Western Grebe

Western Grebe (Aechmophorus occidentalis)
Blogged Previously.

Better detail:

Closeup:

(He has an odd spot there between eye and bill.)

cornell
Similar to Clark's Grebe, but has black surrounding the eyes and a duller yellow or greenish bill.

Clark's Grebe is Uncommon in ND.

wiki Western Grebe
The Western Grebe has black around the eyes and a straight greenish-yellow bill whereas the Clark's Grebe has white around the eyes and an up-turned bright yellow bill.

wiki Clark's Grebe



Wiki has a list of birds for North Dakota.

Northern Harrier

Northern Harrier (Circus cyaneus) Male



Photo taken by my companion with the XSi and tele.
My first impression when I saw him alongside the road was that he looked very white. Like a seagull, but obviously not a seagull.
Although common around here, I think this is the first time I've ever seen a male.
He flew away and we followed him with the car and then he actually started flying toward us. That's when we got this photo.
He was more intent on his prey than our vehicle, evidently. It pays to be persistent sometimes.

cornell
enature
npwrc

For male photos:
google images

Music

Listening to:
Ride
Cary Brothers - Ride (Tiesto radio Edit)
Best sound quality.

wiki

Another version
Cary brothers Ride with lyrics

Grooveshark

I was reading a discussion on reddit about YouTube as an audio only player and ended up googling about Grooveshark which led me to find this playlist which is good for background music while working on my laptop. I have no idea who the user is.

I also liked listening to the Graham Colton Here Right Now album.

Image Sequencer

So I wanted a free software program that would automatically create all the image stills in my videos.
I think VLC just does a one image screenshot.

The google search criteria to use is "mov to jpg" or something like it.
I was using "video capture stills frames" and coming up with single screenshot results.

Here's the Q &A I found googling.

3 Software programs mentioned:

1. VirtualDub
(File > Save Image Sequence)
I tried VirtualDub but that wouldn't open anything I had. I think it just works with *.avi type files.

2. MPlayer
I didn't want to compile, so I chose the "frontend" version for Windows and downloaded the
portable version
smplayer-portable-0.6.9.7z (13.32 MB)



Under the Video Menu there is a Start/Stop taking screenshots (Shift/D).
Open Video, start playing it and do Shift/D. It spits out all the frames/stills in the smplayer/screenshots directory by default. Can change the location in Options Menu, Preferences, General.

I got bigger images in Compact Mode (Ctrl/C) or FullScreen (F). Right click on screen for popup menus.

Command Line -vo option (e.g. -vo png, -vo jpeg)
option -ss 01:10:00 to seek to the starting position
-endpos xx to save xx seconds of video
(From Q&A link above, did not try this.)

3. Avidemux
Windows 2.5.4 ZIP

I liked the Avidemux interface better than SMPlayer. I got popup messages upon opening wmv and mov that I didn't know what to do with.
Click on the Marker A and Marker B Icons to set the Selection start and stop.



File, Save, Save Selection as jpeg.
Does window size matter for the image size? Can't remember.
File size was significantly smaller on jpg than png spit out by SMPlayer and VLC. I don't know if that means the image quality isn't as good, since they are just screenshots, right. Doing some tests, the jpg quality is about equal to compression 20 in Paint Shop Pro.

I saved the selection as a video and it worked okay. I tried both avi and mp4.



I then tried slow motion and that worked okay too.
Video Menu, Frame Rate set to 5.

I'd like to spend more time with Avidemux and see what all I can do with it.

Here's a still I got off my meadowlark video. I'd never get this kind of shot trying to capture the flight with camera images alone. It happens too fast.

European Starling

European Starling (Sturnus vulgaris)


enature
cornell
(Good comparison photos here. Compare with the immature red-wing blackbird. And the female, a blah brown, could be difficult to distinguish from other species.)

Here's a good photo comparison of the European Starling at different times/stages.
paulnoll.com

UPDATE 8May11:

More/better

Tree Swallow

(Pretty creamy bokeh background.)

Tree Swallow (Tachycineta bicolor)

cornell
enature

Couple:

(I like the colors.)
Females and males must look the same? There were a lot of them and all I saw were the ones that looked like this.

This was a park sign bird house setting, one of the reasons why I got the nice closeup shot above.

Pine Siskin

I think this is a Pine Siskin, which means he's a winter bird for our area. Closely related to the goldfinch.

cornell
(Spinus pinus)
"The most common of the irruptive 'winter finches,' the Pine Siskin often remains on the wintering grounds long enough to breed."

enature
(Carduelis pinus)

Carduelis vs Spinus:
itis favors Carduelis.
wiki (1976...Spinus merged into Carduelis)
wiki - carduelis (2009 Cornell link.)

House Finch - House Sparrow

Mr and Ms House Finch and Mr and Ms House Sparrow all on the same tree.



House Finch (Carpodacus mexicanus):
Male:

Female:


cornell
enature

House Sparrow (Passer domesticus):
Male:

(He looks interesting. I'd sure like to get more/better photos of him.)

Female:


I think this is a female house sparrow also (better detail):


Must be nesting. That's a overexposed feather in her beak.

enature
cornell

UPDATE 2May11
Here's another one of the male house sparrow. He looks so cute. Nesting.

Butterfly

I think this butterfly is a Polygonia comma.
There's a winter and summer form. Must be the winter form.
I was surprised to see a butterfly this early. There was a break in the rainy/snowy overcast weather. It was sunny and maybe 45-50 degrees at about 10:30 am.

wisconsinbutterflies.org
(Has pics of winter and summer forms.)

"The Eastern Comma is the most common of the commas and is found throughout the state. Adults of this species hibernate and appear on warm sunny days in the early spring, even when there is still snow present. After a long winter it is a real pleasure to see these butterflies flying around."

bugguide drill down to
Genus Polygonia - Commas, Question Mark
Species comma - Eastern Comma

wiki
ND Butterflies

Yellow-rumped warbler

New bird.
A migrant.



Yellow-rumped warbler (Dendroica coronata)

cornell
enature
wiki

My Dakotas Bird book says:
"Sometimes called Butter-butts due to the yellow patch on rump. Was formerly called Audubon's or Myrtle Warbler."



White throat would be the Myrtle form (SDBirds).
Or Adult Male Eastern (cornell).

Apophysis Windows 7

There is a Windows 7 UI version of 3D Apophysis.

Some improvements, but it's basically the same.

Most of the current online activity for this software is at deviantart.

It's probably easier to google what you want (tuts, news, plugins, scripts, flames etc.) rather than surf deviantart directly.

I didn't see much new beyond very basic tuts. And I think much of the fractal creations rely on plugins and scripts. What I've already posted for Apo info is still relevant and probably still contains the best links.

There also might be some current info at fractalforums.

Muskrat Love

These muskrats are fun to observe (previously). They were out at 2pm this day, so my theory that they are only out and about early in the morning was wrong.

The male was feeling amorous again and his mate looked less than enthused:


Scuffle ensues:



Maybe I'll get baby photos eventually if they stick around the same area.

Muskrat Love, by America.

songfacts.com
“This was written by the Texas singer Willis Alan Ramsey in 1972, who recorded it as "Muskrat Candlelight." America recorded the song on their 1973 album Hat Trick before Captain & Tennille recorded their hit version in 1976...
This song really is about 2 muskrats making love. It's not to be taken seriously, and even contains synthesized sound effect to simulate the muskrat copulation. This sound was played at the end of the song and included in the end groove of the 45 single, so when the record ended, it played the muskrats on a loop until the record player was attended. ”

Is that really true? I have no idea, lol.

Lyrics...
And now he's ticklin' her fancy
Rubbin' her ties
muzzle to muzzle now
anything goes
as they wiggle
and Sue starts to giggle

And they whirled and they twirled and they tangoed
Singin' and jinglin' the jango
Floatin' like the heavens above
It looks like muskrat love...

Mystical Goose

Canada Goose


I thought this looked kinda cool. Mystical? or something.
I had to do some post-processing work. I cloned out a few branches. The right wing tips were clipped, so I copied mirrored blended the wing tips from the left side. Tone Mapping and High Pass Sharpen to increase definition. But it really was white snow drifts for background in April, yes, it's true. lol.

Canada Geese are very common around here and sometimes considered pests. I don't post anymore photos of them unless something unusual shows up like the photo above.

Alice

I finally watched Alice In Wonderland.
Worth a watch.
I liked the song by Avril. I didn't know she wrote a song for the movie.
I recognized her voice when the song played.

YouTube
Avril Lavigne - Official 'Alice (Underground)' Music Video (HQ)

Lyrics...
It can't stop me now
I - I'll get by
I - I'll survive
When the world's crashing down
When I fall and hit the ground
I will turn myself around...

wiki
songfacts

“Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

Photo Walk

Spring Thaw:


The usual spring sightings of robins, Canada geese, mallards, and...

Out for breakfast, a muskrat:



Well, that's something new.
Just an insignificant speck in the scheme of things:



Okay, here, take your best mug shot:



And there he was, gone:



I see them every morning about 7:50 am and by about 8:15 am or so they disappear. I see two couples at two different locations. Not much light so my camera is really straining to get a decent exposure and the photos aren't the best, but I'm happy to get something.

Feeling frisky (different day):



And a little further North along the river, a beaver, obviously bigger than those tiny muskrats:



I like the water texture. Moving right along, cutting thru that water pretty fast... and *slaps* the water with that flat tail and disappears.

wiki - muskrat
muskrat? previously
wiki - beaver

The End - Music

The End by Pearl Jam
What a sad song. Made me cry.
Nope, never heard it before. Found it while googling some stuff on the Castle tv show (Epi 213).

Backspacer Album 2009. 9th album.
songmeanings.net

I also like:
Just Breathe
Love his deep voice.

Eddie Vedder songs - previous blog posts:
Better Days (Eat, Pray, Love)
Hard Sun (Into The Wild)

Trading Yesterday - Music

Trading Yesterday, now known as The Age of Information

My Space

YouTube
She's The Sunlight
Shattered
The Beauty & The Tragedy
One Day

Windows Explorer Alternatives

Windows Explorer Dislikes:
1. I can't get it to remember my Column Header Titles (Apply View to All Folders does not work.)
2. I can't set it to display the full file path in the address bar at all the times, not just when I click on it. (Essential for doing backups. I need to see what drive I'm on.)
3. It doesn't refresh and sometimes crashes because of this.
4. I'd like a better search.

Alternatives:
I tried portable versions of:
Cube Explorer
FreeCommander
Explorer ++
seExplorer

The only one that has good Column Header Titles is Cube Explorer.
I wouldn't even consider using the other ones because of that.



• I like the clean interface.
• Nice Themes. I like the Green one.
• Has Tabbed Window Views.
• I like the No Folders Filter.
• Single Instance Only Setting.
• No 7Zip in right click popup.
• Search: No Date Criteria, no Views (You can search for *.jpg, but you can't view thumbnails.)
• The Sessions is a good idea, but a tad buggie and doesn't offer much except to bookmark a folder. Can't save selected Column Headers or Views or Filters. Make sure Sessions is set to Default on exit. If you have one of your saved sessions checkmarked and exit, whatever you are viewing is saved as that session.

FreeCommander and Explorer ++ have a Wipe File option that might be useful.

Explorer++ - column header titles are a mess, but it does have an Extension header. And Dimension is split into Width and Height Headers.

Reference

ReverbNation

Since MySpace is kinda dead now, I was wondering what bands/musicians are using now.
Discussion (garagepunk).

I liked reverbnation because I found songs to try right away.

Try:
Alexander Cardinale
Traffic Lights
Has a different background sound to it.

Reminds me of?...Sugarcult. Not sure why.



Sugarcult - Memory
Pencil stick figures playing guitar and singing - Fun. It's so amusing what people come up with for videos sometimes. (Way back in Nov 2006.)
Sugarcult - Memory
The band playing.

Other sites mentioned in discussion:
musicalley
bandcamp