust continues to go well. It's busy and sometimes a little overwhelming, but it's a great cause and I get to folk with godd folks. The best part is getting out and walking around in the woods- and getting paid for it!

posted by Slick 7:45 PM