Three birds

First bird.  A cloudy day, so not optimal, but these came out very well.

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Second bird, sunny day.

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Third bird, sunny day, and it's not all black as it appeared at first. Also the picturesque face.

Why you really need a big monitor

My students love their laptops.  We have monitors in the class, and I encourage them to use those.  It is always a hard slog to get them to plug in, so today I decided to make a comparision graphic to see if they would responds.  

This is a view of the Nile Delta, and off all 3 screens it is at 100% resolution to show all the detail of the Landsat TM imagery.  In the top left, our seniors have a laptop with a tiny screen and they can see a tiny portion of the delta.  Our external monitors, top right sees a much larger area, so they get a huge improvement with the external monitor.  (The juniors and sophomores have the same size monitor 2K monitor as the external monitor, so they won't see more, but they can use the second screen for the directions and the word processor to write up their labs).

And me?  I have the 4K monitor on the bottom, and I see everything: the detail and the big picture.  On the student laptop, they barely see anything by comparison.

This GIS program is good about using most of the screen for the map; a number will carve out huge chunks for legends and other controls, further enhanching (or de-hanching) the postage stamp effect.

New toy--I mean scientific instrument

I got a new tool for documenting the state of the world.  It's camera, with more megapixels, integrated GPS that I am still trying to figure out how get fully working, and a new lens but still works with my exsiting stock of lens (not the really old ones from the 1970s and cameras that took actual film, but the newer ones from at least this century).  Last night it was normal time when I got home, but with the approach of the equinox, there was not light enough for two much experimenting.

This morning I took it in to work, and on the way I noticed the ducks appeared to be swimming on the road, but I had two students waiting to make up a quiz, so I had to hurry by.  And the water was way down by lunch.

But I got some nice photos to test out the new camera.  All these are cropped so users will see something close to the full resolution of the camera, but even so most are greatly subsampled.  You really need the big monitor.

Then when I got home, I got some pictures of the late season flowers in the front yard.

Dog comes to class and birds on the bay

This was parent's weekend, and the parents of the juniors could come to class on Friday.  One of my students asked if her parents could bring the service dog they are training, and I had no problems.  I noticed the dog at the beginning of class, sitting along the back wall of room, but after that there was no sign or sound from it.  I hope the dog got as much out of class as the younger sister who came up at the end of class and asked if I liked collecting minerals as much as fossils.

This was the weekend of the full moon, and probably effects from cyclones farther south (maybe the one that missed Alabama), and we got a good high tide in the very early morning.  By the time we got out, the water was down significantly, but still covering the road (the bay is beyond the stone curb at the back of the photo).  The ducks were enjoying swimming on the road and diving for food; the water must have brought in something munchy.  Our future, should we decide to acknowledge it, will have more pleasant surprises like this.

Cormorant the day after the ducks.  The sun was out, and the photography much better.  Last weekend the Coast Guard's Cormorant was tied up along the seawall, evacuating during the hurricane threat, and we saw another cormorant diving about the boat.  I wondered if the crew had a pet mascot.

Botanical Gardens, DC Mall

One of our favorite spots in Rabat was the botanical garden.  I have been going to the US Botanical Garden since the mid 1970's, but today was the first time I ever realized they have a wonderful outdoor garden.  So we did some computer mapping, and some close up photography.

Our walking route.  We started at the flea market at Eastern Market (east side of map), then wandered past the Library of Congress, the Capitol, the Botanical Garden, the American Indian Museum for lunch, and then on to the Metro down Maryland Avenue.

Blow of the route through the Botanical Garden, both the insider part and the outdoor gardens.