We had a power glitch yesterday, FPL had a transformer fail. I never saw it while I was working on my iMac. Mitzi's iMac shut down and she said she saw her lights flicker, which prompted me to check the Tesla app on my iPhone.

The Powerwall is configured to switch to grid power once it has discharged to about 20% of capacity, leaving that as a backup reserve in the event of an outage. That's why the state of charge is at 22%, we'd been making enough power to start charging the batteries again, but we were still some way from peak production.

There were actually two outages yesterday, we never noticed the second one. We received an email from the HOA clubhouse that it was closed because the power went out around 1:10 PM. Though it was restored quickly, the HVAC units didn't come back up, so they closed the clubhouse. I checked the app and it shows two backup events yesterday, at 8:49 AM and 1:10 PM each about 5 minutes long.

I don't know if they were exactly 5 minutes long, or if the software running the switch-over waits a few minutes to see if power is stable before re-connecting to the grid. By all accounts, they were brief interruptions, but probably not good for anyone.

It got to over 100°F here yesterday, so we're using a lot of power for air conditioning; and Mitzi and I each used the car yesterday so we got about a third of our total power from the grid.

In the illustration above, the house is only consuming 400 watts at that moment, while the array is producing 2,000 watts so you see 1600 watts going to the Powerwalls. It's animated in the app, so it's clearer.

We've been in Saul Hall for four years now, three of those years receiving power wirelessly from a remote off-site fusion reactor you may know as "the sun."

This mourning dove. Got a killdeer and a bluebird too. Up on Flickr.

Can't sleep? Well, bark at the moon. Or photograph it. E-M1X handheld high-res, 400mm (800mm efl), cropped and edited.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 04:22 Friday, 4 August 2023

Overslept because Oppenheimer kind of disturbed my sleep. Rather than walk in the Florida sauna, Mitzi and I got on our bikes and rode to a retention pond called Settler's Pond, which has a walking path around it and some nice amenities.

At first I was disappointed, I didn't see many birds and I'd brought along the Olympus E-M1X with the 100-400mm zoom mounted. But it didn't take long before I started to see some. Put a bunch up on Flickr. (I think this link will take you to the "last" in the series, and then scrolling right will take you through the whole set.)

Saw a snowy egret and a little blue heron too, but the bluebird made the best shot. The Wikipedia entry for "Bluebird of happiness" included this:

The world rolls round,—mistrust it not,—

Befalls again what once befell;

All things return, both sphere and mote,

And I shall hear my bluebird's note,

And dream the dream of Auburn dell.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson, May-Day, 1867

Coincidentally, I put the drone up yesterday afternoon because it was such a nice day and we'd had so much rain. Wanted to take a look around. I put a couple more shots up on Flickr. (That's just a link to my photostream. Those images will eventually scroll into the past and off the page. But should be easy to find for now.) I flew the mini into the clearing over the water and got some shots looking back at the house. You can kind of see what the kid was facing, except, you know, in the dark.

So I'm guessing we're talking maybe 20 yards past the retention wall? Through a bunch of palmettos. I can see the drone when I fly it in there, until I get really low. Water doesn't seem very deep, plants are growing out of it. It's wet 365 days a year.

Anyway, hope the kid's okay and didn't get bitten by anything. There's another area of open water between the trail and area in this pic, and it's solid green with algae. Which can be problematic.

Always pleasant to see the bluebirds. There were a couple of turkey vultures grooming themselves in a tall pine too. Put them up on Flickr.

Cloudy this morning, which keeps the intense heat of the sun off you but makes it kind of dim for photography. Green heron.

This morning's bird.

Mitzi planted three of these bird-of-paradise plants last year and this is the first of them to blossom. This shot is from the Olympus E-420, which has a 10MP Panasonic CMOS ("LiveMOS") sensor. I posted some shots from the E-500 with the 8MP Kodak CCD sensor on Mastodon. The E-500 shots were SOOC JPEGs. This one I tweaked with some micro-contrast using the Definition adjustment in Photos.

Shot with the 25mm/f2.8 pancake, wide open. Probably should have stopped it down a bit for a little more dof, but it's fine.

I've been watching this thing for the last few days as it began to develop. When I went out for my run this morning, it hadn't opened yet, though the top had begun to split. I stepped outside a few minutes ago and noticed it was open, so I had to grab a camera. (Four of them, actually.)

Mitzi's kind of disappointed that the others haven't blossomed.

Another test post.

Went to lock the front door last night and spotted the crescent moon.

Mission accomplished!

In the Photos to Tinderbox script, now a system service with a keyboard shortcut, the last step was to run an Automator application called Export Photo. That's the one that actually takes the image from Photos and places it in the folder that gets sync'ed to the server and then cleans up after itself.

I figured I'd add another Automator action to that application in the form of "Watch me do..." and have the computer upload the image for me. There are probably other/better ways to do it, but that seemed easy to me.

Well, it wasn't. It would work fine in Automator, but it wouldn't work within the Export Photo application when called by the Photos to Tinderbox script. After much trial and error, I had to create a separate application called "Sync Server," that included "Watch me do..." by itself. Then the Photos to Tinderbox script calls Sync Server after Export Photo, and everything works fine.

It seems to have something to do with keeping application permissions straight in Accessibility, it can't control more than one app at a time it seems. But the script can call as many apps as it needs to.

All this does is eliminate another fiddly mouse movement, and does it faster than I can. So when I select a photo to post in the marmot, everything but the text is done for me.

After I "Export to html" from Tinderbox, I can then call Sync Server directly using LaunchBar, which is also a nice convenience.

I feel very productive today. I'm taking the rest of the day off...

This is a test post, the latest of many. This one seems to be successful. The next post will determine if this success can be replicated.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 11:39 Wednesday, 19 July 2023

CTRL-Shift-P (Post pic? Photo to marmot?) seems to work. Now if I can only remember it.

Works from the Services menu. Couldn't find it in the System Settings to assign the keyboard shortcut, but I just wanted to make sure it ran as a service first. Now I'll dig a little deeper and give it a shortcut.

This is a test post. I've embedded the Photos to Tinderbox AppleScript into an Automator action, which I will save as a Quick Action. I can assign a keyboard shortcut to that. As "fiddly" goes, hitting that little FastScripts menu icon and then hitting the right item can be a bit fiddly. A keyboard shortcut might be nicer.

So far, the script runs fine in the Automator editor. I'll save it and try again as a Quick Action.

Then I may try it as a dictation command.

The fun and games continue here at marmot headquarters.

Kind of a test post to see what happens with the title. Went out with the E-M1x to try and shoot some dragonflies in flight behind the house, but the background is much too busy to reliably grab focus. Need to do this near a pond.

I brought along the decade old E-M5 with the 14-150mm zoom mounted. I've usually carried the 75-300mm zoom because I'd often see birds and 150mm (300mm effective focal length), often isn't quite enough. One of the things I enjoy about photography, especially with a long zoom, is that it allows me to see these beautiful birds in much closer detail than I can with just my eyes. I remain amazed that I have this facility at my fingertips.

But I haven't been seeing many birds lately. So I wanted to see if I would notice anything else, kind of examine whether the kind of lens I'm carrying affects my perceptions or attention on my walk.

I think perhaps it does. If the sky is particularly interesting, it's hard to miss, and I'd often use my phone to try to capture it when I was carrying the long zoom. But the 75-300 doesn't allow for particularly close focusing, so I don't often look for anything close to the ground.

Anyway, I have another shot of this bluebird, standing still after munching on a bug. But this one felt kind of Cartier-Bresson, and I like it.

It was a productive walk. I ended up with 10 "keepers." If you're so inclined, they're up at Flickr.

Didn't see any birds on my walk this morning, but on our way back from the farmers' market (really just an outdoor vendor event) in the golf cart, these wild turkeys crossed the road and the multi-purpose path in front of us. Fortunately, I'd brought a camera along. There are 11 young ones. I've seen small groups before, 3-5 individuals, never a whole family this large. It was fun watching mom go after one of the chicks(?) when it started to wander off.

(I used my newly revised Photos to Tinderbox script to post this image I just took with my iPhone.)

Some ideas seem to take a very long time to come together.

Mitzi and I were in Scottsdale, Arizona in March 2022 and we were doing some window shopping when she spotted a photo of someone who looked familiar in the window of one of the shops. She asked me if I recognized the man with his arm around a woman who appeared to be the proprietor. I told Mitzi, "That's the Boss!" and walked right in.

We were met by the woman in the photo and I asked her, "What did Bruce buy?"

And thus we became acquainted with Beverly and Brian Moore, proprietors of Earthen Rare. We had a very nice conversation for some time. I learned Bruce bought Desert Prayer, which is the one closest to my hand. The middle one is called Born to Run, which was inspired by his visit, and the third one is just a bead bracelet because I thought I needed three.

I recall a blip that appeared briefly on my radar when she mentioned how much she loved Springsteen, but qualified it by adding, "I don't always agree with everything he's saying," or words to that effect. And we went on talking.

They asked if I'd write them a Google review, and I said of course.

So when we got back to our hotel, I googled them and discovered that they were Trump supporters. Pretty strong Trump supporters. So I was trying to reconcile the impressions I'd formed in their shop where they were a very charming and creative couple, and the photographic evidence of their strong support for Trump.

I promised them a favorable review, so I wrote one and consciously tried to ensure that what I'd just learned didn't dampen my praise for our experience in the shop.

That experience of cognitive dissonance was to remain with me to this day. While we were flying home, masked, during a time when masks were divisive because they were mandatory, I kept reflecting on this feeling that I liked these people, but I didn't like people who supported Trump.

The thought that came to mind during that reflection was from War Games: "The only way to win is not to play the game."

It seemed to me that there were powerful entities, politicians and corporations, who work hard to divide us, because they can exploit that conflict for their own benefit. Who does it serve? It certainly doesn't serve us.

But I still get angry when I hear Trump supporters, and I don't like that feeling. And I live in a place that is almost Trump central. So I avoid people I don't know and don't talk about politics unless I do and I know they're on "my side." It's not a great way to live.

I often think of Beverly and Brian and wonder how many wonderful people I don't get to know because I'm afraid they're Trump supporters.

A couple of weeks ago, Mitzi and I went to a Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp (Don't ask.) baseball game, as part of a group outing for communications professionals, Mitzi being the professional. She ran into an old friend and colleague she hadn't seen in a long time and spent time catching up with her, while I talked with her husband.

He was wearing a bead bracelet, and it made me think of Beverly and Brian. And I didn't know him at all, so I tried to steer around politics. But he was in police work and in Jacksonville policing is political, so it kind of came up and it was interesting. I still can't say for sure where he is on the political spectrum, but he didn't react viscerally to some of the tentative points I offered, and we went on to talk a little bit about local politics. And I found it somewhat illuminating, so I was glad we had the conversation.

But seeing his bracelet reminded me of mine, which have sat in a box since we got back from Arizona, save for one evening when I wore them because I'd spent quite a lot of money on them. And I thought to myself that I ought to dig them out and wear them now and then. Because they look cool, if nothing else.

I left Twitter because I was tired of what I was becoming. Angry all the time. I have learned that Mastodon can replicate that experience, and I can continue to make myself angry there, without the benefit of the local social connections I'd made on Twitter.

Le sigh.

I saw something recently about the radical faith of Fred Rogers, or something to that effect. I'd made a mental note to look for it and read it, because there may be a clue there for me. The video I posted the other day, about dying, made me think about all this anger and whether or how it served me.

The "still small voice" is nagging at me, and my inner voice is arguing with it. And I haven't quite figured out how that's going to all work out yet.

Anyway, last night we went to an event over in Jacksonville Beach, and it occurred to me that I should have worn my beads! Because they're cool.

And then it occurred to me that they could serve me. That if I met someone who was a right-winger (50% chance on your best day in Florida, 75% chance here in St Johns County.), and they said something that aroused a feeling of anger, the beads could remind me of Beverly and Brian. And I could recall that feelings pass. And that there's nothing wrong with having feelings. It's acting on them that gets us in trouble.

When we got home from the event, we finished watching Ford vs. Ferrari, and I did some digging into the biography of Leo Beebe, because I noticed I was having very negative feelings about a real person who existed, who may not have been the person depicted in the film. It turns out, he probably wasn't. But the filmmakers chose to make his character personify the worst characteristics of corporate culture.

And that's what I was thinking about this morning on my walk, which made me think about having all these feelings, and remember Beverly and Brian and my beads and something to blog about.

Everybody's out on the run tonight

Baby we were born to run

I seem to have an issue with the DJI mini recording all the DNG files, or with Image Capture downloading them. I didn't have .DNG files for each image. But that may have been a useful constraint. This was a quick and dirty with Affinity Photo 2 this time. Larger version at Flickr.

Put the drone up when I saw the clouds approaching. This is a 7-shot pano stitched in Affinity Photo and probably too wide.

May try again with the .DNG files and see if I can do a little better. Larger version at Flickr.

I posted a later shot from this morning on Mastodon, but looking over the images later, I prefer this one. I was hustling to get something posted before I went out for my walk. Doesn't speak to being very "mindful" or "intentional," except to say I was mindful of the time, and I intended to get out there before the sun got much higher.

I like this one better because the sun's just clearing the horizon and there's a boat in the river headed south at speed, and you can see more of the serpentine bend of the Tolomato.

I'm also just having fun watching this automation work.

Normally I post "this morning's bird" on Mastodon, as I used to do on Twitter. I get some likes and comments, but they're about the same as I get on Flickr, which is to say, not a lot. Which is fine.

Since it's so easy to do it here now, and since micro.blog mirrors the marmot and posts it to Mastodon anyway, I might as well just do everything here.

Some mornings I go out and don't see any birds worth shooting. (I could make a career out of shooting mockingbirds, but I'd bore myself to death.) I haven't seen many wading birds in the retention ponds lately. I did hear a hawk this morning, and I knew it was close, but I didn't spot it until it flew out of the tree in front of me!

This shot isn't remarkable, the osprey has its back to the camera. But I was able to get closer than I usually do, and this is a crop, so the eye, the beak and the talons were all points of interest. It was grooming itself, so there wasn't much in the way of a "hero pose."

I miss shooting spiders and dragon flies. There are dragon flies around here, but not usually where I walk. I'd have to go out of my way to find them. I think we've just killed off nearly all the spiders. I'd see hundreds of them a decade ago, giant orb weavers. Nothing today. It's sad.

But I like shooting bluebirds and ospreys and the rest, while we still have them. One day, hopefully not in my lifetime, they'll be gone too.