Mark Hamzy's weblog about boardgaming, discgolf, and pictures

I drove to Enchanted Rock today. It's been quite sometime since I went there previously. It was a beautiful day out. We arrived at around 8:30 in the morning. And unfortunately people started arriving in droves. Including big groups of very loud people. I had wanted to enjoy a peaceful climb. But it was not meant to be. I guess that, for the next time, I need to camp there overnight and climb it at first light.

My next door neighbor was game to come along. And we posed for this picture at around 1/4th of the way up. There was a handy rock to set the camera on. Unfortunately, the facial recognition count-down feature did not work. But the standard 10-second count-down did.

As we were climbing, three old propeller-driven aircraft used the rock as a way-point and performed a turn for us.

With three cloud trails forming a \ | /, I centered the picture on a bloom from some sort of yucca plant.

When I got to the top, I saw some beautiful islands of grass, moss, and cactus. They were very zen-like in a sea of pink granite.

I thought I was hallucinating that there was a dark streak in the sky. So I took a picture of it. At least the camera shared my hallucination.

I tried a vertical panorama of a tree today and learned some things. Even turning the white balance to a specific setting, and turning the automatic focusing off, I still ran into problems. My dynamic range was blown in the last picture on the top. This caused the tree itself to go almost black. So when I tried to recover the bark, the picture turned very grainy and noisy.

So, for the next time, I will take a set of multiple exposures for each position in the range. And the aperture will be fixed so that the depth of field will not be compromised.

Okay, I would have liked to have gotten the compass-rose points into the picture. But I missed a couple of pictures towards my feet. Sigh. Data lost is never recovered.

This is a picture, not taken, during the briefest of milliseconds on a rural Hill-county road, while driving at a high rate of speed and rounding a corner, of a bird's breast before slamming explosively onto and then off of the driver's windshield, making me wonder about the whole ephemerality of life, and also the interrelatedness, given I had just stopped to view an eagle's nest...

This is a picture, not taken, of an older, medium-sized truck well past its prime, spruced up with a graffiti-type spray paint job boldly declaring King Ice, the truck taking its left-turn too quickly as it leaked a stream of water from multiple areas, the water quickly evaporating on a hot summer day.

I have bought a number of cookbooks over the past year. They are:

• Good Eats: The Early Years
• Bakewise: The Hows and Whys of Successful Baking with Over 200 Magnificent Recipes
• Wild Fermentation: The Flavor, Nutrition, and Craft of Live-Culture Foods
• Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking
• Under Pressure
• Alinea

Unfortunately, they have remained on my breakfast table instead of residing in the bookshelf. I am now motivated to place them where they belong. However, the bookshelf is already full. So books must be kicked out.

The cookbooks are (top shelf):

• Central Market Cooks
• I'm Just Here for the Food: Food + Heat = Cooking
• I'm Just Here for More Food: Food x Mixing + Heat = Baking
• Cookwise: The Secrets of Cooking Revealed
• What Einstein Told His Cook: Kitchen Science Explained
• The Curious Cook: More Kitchen Science and Lore
• Think Like a Chef
• The Perfect Recipe: Getting It Right Every Time : Making Our Favorite Dishes the Absolute Best They Can Be
• How to Cook Without a Book: Recipes and Techniques Every Cook Should Know by Heart
• The Minimalist Cooks at Home: Recipes That Give You More Flavor from Fewer Ingredients in Less Time
• The Minimalist Cooks Dinner
• The New Elegant but Easy Cookbook
• The Ultimate Rice Cooker Cookbook
• On Rice: 60 Fast and Easy Toppings That Make the Meal
• Splendid Soups: Recipes and Master Techniques for Making the World's Best Soups
• Essentials of Cooking
• Vegetables
• Sauces: Classical and Contemporary Sauce Making
• The Soup Peddler's Slow & Difficult Soups: Recipes And Reveries
• Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking
• Classic Home Cooking
• Better Homes and Gardens New Cook Book With Test Kitchen Tips
• La Bonne Cuisine de Madame E. Saint-Ange: The Original Companion for French Home Cooking
• Book Of Perserves
• Vegan Recipes

(middle shelf):

• The first ever un-edited & un-tested Hatch chile pepper recipe book
• Mexico One Plate At A Time
• Rick Bayless's Mexican Kitchen: Capturing the Vibrant flavors of a World-Class Cuisine
• 30-Minute Meals
• Veggie Meals: Rachael Ray's 30-Minute Meals
• Sweet Simplicity: Jacques Pepin's Fruit Desserts (Pepin, Jacques)
• The Cake Mix Doctor
• Better Homes and Gardens Cookies Cookies Cookies Any-Day Treats/Christmastime Treats
• Betty Crocker's Ultimate Cookie Book
• The Pizza Gourmet: Simple Recipes for Spectacular Pizza
• Classic Sourdoughs: A Home Baker's Handbook
• Nancy Silverton's Breads from the La Brea Bakery: Recipes for the Connoisseur
• Breaking Bread With Father Dominic
• Breaking Bread with Father Dominic 2
• The Book of Miso Soup (Quick & Easy Series)
• Classic Rice Cookbook
• Washoku: Recipes From The Japanese Home Kitchen
• The Japanese Kitchen
• Harumi's Japanese Cooking
• Healthy Noodles
• A First Book of Japanese Cooking
• Sushi Making at Home
• Easy Japanese Pickling in Five Minutes to One Day: 101 Full-Color Recipes for Authentic Tsukemono
• The Book of Tofu: Protein Source of the Future...Now!
• The Book of Miso: Savory, High-Protein Seasoning
• Easy Family Recipes from a Chinese-American Childhood (Knopf Cooks American Series)
• The Cuisines of Asia: Nine Great Oriental Cuisines by Technique
• The Curry Book: Memorable Flavors and Irresistible Recipes From Around the World
• 660 Curries
• Hot Sour Salty Sweet: A Culinary Journey Through Southeast Asia

I went swimming today in Barton Springs. It was quite an experience! First of all it is really cold. You would think 68 degree water would not be that bad. After all, I wear shorts and short-sleeved shirts in that weather. But it took me a while to acclimate to it.

The next odd thing is there are plants living in this pool just below the surface. So when you swim, you are brushing against them and swimming through them. The pool is also quite deep so there is no standing around to rest.

It was certainly fun. I should try it in Winter when it is freezing out. I bet it would feel quite warm...

This is my first attempt at creating a video of my bike ride. The video is created from a series of 257 pictures taken with a Canon G10 at 30 second intervals and was attached to my handlebars.

The first problem with this video is the blurriness of some of the photos. There were a couple of reasons why. It was overcast so the shutter speed was not enough to compensate for the occasional bump. And my road bike has no shocks.

The second problem was that the camera mount was attached via velcro straps. These straps did not handle bumps too well. The camera would get jarred out of position. And a couple of times it spun completely around. Sigh.

It was also annoying that the camera took up my usual resting spot for my left hand. This made for an uncomfortable 29.48km trip.

These are two pictures, not taken, of a fat and hairy caterpillar, together giving a sense of Deja vu. The caterpillar was slowly undulating in a psychedelic manner, from the white highway dividing line, across my path, towards the safety of the field. Enough of them were on the road to make me question the long-term survival of their species.

They cut down the climbing vine again. Which should be no big deal. It seems to grow back in a year. Its a really fast growing vine.

It left an interesting pattern on the wall....

The architect poorly designed these buildings at work. The Bradford Pear trees were placed too close to the buildings. They don't get enough light. And the high winds knock them down. And they never get replaced!

It seems that two were taken down recently. Too bad they wont let it grow back...

This is a picture, not taken, of a car, stuck in backed up traffic, bolting from the left lane to the middle, oddly trying to move to the right lane, but at the last second returning to the left lane, just in time to run a red light -- which a police officer just happened to notice...

It seems that water problems come in threes. The first leak was an easy one to fix. One of my old, above ground sprinkler heads broke.

The second one took a day to fix. I noticed that water was coming up from the ground next to my driveway. I thought it was from the sprinkler system side. But, when I shut off the master valve on the backflow preventer, it still kept leaking. I could tell because my water meter was running. I tried turning off the valve on my side of the water meter, but no luck. When I turned off the valve on the city side, it finally stopped. Great. I also have a broken shutoff valve. I also like how the city can install a padlock when the water is off. Nice.

Now, I had to track down the leak. Unfortunately, it was not a straight run to the house. As you can tell by the amount of earth I had to dig up. It seems that the 90 degree elbow bend split on the inside of the bend. It was thankfully easy to cut it out and replace it with a 45 degree bend.

My friend and I installed the backflow preventer (and the rest of the sprinkler system) ourselves. Now I am wishing that it was hooked in better. It should have been a simple T-connection. But as you can see that it is higher than the main pipe and also on top of the main pipe. There are a number of twists and turns. I wish I can just rip everything out and start over again. But that's not going to happen...

The third problem was that my shower head started to leak. I really hate my Moen faucets! This has been the at least third time that I have had to replace the faucet cartridge. Unfortunately, it was not doable by me. I tried and tried to pull the old plastic cartridge out. But it was wedged in tight. I had to resort to calling a plumber out to the house. It cost me 128 dollars for five minutes worth of work. Sigh. But what can you do?

This time I used some Plumber's Grease to lube up the insides. I also learned to not push the cartridge in by the copper stem. But to use the plastic removal tool to push it in by the plastic middle.

Our group at work got together and held a pot-luck picnic at Emma Long Metropolitan Park. I decided to make a cold, black bean salad. It was pretty easy to make and turned out tasty. I cooked the beans and diced the remaining ingredients. It was a mixture of beans, cucumbers, tomatoes, and mangoes. Unfortunately, only a tiny bit was actually eaten by people. I kept a couple of meals worth for me. But threw out 95% of it because it sat out all day. Oh well, I guess I won't go to the effort to make something from scratch again...

My Grandfather owned a Keuffel & Esser Co. Slide Rule 4092-3. There is a patent date of December 22, 1908 on it. It seems pretty old. I wish we had talked about it when he was alive. I bet there were some interesting stories involved...

Some times the program's automatically generated taunts just happen to fit the bill.

It's cool that a big wildflower area is right next to the parking garage at work!

I like the Domain's multi-colored sign. Too bad for all the power lines around it...

Evelyn R. Hamzy, 89, of Palm Beach Gardens, died Saturday February 6th, 2010.

It's a shame I had to find out like I did. But at least I got to see you again when I went to Florida.

I think its included in the documents you sign when you move to Texas. You must take a picture in a Bluebonnet field...