Snows of February

2015-02-26.

February delivered some good snow towards the end of a mostly uneventful winter; still nowhere as close to previous February snowmageddons and snowpocalypses, but enough to close schools for a few days and make the general landscape look mildly Arctic.

Walking around DC on a Sunday morning after the snowstorm was especially fun since most businesses didn’t bother to shovel or treat their sidewalks till later in the day.

And here’s a snowy selfie.

(Yes, I know, I need a haircut, but while it’s still cold I don’t mind looking like a disheveled hippie if the extra layer of hair keeps me warm.)

Pictures of the Sky

2015-02-01.

On our flights between O’Hare and Narita I’d hoped to get something like Alessandro Merga’s view of the Milky Way, but my plane window long exposures turned out sadly less impressive. I did catch some faint auroras on the westbound flight, though.

The night sky in Puerto Galera, Philippines was mostly cloudy, but the one clear night we had made for some good star photography, stymied just a bit by a full moon and bright resort lights.

On January 10th I was able to capture Comet Lovejoy (C/2014 Q2), visible as a fuzzy green smear just barely shining through DC area light pollution.

A week later I captured Venus and Mercury in the winter twilight. I’d never actually seen the planet Mercury before; it was much fainter than I had expected.

All photos shot with a first-gen Sony NEX3.

2014 in Review

2015-01-31.

Most notable thing about last year was @PicPedant, my half-humorous Twitter image-debunking account which somehow got so popular that I made the news.

My grandmother died.

I got a Google Glass.

Travel-wise, I went to Florida to visit the Space Coast and hang out in Orlando with my parents. We went to Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon. Visited Chincoteague, twice. Visited Shenandoah, twice. Rode coasters at Hersheypark and Kings Dominion. We finally got to see the Fairfax Museum and Visitor Center, which we’d been meaning to do since we moved out to the county in 2009. At the end of the year we went to the Philippines to spend the holidays with my family.

In space, ESA’s Philae landed on a comet, EFT-1 launched and returned successfully, Virgin Galactic’s SpaceshipTwo was destroyed, killing a pilot, and Orbital’s Antares blew up, losing an ISS cargo capsule.

Work has been sending me to NASA HQ a lot; I take photos.

Best selfie of 2014:

(You know, when I wrote 2009 in Review, I said I would start cleaning up and backtagging old entries. Six years later, I still haven’t. Sorry.)

Trip Roundup: Holiday 2014-2015

2015-01-06.

Weblog

Photos

Videos

Trip Playlist

MNL-NRT-ORD-DCA

2015-01-05.

The return trip was much less grueling than the flight over: no overnight airport transfers in Japan this time around — though Chicago O’Hare was a pain to transit through, what with the standard bag re-check and a broken airport tram that forced us into a taxi for a terminal transfer.

Continue reading MNL-NRT-ORD-DCA

Christmas 2014 and New Year 2015

2015-01-03.

Already knew it was going to be a great Christmas Day from the Manila Bulletin headline.

Dad at Christmas brunch with grandson (my nephew), and sister-in-law after jubilantly gifting my brother with a GoPro:

Toddler nephew also played around with my DSLR and managed to snap a decent photo of Amy. Then I pointed the DSLR at my other nephew Uno and said “DON’T SMILE”:

So Merry Christmas, here was our tree:

Next day we packed up and headed south to Puerto Galera by banca.

We stayed in the dive resort town of Sabang rather than the somewhat less quiet Puerto Galera town proper. Much scuba diving was done.

I’m not a huge fan of the Philippines’s New Year firecracker culture, but some of the resorts had nice fireworks. (Not pictured: drunken fistfight that broke out on beach in front of our resort.)

We had a couple days back in Metro Manila after the Puerto Galera dive trip, mostly spent packing for the flight home to DC. Lovely views of Manila right up to the Bay from our hotel room.

It was really nice to come back and reconnect with family after a few missed years. Full holiday photo album here.

Dive Log: Sabang, Puerto Galera

2015-01-02.

Puerto Galera sits at the base of a peninsula on the northern coast of Mindoro, about 80 miles south of Manila and an hour’s boat ride from Batangas. Once a sanctuary from rough seas for Spanish galleons, today Puerto Galera is a thriving watersports town, with a yacht club, cheap beach resorts, and coral reefs teeming with sea life.

Continue reading Dive Log: Sabang, Puerto Galera

Manila Christmas Morning Sunrise

2014-12-25.

Quick time lapse of the sun rising over the hazy Metro Manila landscape on Christmas morning, as shot from a San Juan high rise, looking east towards Ortigas:

That may look like a picturesque mist but it doesn’t burn off quickly like radiative fog when the heat of the sun falls on it. That’s because it’s more a haze of particulate matter — smog — settling where there’s no wind.

Snapshots from around Greenhills

2014-12-24.

I’m trying to formulate some dumb egg jokes for this egg-static breakfast but bad yolks like that are just too over-easy for me to bother the shell about.

As always the Greenhills tiangge (bazaar) is a great place for lovely jewelry made from the aggregated nacreous excretions of irritated shellfish.

This is a new snack to me: “butchiron”, or deep fried chicken esophagus bits. Not only do you get delicious crunchy fried chicken flavor but it is pre-seasoned in life with whatever the chicken ate, things like corn feed and worms. Yum.

I was very tempted to get a pint of durian frozen dairy dessert but settled instead for some mango ice cream.

“PotDog” turned out to be neither.

LHC Reunion

2014-12-23.

Took the NEX3 camera to lunch at Serendra with old friends from college. We wryly called ourselves “Lonely Hearts Club” back in school but we’re not lonely today, and I’m who I am because of their friendship. Love you all, great to see you again.

And the chili chocolate gelato was amazing.

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