This gallery contains 8 photos.
I visited the Quechee Vermont Hot Air Balloon Festival this weekend with my brother, nephew Matt, and his friend Matthew and his father. We saw “The Glow” opening night, where all the balloons are tied down at dusk, and illuminated by the light of their burners, and had my first balloon ride on Sunday Continue reading
I took advantage of the nice weather on Sunday to spend some more time on the Charles. Earlier in the afternoon, I went in town to go rollerblading for the first time in a long time. I started in Allston, and skated up the bike paths, then crossed over the Anderson bridge to Memorial Drive and skated up to Western Avenue. There was a dragon boat race there, so it was really crowded. It was fun to be back on skates, but boy, was it painful. My legs just aren’t what they used to be.
After getting back to the car, I headed back out to Newton to go kayaking. I’d gone downstream last week, so this week I was determined to go upstream, all the way to the Route 16 dam if I could.
I’m feeling rather like Elmer Fudd lately. Critters have been eating the bejesus out of my flower garden. And they don’t just eat a few leaves. They leave NOTHING. The morning glories…stripped down to bare stems. My brand new lupines…only a few leaves left. The zinnias….gone.
I’m not sure exactly who the perpetrator is. We saw a woodchuck last year, and this year we’ve seen a small rabbit lurking around the garden. The rabbit is small and cute, but quite brazen.
I decided to try animal repellents. The first one was a pepper based one…no good. Then, last week I picked up one that contained dried fox urine, and sprinkled that around, and put in some replacement zinnias. When I came home last night, the zinnias were nearly gone, and the garden still stank. Great.
I think part of the problem is that there aren’t as many cats around as there used to be. Our cat Mugsy is long gone, and the neighbor across the street who had cats died a couple of years ago, and her cat isn’t there anymore. I first noticed the problem late last year, but now it’s out of hand.
I’m not sure what do do now. I like having flowers in the garden, but I’m restricted to what the animals won’t eat. So far, they haven’t cared for the impatiens, portulaca, roses, or snapdragons. For some reason, of course, they don’t seem to like weeds. I guess I need to decide if I want to care how things look, and then see if I can find some more plants the animals don’t like, or just throw in the towel.
This gallery contains 11 photos.
Despite the clouds and mist, I went kayaking along the Charles today. I headed downstream against a fairly stiff breeze out of Charles River Canoe and Kayak in Newton. Along the way, I saw a number of swans, a bunch of canadian geese, and the fiberglass animals that one of the homeowners has deployed along the way. Continue reading
I saw this turtle laying eggs alongside the East Bay Bike Path this evening, just north of where the pipes cross over the path
I did the first local dives of the season today. After 80° water in Bonaire, 46° at Pebble Beach this morning was pretty nippy.
The first dive had all the hallmarks of a first dive of the season. I forgot to bring the anti-fog for my mask, and nearly made it to the water before realizing I’d left my gloves back at the car.
I also realized pretty quickly that I’d forgotten the intricacies of operating my camera. I couldn’t remember how to change the f/stop, and had a little trouble finding the controls to set the flash to alway fire.
There also wasn’t too much to see… lots of kelp, lots of crabs, some small lobsters, and a funny looking fish at the end. Along the way, I saw a baby sea robin, but the pictures aren’t very sharp– I guess I was too close.
Hermit Crab
Funny Looking Fish
Starfish and Algae
After the dives, I finished off planting the garden. Right now, I’m pretty grubby and pretty sore, but at least the yard work is done. For now.
We had another of those time-sucking mysteries yesterday, when we had a problem with a page that was supposed to redirect to another page using a ColdFusion cflocation tag– but didn’t.
This gallery contains 6 photos.
After an afternoon spent doing yard work yesterday, I decided to take the bike for a ride along the Charles after supper. The paths are flat there, and I needed the exercise. As an afterthought, I decided to bring along … Continue reading
Yesterdays’s post about the Boston Trolley Meet was more about playing with the iOS WordPress app, and the HTML 5 <video> element, but it did remind me that there was another recent local centenary that I’ve been meaning to talk about: the 100th anniversary of the opening of the initial section of the MBTA’s Red Line. The original section of the Red Line opened from Harvard Square to Park Street on March 23, 1912.
There was also a presentation from one of the restorers at the Seashore Trolley Museum, and I picked up several issues of Rollsign, plus a copy of the 1947 transportation report for Boston. I also saw, but couldn’t afford, a rollsign from one of the Boeing LRVs.
(Note- this video and post were shot and composed on my iPhone.)
Update: The video, which uses the HTML 5 video element, is only viewable on Safari, as far as I can tell. I’d have to create a second encoding for Firefox and Opera users, which kind of limits the usability of adding video through the iOS WordPress app.
Second update: unlike the WordPress web app, you can’t switch easily between WYSIWYG and raw code modes– and the app (or the OS) aggressively converts encoded angle brackets to actual angle brackets– leading to accidental tags.
Third update, 4/30: Created WebM and Ogg Theorea versions, and changed markup to use video and source tags, instead of video with a single src attribute. It’s now visible on Firefox and Opera, and I assume Chrome. What a nuisance.