Category: Photos

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Last weekend we went to WorldCon / LAConV for a day. It was our first convention since 2019 (for, you know, reasons), and Katie finally got to build a rose goblin and cosplay as October Daye, something she’s been planning to for years. (Basically since we were gifted the jacket.)

Spike is described in the books as a cross between a rose bush and a cat. Three craft store grape-vine wreaths, soaked for reshaping, give it structure. Bougainvillea vines are woven through it to add thorns, though she ended up trimming them so it wouldn’t be hazardous if someone grabbed it, or if someone else’s costume brushed up against it. (We both managed to stab ourselves on the thorns while she was making it.) She cut a bunch of artificial leaves to look like rose leaves, and sewed them onto the vines.

For the eyes, a pair of LEDs are hooked up to a battery (the switch hidden under leaves) and placed inside mini ping-pong balls, held in place inside the head by wire.

Originally she was planning to put it on a skateboard and pull it along behind her, holding it on using magnets and washers, but the magnets turned out not to be strong enough. So the day before the con, she scrapped the skateboard and built a handle into Spike’s back so she could carry it around. It turned out to be better anyway, since the skateboard wouldn’t have gone on an escalator!

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It’s been gloomy all day – the kind of August day that’s hot, humid and still, sapping all your energy because nothing *actually* cools you off except real air conditioning (or standing in front of the refrigerator), not even taking a cold shower in the afternoon. At least the nights are still cooling off, even if the days are muggy.

Close to sunset, the clouds finally started to break up, and I began to think I might get to see tonight’s lunar eclipse after all.

Darkening sky with a bunch of small clouds, lit from behind/below.

That’s looking west. The clouds to the east were still a bit more solid, but low to the horizon, and by the time the moon cleared the rooftops and the eclipse was well underway, the clouds had broken up enough to see!

At first glance it looks like a half-moon...but the line between light and shadow is curved the wrong way, its endpoints aren't aligned with the center, and there's none of the texture you'd see along it in a normal moon phase

I took the sunset clouds shot with my Fairphone, which did a lot better than I expected, though I only managed to get misshapen blobs when shooting the moon. It’s been hectic enough that I didn’t try to set up the good camera. The point-and-shoot Canon with real optics does okay with the moon, as you can see here. (The teen’s iPhone, however, was able to get at least a couple of shots where the maria are visible. Not as good as the Canon, but better than any of my phones have managed.)

We went back inside, waited a while, went back outside, took some more photos, talked with the neighbors who were also looking at the moon, went back inside, rinse, repeat. Lunar eclipses are a lot more accessible than solar ones. They’re slower, since the Earth’s shadow is around 3 times the size of the moon at that distance. They’re visible from anywhere with a view of the moon, not just a narrow track. You don’t need eye protection. And unlike solar eclipses, a partial lunar eclipse is almost as cool as a total one. A lot of the time you can just walk out into your front yard.

The moon hangs in the black sky above the top of a telephone pole, one wire (and something hanging from it) passing in front of it. Most of the moon is a dim red color, on which the maria are clearly visible. A bright white arc at the top looks like a shallow beanie. The brightness completely washes out any details, and makes the outer edge of the arc bulge outside of the circle.

If you’re reading this close to when I’m posting it, the eclipse isn’t over yet. There’s still an hour or so before the moon completely passes out of Earth’s shadow. If you have clear skies and the moon is up where you are, go take a look!

Blaugust 2026: My Posts

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Looking straight up a central gallery with alternating straight and curved railings. The top is a circle surrounded by concentric ovals, resembling a giant eye looking down at the camera. Nordstrom can be read on the lowest visible railing.

In downtown San Francisco, there’s a multi-level shopping mall with an atrium and a skylight. If you stand in the dead center of the atrium and look up, it resembles an eye, looking down at you through a giant microscope.

This was taken during WonderCon 2009. Years later, I posted it for a February 2015 photo challenge on the theme “Symmetry.”

I was recently reminded of the view while reading author Annalee Newitz’ latest newsletter, Inside the Dying Malls of San Francisco. Continue reading →

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Finally getting around to sorting through photos from a walk at the pond and botanical gardens at Polliwog Park…um…two months ago.

Two ducklings with mottled brown feathers swim, following their mother, who has similar coloring. A third is off to the side, not far from where a turtle's head is poking out of the water.

The third duckling on the right was spooked by the turtle surfacing its head right next to it. Between this shot and the next, a few seconds later, it had darted away and hidden behind its mother!

The same two ducklings and their mother, only the third duckling is nowhere to be seen. For that matter, neither is the turtle.

Ducks (mostly mallards like these), coots and geese (mostly Canada Geese) make this pond one of their regular migratory spots. Seagulls, pigeons and crows stop by regularly. Smaller birds mostly stick to the other parts of the park. The turtles, like those in most of the ponds around here, are feral – released pets and their descendants.

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Yes, it turns out a colander *does* make a fun instrument for observing a solar eclipse! Also, thinking about how common eclipses actually are.

Circular shadow on the sidewalk, with lots of bright crescents inside, all facing the same direction.

For a lot of reasons, we didn’t arrange another road trip to see today’s total eclipse like we did in 2017 (which was amazing, by the way!). It was only partial out here in California, and not even with as high a magnitude as the one last October.

But we had clear skies, so we broke out the eclipse glasses from 2017 again. After testing them first by looking directly as a bright indoor lamp to make sure there were no scratches. And I’d heard that colanders make interesting patterns (each hole works as a pinhole camera) much like overlapping leaves do, so I brought that out — as you can see, it worked quite well!

I do kind of regret not being able to get out to see this one as total. Partial eclipses can be really cool, especially if you have multiple ways to observe them, but XKCD has a point. There really isn’t any comparison to experiencing totality, and it doesn’t come through very well in photos.

I bet northern Spain is already booked for 2026.

It is interesting to think that solar eclipses happen every year — usually twice! — but they’re not always total, and they’re only visible from a small part of the planet at a time. And sometimes that’s a slice of, say, Antarctica or Siberia or out in the middle of the ocean. Not rare for the planet, but definitely rare for any given location.

On one hand, it’s no wonder people used to see them as omens. With travel and communication slow (and in many cases impossible) in the ancient world, if you’re only going on what’s been seen in your area, it seems super-rare and unpredictable. On the other hand, cultures with sophisticated enough astronomy like the ancient Babylonians were able to calculate the eclipse cycle thousands of years ago!

One bit of funny timing: We’ve been catching up on the last season of The Magicians. Today we got up to an episode that…well, let’s just say the moon figures very prominently in it!

Update: Axios posted a nice map last week showing how fully booked AirBnBs are for the day in different parts of the US…which shows the path of totality *very* clearly!

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It was hazy, and the weather forecast was partly cloudy, but the sun stayed visible and the eclipse glasses (used here for the photo) haven’t cracked!

Yellow-orange circle on a black background, with a circular chunk apparently cut out of it.

We didn’t do anything complicated this time: just took the glasses with us as we went about our morning, looking through the glasses every 15-20 minutes to see how much was covered until it reached its maximum coverage of 78% of the sun’s apparent diameter.

And at projections. Leaves are nature’s original pinhole camera!

A bunch of overlapping bright crescents of light on the ground.

A road trip like 2017 to see the full annular eclipse would have been cool, but it just wasn’t something we could do this time around, and with clear visibility, there wasn’t any need to seek higher ground like 2012.

Here’s peak coverage for this area, again viewed through eclipse glasses.

Yellow-orange crescent on a black background.

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