While walking to lunch today, I spied a fragment of halo above the sun. (Whenever I notice a really thin layer of cirrus clouds, I always try to find an opportunity to block the sun and look for halos.) I tried to get a couple of shots with my phone, and figured I’d try enhancing them when I got home.
What surprised me is that the halo was not only still there after lunch, but clearer. On the way back, I stopped in several places with a building, or a sign, or a tree blocking the sun. The curve seemed too shallow to be a standard circular halo, so I wondered what I was actually seeing. Then I realized there was a faint halo inside the brighter curve, the two fragments meeting above the sun and splitting like diverging roads.
Then I noticed the sundog.
Three distinct sun halos. Not complete, and far from the clearest display I’ve seen, but certainly the most complex.
The brightest part appears to be the top of a circumscribed halo, which varies in shape from oval to kidney-bean depending on how high the sun is. You can just see the 22° circular halo branching off below it. Off to the right is a sundog.
It’s too bad I only had the phone, but it did manage to catch all three halos. I fiddled with the contrast a little to make them clearer, but they are visible without it.
And to think I saw this from the middle of suburban Southern California!
An artificial lagoon on the seaward side of the Long Beach Convention Center. I was there this past Saturday for the first Long Beach Comic Con and did some sightseeing.
I’ve got more photos, both of the convention and sightseeing, and a write-up of the con.
Originally posted at Parallel Lines
This Saturday I attended the first-ever Long Beach Comic Con. I had a great time catching panels, meeting writers and artists, talking about comics, sightseeing, and even breaking some Flash news. I can definitely see this as an annual event.
Note: If you just want to look at photos, feel free to skip to my Long Beach Comic Con 2009 photo set on Flickr.
It’s been at least ten years since the last time I’d been to the Long Beach Convention Center*. I didn’t recognize the building the con was in at all (and I’m sure the shopping mall across the street wasn’t there before), though the facade and lobby reminded me a lot of the San Diego Convention Center with the arched ceiling and floor-to-roof windows. It made me wonder whether they had been designed by the same architect.
With a mall across the street to the west, Shoreline Village across a bridge to the south, and Downtown Long Beach across the street to the north — not to mention the food service in the lobby not being swamped — I really regretted having brought my lunch with me. Though it probably did save time, since I had panels I wanted to see from noon until 2:00. If I’d wanted to go to, say, the Auld Dubliner (right across the street! Auughh!), I would have only had about half an hour on the convention floor that morning.
*Not counting plays at the Terrace Theater. Though the last thing I saw there was a touring production of Miss Saigon in 2003, about two days before the start of the Iraq War. Talk about timing.
I think the main floor was about the same size as the floor at Wizard World Los Angeles the last couple of years — or rather, the amount of floor space they used was about the same. (Last year WWLA had a large empty space in the back.) Exhibitors were clustered around the entrance, mostly indie press (I remember Boom, Archaia, and Aspen) and a large Nintendo exhibit. The center of the room was dominated by the Artist’s Alley, with dealers wrapped around it and celebrities lining one wall.
In the back, inexplicably, was a raised wrestling ring. I didn’t notice it when I went through in the morning, but in the afternoon, when they were actually holding wrestling matches, it was loud! Halfway down the hall, you could hear the *smack!* *thud!* as the wrestlers threw each other to the floor. I figure the floor of the ring and the convention center floor must have made a fantastic sounding board!
I got in about 20 minutes after the con opened for the day, so if there were any huge lines I missed them. The artists’ tables were practically empty (they came in later), and most of the action seemed to be at the publishers’ booths and dealers. There was a big line for Jim Lee, and people were lining up for Stan Lee and Berkeley Breathed signings at 11:00.
Unlike San Diego, though, I could walk around without relying on Level 18 Crowd Weaving! Continue reading
I stepped out of the office building tonight and felt like I’d stepped into a Maxfield Parrish painting. The whole sky looked like this. (Or at least the half that was visible.) It literally stopped me in my tracks.
I spent the next 15 minutes walking around the parking lot, watching the lighting on the clouds change as the sun set, and taking pictures.
Why do people get take-out fast food, then sit and eat it in their car in the parking lot, idling with the AC on?
Update: It’s weird how this became normal for me during the 2020 Covid shutdown. I always figured, if you’re going to eat right there anyway, why not just eat at the restaurant? (Assuming the tables aren’t full, of course.)
But in 2020? First you couldn’t eat at the restaurant at all. Then you couldn’t eat inside the restaurant, but could eat outside. Though depending on the weather, you might not want to. Eventually you could eat inside, but had to make a risk calculation as to whether it was a good idea or not. Drive-through and park became an easy way to keep separate airspaces.
At least by the time that hit I was driving a plug-in hybrid, so I didn’t need to idle the gas motor.
Of course there are also plenty of other reasons I just hadn’t thought of at the time: private conversations, for instance, or a sleeping baby in the car seat who you don’t want to wake up early.
There’s a TV on the wall of the crepe cafe where I’m having lunch, bigger than the TV I have at home. Right now it’s showing a live view of the kitchen. This might be more interesting if the kitchen weren’t open to the dining area. I can see the same thing (from another angle) just by turning my head.
