New Year's Resolutions

I hope to keep up some of the momentum gained from this year. Here are some of my bloggy resolutions for the new year:

• More horizontal pixels for the main body text


• More photographs


• MOAR Cats


• More squid


• More snails


• More rocks


• Goat Pants?


• More frac sand posts


• More High Speed video


• Unscented deodorant


• Something wicked


• More invented words


• Enhanced links and keywords


• More plants


• Something about skeletons


• Something else about skeletons


• Something about dinosaurs that isn't about skeletons


• Additional information about regional geology


• A detailed review of the claim made by the pretender to the throne


• I should probably bake something


• At this point, you should probably look for someone to kiss


• Cat Vests?


• R- versus K-selection in the various Quendi races in The Lord of the Rings


• Tempo and Mode of evolution


• I will try to type without using vowels or verbs at least once a month


• If you are lucky, I will post more interesting tidbits about bookshelves


• Hidey-hidey hidey hidey-hi


• Scoodle-ee-boo, Scoodle-ee-boo, Scoodle-ee-boodle-ee-boodle-ee-boo


• No showtunes unless they be of a geological theme (or I'm feeling punchy)


• Geology sketchbook color by number


• I really want to go to Scotland


• If it ain't scottish it's crap


• Only 40 minutes left...


• Ringing in the New Year by Wringing out the Old


• Something related to dirt should be a fun topic or three


• Get ready, here it comes...


• HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

A Squidlet?

I'm going to be an uncle in a few months. My sister's first kid is due on March 1st and true to form, she didn't want to have a traditional "Shower," so we got together for a non-shower baby party for her and her husband (who is also a college professor, BTW). I drew up a card to congratulate them:



That's the cutest cephalopod I've ever drawn if I do say so myself...

Hand a guy a camera...

So I do this thing where by day I'm a geology professor, but at night and on weekends I take pictures. Last night we trekked over to Stillwater, MN where Paul and Lorraine were playing. I brought my camera and managed to get some okay shots of them playing (I usually haul some photo gear around because, you know, pictures happen). Kind of wish I could have gotten the folks at the front table out of the shot, but I needed the faster wide lens to make use of the available light (30mm f1.4 @ ISO 3200 for those of you who want to know)





I'm ruminating on a end-of-year post, so you might get more from me before the year's out.

Capillary Rise Experiment crosses 1000 hr point

My ongoing capillary rise experiments have crossed the 1000 hour mark! And the data still looks pretty.

A review and call reversal from the line judge

An astute reader noticed that my geology photo from a few weeks ago was probably misidentified. I was looking at a top-down satellite image of the Big Island of Hawai'i and trying to extrapolate which peaks I was looking at in this picture:



I had originally identified them as Mauna Loa, Mauna Kea, and Kohala. However, one reader questioned my original ID. And after looking more carefully (and not early in the morning before I had coffee), I had to agree with MacLaren that I had Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa switched. Then the reader suggested I was actually seeing Hualalai and not Kohala. I looked at the geometry of the image and from the satellite photo I wasn't 100% sure of that. So I went to the ultimate arbiter of what one can see from a particular spot: Google Earth. And sure enough, MacLaren was spot on:



I guess the moral of the story is this: double check your geographic reference points - using Google Earth can be very helpful - and welcome suggestions from readers. I probably wouldn't have noticed my error until much later without MacLaren's suggestions. Thanks :)

Asplody Sand

While I've always known that getting good video footage or great photographs often requires some setup, high speed video demands another level of pre-planning. That's one of the reasons for shooting so many test clips early on - the more I know what is going to be needed for capturing high speed video, the quicker it will go in the future. So here's a bunch of "meteorites" impacting some alien planetary surface.



I think it's time to get these impactors moving at higher speeds.