Vacation Pics Pt 3

Finally a few of scenic shots while hiking and some close up camera work on the plant life of the region. In the absence of grass or weeds, the interesting stuff low to the ground that generally gets overlooked stands out.


On top of a small peak. Our car is somewhere down on that road.


Another vista, with my friend standing in the way.


Pollution from Los Angeles usually ruined the view of the High Sierras on the other side of Owens Valley. But one day was a little clearer than the rest. Yes, those faint white patches are snow.

Close up shots. I should be able to identify most of these, but I'm a botanical dummy :(














The cones on a bristlecone. They take three years to mature.


The foxtail-like branch of a bristlecone. They shed only 2-3% of their needles each year, a normal pine sheds about 1/3.

The End. I already need another vacation.

Vacation Pics Pt 2

After visiting Yosemite and Mono Lake, my friend and I went up into the White Mountains to do some camping and hiking. The number one attraction while up there, besides the natural beauty, is the ancient bristlecone pine forest.


These trees are awesome and surreal. All twisted, gnarled, part dead and part alive, and old, so old it's humbling.


The number one killer of these ancients isn't bugs or microbes (too high up, too cold, too dry, the wood is too hard), or fire (to high up, too widely spaced), it's erosion. They last so long the land around them eventually crumbles away.


On the trail to the Methuselah Grove, with two dozen trees more than 4000 years old. The trail itself is rather scenic, btw.


The entrance to the Methuselah Grove, home of the oldest living things on the planet. One tree is the oldest of the old, the Methuselah tree at 4839 years (it was hundreds of years old when the Great Pyramid of Giza was built), but they don't identify it specifically for (legit) fears of vandalism.


Maybe it's this one. The highly accurate tree ring records from these trees are an immense boon to paleo-climate studies. They've even been used to calibrate our standard dating methods, like carbon-14.


Or one of these. One survival mechanism of these trees is to gradually shut down parts of themselves to conserve resources in a harsh environment (6 week growing season!), eventually leaving only a thin strip of bark with nutrients flowing.


This one is my personal guess as to the oldest. Some are right along the trail and you can touch them. They feel 4000 years old is the best way to describe it.


The fallen bristlecones erode due to wind and (very little) water faster than they decay. Chaining tree ring records together, dendrochronologists have determined that some of the wood laying around is up to 10,000 years old.

While bristlecone pines are all over this region, there are two attractions maintained by the NPS. One is where the oldest trees are, the other where the biggest are. The biggest grow in a grove near treeline (~11,500 to 12,000 ft). The 12 mile dirt road to get there is an adventure in itself.


No one knows for sure why they grow so big up here. Speculation is that it is a genetic mutation, like a family where all the kids are 7 feet tall.


The biggest of the big is called The Patriarch. It's 36 feet in circumference. There's me standing next to it. These trees are old, but not that old. A mere 1000-2000 years is all.

Vacation Pics Pt 1

I'm back from my little vacation to east-central California, and I have pictures. I'm a terrible photographer. Fortunately, I took a wholelotta pics, so some turned out decent.

Part 1 pics come from my hike in Yosemite and my visit to Mono Lake.


A shot of Tuolumne Meadows in eastern Yosemite NP, where I started my hike.


Walking up one of the granite domes.


On top of one of the granite domes, looking back toward Tioga Pass. From here I wandered off into the wilderness in a northwesterly direction.


I came upon a lightning-killed tree that I thought was photogenic.


Eventually I hit the Tuolumne River, well above the canyon and the falls.


Here's where I rock-hopped across. I went off into the woods from here.


Random forest shots are boring, but I did manage to capture some of the wildlife. I eventually made it back to my car, tired and tanned.

Not far from Yosemite is Mono Lake, but the environments are very different.


All around and through the lake are these tufa towers, the result of deposition of minerals from underwater springs. Obviously, they are no longer underwater (but that's a different story). The black rime on the shore isn't some varnish or dark algal species, it's alkali flies, billions of them. The water is 2.5x more salty and 100x more alkaline than the ocean. These flies are uniquely evolved to take advantage of this.


More tufa.


Yet more tufa. They can form some pretty interesting shapes.


The lake is big. This is where I went in. The water is extremely buoyant and feels slippery, like a dilute oil.

Fly me to the moon. Thousands of moons, in fact

I started playing Eve:Online, a space mmorpg, 41 days ago. I'm currently flying around in this bucket of bolts:


My shield-tanking Cyclone battlecruiser seems awesome to me, but I know it's rather weak in the grand (and evil) scheme of Eve.

My current fitting:

high slots (8)
220 mm vulcan I x5
heavy missile I x1
utility x2 (more missiles, salvager, miner, nos, neut, etc, depending on the job)

mid slots (5)
invulnerability x1
10nm AB
damage-specific shield hardener x1 (varies)
large shield extender x1
utility x1 (shield booster, another hardener, web, etc, depending on the job)

low slots (4)
ladar booster x1
wcs I x1
power diagnostic I x1
damage control I x1

If you want to come say hi, I'm hanging out at the Republic Justice station, Dal VI, Moon 1.

TSP, Being and Nothingness

Of course things do not exist until they are named. I don't need no government official to tell me that! It goes hand-in-hand with that other verbal black magic principle; if you name a thing then you control it. So to help out our belearguered government protectors and clear things up (or quite possibly not help and spread consternation), I'm creating some TSPs of my own. I've drawn my pentacle (colored chalk), inscribed it with protective symbols ('War is Peace,' 'Ignorance is Strength,' etc.), built a golden pyramid around it (cardboard and gold spray paint), placed an all-seeing eye on top (papier-maché) and am ready to begin:

Terrorist Scapegoating Program: Everyone who bothers me becomes a terrorist, a terrorist enabler, or a terrorist appeaser, depending on how motivated they are at bothering me.

Terrorist Surreptitious Program: Dedicated to being sneakier about fighting terrorists No, sneakier

Terrorist Secret Program: What program?

Terrorist Sur-Valence Program: Hanging short drapes along the top edge of terrorists' windows, thereby subtly undermining their culture of violence, or something.

Terrorist Sangrall/Sangreal Program: Getting the terrorists to waste time and resources looking for this powerful holy relic hidden somewhere in the Middle East, or in Turkey, or in the Castle Aaaaaarrrgggh, or possibly Scotland, without ever knowing exactly what the heck it is they're looking for, or why.

Terrorist Sinaloa Program: How can you be sure there are no terrorists in this northern Mexico state?

Terrorist Surge-Protector: Dedicated to spreading mis-information about our Surge, so the terrorists don't see its wonderous success and emulate it.

Terrorist Superciliousness Program: Spreading the idea that terrorists are gauche and déclassé. That's hitting them where it hurts!

Terrorist Slinky Program: Hours of fun! Hours when they won't be carrying out dastardly terrorist attacks.

Terrorist Space Program: Build rockets and shoot them into the Sun! Plus, it will give a moribund NASA something to do.

Terrorist Singles Program: Tie up their terrorizing time with boring and awkward mixers.

Terrorist Subgenius Program: Terrorists should already be targetting this decadent, psuedo-discordian church. Introduce them to it, so they can spend their time railing against it instead of us, as soon as they can figure out who and what they're supposed to be railing against, which may be a while.

If any government officials are reading this, please, don't send money. Eternal gratitude is enough.