Ron's Log

Bat Cave Butte and more

Some of us went out today to explore Bat Cave Butte and other places along the eastern side of the Salton Sea.

Panorama of the Salton Sea.

Bat Cave at Bat Cave Butte.

View of the Salton Sea from Bat Cave Butte.

Desert lilies are sprouting.

Bat Cave Butte.

Coachella Canal.

Eagle Mountain Railroad where it crosses the Coachella Canal.

Bat Cave Butte.

Bat Cave Butte.

More photos here.

Mission Springs Park

Flickr Poet

Type in a poem at Flickr Poet and it will try to find photos at Flickr to illustrate each word of the poem. It's got some catches. Not many photographers at Flickr tag their images with archaic words, so the older your poem the greater the chance that some words will go unfound. The program seems to try to ignore 1-letter words (like "I") - sometimes. Also dashes without spaces may confuse it. Example: "word—word"

But once you get around that, it can sometimes produce some good results. Here is the third stanza of Pioneers! O Pioneers! by Walt Whitman.

3M Headlight Lens Restoration

Last time I went to Jiffy Lube they tried to sell me some sort of lens de-oxidation thing to remove the cloudiness. I was suspicious and turned down the offer. But then I discussed it with Darrel, who told me it was possibly real, and pointed me to this video:

Here's the product's page at 3M.

Today, Darrel decided to give it the test on his own car and invited me over for the pure entertainment of it.

Before.

During.

After.

More photos here. I'd say it works and, even more importantly, is fairly easy and seems to run a very low risk of destroying your headlights. Less than $20.

Blue Cheese Dip

If left sitting too long it makes its own art.

Canon Rebel XT Tougher Than Thought

"Marius" is a skydiver and took a jump with a Canon Rebel XT (with standard 18-55 mm lens) AND a Sony video camera attached to his helmet. What could go wrong? When I looked at the photo of his outfit my first concern was not his cameras, but his neck. All that wind resistance on top of his head must put some torque on him. Of course, the cameras ripped loose (or we wouldn't be talking about it) and the Sony video camera met its demise after falling 3,000 feet. But not the Rebel, which is still going (with a bit of a limp).

Roy's Desert Resource Center Ribbon Cutting

Supervisor Marion Ashley. In the background is a portrait of the late Supervisor Roy Wilson.

More photos.

Found! At Burning Man

400 photos from found cameras, found camera cards, and found camera bags at Burning Man.

If you spot your images, write lostandfound@burningman.com and include:

• The camera/card or bag inventory number
• A description of the make and model of the lost camera/card, or bag.
• A description of other (non-posted) images from the same source.

In the meantime, this is your chance to peek inside the cameras of strangers. All images are SFW (or pretty much so).

Is that Sissy Spacek's long lost twin?

Also, here you can see a set of 482 professional quality photos from Burning Man 2009 by Scott Hess.

Ryan Ranch (and around there)

Cap Rock.

Ryan Ranch.

All the photos from this one-day photo excursion can be seen here.

White Tank in Joshua Tree N.P.

The arch.

More photos here.