Silly Songs, The European Starling

Here, from J., are 365 days worth of silly music MP3 files for your listening pleasure (sorry J., I know you sent me this link ages ago but I didn’t follow it up until today as I only got the sound fixed on my computer very recently and I’ve been absorbed by iTunes and PureTracks since then.)

UbuWeb also has an eclectic collection of other audio files, writings and art/images, all free – great stuff to browse around in when you’re avoiding the items on your to-do list.

And, just arrived today from wherever they’ve been lately, two European Starlings (Sturnus vulgaris).

I don’t really like Starlings. They are messy, hacking away at the suet with their bright yellow beaks, scattering more on the ground than they eat. They are bossy, preventing other birds from approaching the feeders. Even the Steller’s Jay, which will normally only give way to Crows, vigorous arm-waving, or attack dogs named Andy, screeches loudly from the top of the bird feeder pole, not able to land on the suet feeder despite being 2 to 3 times the size of the Starlings.

I bang on the kitchen window and the Starlings fly off.

The Steller’s Jay turns around and screeches at me. Ungrateful!

The Purple Finch

This morning I was surprised to see a pair of new finches at the birdfeeder. Well, spring is just around the corner and you would expect a few different birds to be passing through.

At first I thought they were male House Finches that had brightened themselves up in anticipation of the breeding season. Groups of 8 to 10 House Finches, which I have written about before, regularly hog all the perches at my birdfeeder.

But these were a brilliant raspberry red color, not the strawberry red of the male House Finches. And they weren’t quite as bold, hanging back in the bushes while the Chickadees and Nuthatches made their wild zooming grab-and-dash forays at the feeder dodging around the House Finches firmly perched on their favorite spots.

I looked through my bird book, which has terrible pictures. The bird book’s Purple Finches were definitely purple, not raspberry red. But otherwise they sounded like the right species. What finally settled it tonight was when I found some beautiful Purple Finch photos, looking exactly the same as the birds I saw this morning.

According to Cornell’s article, the Purple Finch (Carpodacus purpureu) has been displaced in many areas by House Finches. I’m not surprised. They’re such pigs at the birdfeeder buffet!

Dominion Homes faces lawsuit

Here is a report regarding a lawsuit filed by some of Dominion Homes’ customers.

This press release appears to have come out after the stock market closing bell so we’ll have to wait until tomorrow to find out how other DHOM investors react.

But it’s never good when your customers sue you...

My previous musings on DHOM are here.

First Robin Spotted, It Must Be Spring

Last night I got back from a weekend trip with my sister to the Sunshine Coast (blog entry on the trip will be coming up as soon as I can get through all the photographs) and this morning it’s started raining again. The Big Guy mentioned that it actually snowed a little over the weekend. While it was not exactly brilliantly sunny, the weather was good enough over the weekend to make the trip highly enjoyable.


As I said, it’s started raining again this morning and as I was looking out the kitchen window at the dripping trees I saw our first American Robin (Turdus migratorius) of the year.

So it must be spring!

He was up in one of our neighbour’s trees, looking around for breakfast. Then he flew over into the eavestrough and had a few sips of water before taking off again.

I expect there will soon be lots of Robins returning from wherever they migrate to from here in the winter. According to the migratory maps, Robins do winter locally but in our neighbourhood I don’t see them for 2 or 3 months in the winter.

When the lawn is wet from morning dew or after a rain shower, they will come to our yard in groups of five or more to hop around the lawn hunting for earthworms. They look for goodies to eat by tilting their heads from side to side to get a good look at the ground with one eye or the other; it looks like they’re listening!

I Have Sound! or, How Assumptions Made Too Early Can Be Wrong

Yesterday, The Big Guy said “Happy Valentine’s Day!” and he also asked me what I wanted for my birthday. I was so moved by this unusual display of affection that my mind went completely blank.

But I eventually recovered, said “Happy Valentine’s Day” back, and told him that all I really wanted for my birthday was the sound to be fixed on my computer.

His reply, “Is that all?” made me actually believe that he was going to fix it for me.

I should make a note to myself: Don’t Make Assumptions Too Quickly.

A few minutes later he plunked down a sound card, a screw, a screw driver, a couple of installation and driver CDs, and an installation booklet on the kitchen counter. “Here you go!”

I’m sure he was very happy that he could fulfill my only birthday wish by simply rummaging through his bins of spare computer parts.

But what I really wanted was for him just to take over the whole problem including what I call Stage One Computer Repair. This means doing the Windows software troubleshooting steps, checking for device conflicts, re-installing and updating drivers, shutting everything down, unplugging all the cables, opening up the box, dismantling various electronic bits, looking for scorch marks, blowing out the dust, reseating boards and cables, re-mantling, plugging in all the cables again, and powering everything back up. I get extremely frustrated if I can’t fix this type of problem right away, which is why I hadn’t even tried to sort it out myself before today.

I don’t want talk about Stage Two Computer Repair.

Stage Three is Buy a New Computer.

I started working through Stage One. The symptom of the sound problem was an extremely loud and annoying hum or buzz that drowned out the sound that’s supposed to be coming out of the speakers. Plus, what sound I could hear over the buzzing seemed very distorted, like it was recorded inside a metal box. The problem started about the same time I upgraded the memory. All this made me think that it wasn’t necessarily a broken sound card, it could be something to do with cables or power or speaker/monitor interference.

With that in mind, I changed the order in which I usually do Stage One Computer Repair and after doing the software troubleshooting and driver updating without any noticeable affect on the problem decided to unplug, move, and reseat every single cable connected to the speakers. I should also mention that while I was rebooting the computer after updating the drivers I noticed that the buzzing was still there when the speakers are powered on even while the computer was powered off!

It’s actually surprising how many cables are connected to the speakers. There’s the speaker power cable connected to an extension cord shared with a desk lamp and another extension cord before plugging into the wall. There’s the cable from the right speaker to the left speaker. There’s the cable from the headphones that plugs into the right speaker. There’s the cable from the right speaker that plugs into the back of the computer.

To make a long and boring story about tinkering with cables shorter, I’ll just say that the problem was fixed by reseating the cable connecting into the back of the computer.

Simple.

Cheap flimsy little connecters!

Now I’m happy.

Not so fast. I’m still running out of space on my hard drive.

So, next, I’ll have to come up with a strategy to get The Big Guy to gift me with a hard drive out of his spare parts supply. This time, with installation included!

A Backyard Tour

It was sunny today (I really had to squint, It’s been dark since last November and I’m not used to all this light!) so I went outside to take some pictures of our house and yard.

The Big Guy ordered me out of the front yard. He’s in the middle of repairing damage on the side of our house caused by rainwater getting in around some poorly installed flashing over one of the new windows that we had installed two years ago. He doesn’t like me taking pictures of him while he’s working on something.

So I went to our lovely backyard. Neither one of us do much work that could remotely be called landscaping. Or gardening. Plus we have two largish dogs. And then there’s the ongoing conflict between The Big Guy and I about the pruning and eradication of trees and bushes which, in their natural untamed state, might somehow interfere with either radio waves or the cleanliness of concrete. We are somewhat polarized on this issue. I’m completely against it, eradication that is, and he’s all for it.

As a result, our back yard is a hodge-podge of unkempt and badly pruned trees, misshapen bushes, large areas of bare dirt, grass that has evolved over the years to resist the ravages of dog pee, a patch of garden (ha ha!) surrounded by string to remind the dogs they’re not supposed to go in there, a pile of broken up concrete, a Really Big Radio Antenna Tower (“RBRAT”), various runs of pipe through which power lines and coaxial cables go to the assorted antennas, and well you get the idea...

It’s not all bad. Birds seem to like our backyard!

Here’s a... umm, what should I call this? A roof on 4-by-4s? Well, under this roof we have a neat stack of brand new (and wet) boards that will eventually replace the rotted boards on the water damaged portion of the house, which I can’t take a picture of because The Big Guy ordered me off. You can also see some very pretty blue lawn furniture stacked there. That was my big painting project last year. If you look at the edge of the roof you can see a bright green line. That’s the sun shining through a thick layer of moss (we live in what was once Temperate Rain Forest, there’s moss everywhere!) If you look at the back of the roof over the lawn furniture you can see the lower portion of one of The Big Guy’s radio antennas.

This is Andy. I have lots of good pictures of Andy. It’s so easy to get him to pose. You just put his tennis ball somewhere and he will sit or stand close to it and look at you with this photogenic expression on his face just waiting for you to pick up and throw the ball. I took this picture while I was crouched down with the ball on the ground beside my right foot.

In this second picture he’s starting to realize that I’m not going to throw the ball, I’m just going to keep snapping pictures. He’s a little frustrated and is getting ready to bark.

Here’s the view towards the back (north-west) corner of the backyard. Tyler is inspecting the evolved grass beside the garden (ha ha!) which is surrounded by string to remind him to stay out. You can also see the base of the RBRAT. At the very back is the dog condominium which Tyler and Andy never use since they live inside the house with us.

You know, the grass looks a lot better in my pictures than it does in real life. And I didn’t even tinker with them with my photo editing software, except for some cropping, and maybe I tweaked the gamma on a couple of them a little bit. It looks like the grass in Hobbiton, home of the hobbits in Peter Jackson's Lord Of The Rings, The Fellowship of The Ring – much too green to be real.

This view is looking eastward towards the house. You can see the bottom of the RBRAT in the foreground. About half way towards the house there is an orange tub. This tub is protecting the base of another radio antenna from the ravages of dog pee.

Here’s a shot of Andy admiring the pile of broken up concrete in our back yard. Actually, I put his ball on top of the pile so that he would sit still beside it. In between the concrete and the RBRAT you can see some sort of odd white pipe elbow sticking out of a round upside down pail that is partially buried in the ground. This is where some of the assorted power and coaxial cables emerge on their way from The Big Guy’s office in the house to the RBRAT. If you look at the roof of the tool shed (the really dark building) you can see the bottom of yet another radio tower through the badly pruned tree branches.

This is Tyler. He is very difficult to take pictures of because as soon as you point a camera at him he runs over to get his ears scratched. I have taken lots of blurry snapshots of the top of his head. He always seems to look sad in photos. I don’t know why, he’s really a very happy dog. In this photo I managed to get him to look up from his inspection of the evolved grass and took the picture before he ran over. He’s going very gray because he’s eleven years old.

That’s it for the tour of the backyard. Maybe tomorrow, if I’m real sneaky, I can get some shots of the front yard and of the radio antennas on the roof of the house.

The Northern Flicker

Today I had to get up unusually early (7am) to give The Big Guy a ride to the Skytrain. He still won’t take the bus, which stops less than 200 feet from our house although he’s gotten as far as studying bus timetables and route maps. He was somewhat indignant when I explained to him that the buses don’t exactly take the shortest route directly from our house to the Skytrain station and that the bus that stops at the stop only 25 feet from our house takes longer to get there than the one that stops 200 feet from our house.

Why do we take the Skytrain when we want to go downtown?

It’s not because we’re eco-freaks, although we do modify our behaviour somewhat to be environmentally friendly. It’s not because we don’t each have our very own late-model gas-guzzling vehicle. It’s because we don’t like driving all the way downtown from here in the traffic and rain and then trying to find someplace to park that isn’t full and that you don’t have to take out a loan to pay for and that is secure enough so you don’t have to spend the entire time you are downtown worrying about drug-crazed loonies breaking into your vehicle to search for nickels and dimes between the seat cushions.

Ok, I got a bit side-tracked there.

What I really meant to say was that since I was up unusually early this morning I spotted another bird, the Northern Flicker (Colaptes auratus)!

It’s always a treat to see a Northern Flicker. He’s big and colorful and doesn’t come around very often. I think their usual diet is ants and other insects but the one that visits us likes sunflower seeds and suet too.

He’s so big that it’s a challenge to grip the side of suet feeder while his tail feathers are fanned out underneath and he arches his head back far enough to peck at the suet with his big long beak. His weight causes the suet cage to tip so that he’s hanging almost feet up. I don’t think he likes feeding from this position very much!

This picture shows what I mean except that you have to imagine a wire suet cage hanging from a chain instead of the relatively stable feeder in the picture. I’m sorry to say that my bird photography skills have not improved this much (yet). This photo (copyright 2004 Alan Pattinson) is one I snagged from here.

And congratulations to J. who passed her “knowledge important to Canadians” examination and was duly rewarded yesterday with a certificate, id-card and a little paper flag, plus she swore allegiance in both official languages, shook hands with a real judge and sang the national anthem all the way through without any mistakes. Actually, I’m not really sure she made it through with no mistakes but let’s just assume she did.

Now J. can go to hockey games wearing a silly hat and do the wave along with everybody else without being embarrassed. Or not.

Kilimanjaro

My sister has decided to climb Kilimanjaro for her birthday. Sounds a bit arduous to me but that’s the sort of adventure she likes, so Happy Trekking!


And it’s a good excuse for me to go on about one of my favorite topics again, volcanoes!

Kilimanjaro (Kilima Njaro or “shining mountain” in Swahili), is a large stratovolcano. In fact, it’s the tallest free-standing volcano on the earth’s land surface. It is located in Tanzania, Africa just south of the equator and is 5895 meters high at its highest point, Uhuru Peak. The volcano has a number of cones, the youngest of which is called Kibo. Kibo has a fairly large crater at the top. Some say Kilimanjaro is extinct, but in fact the volcano is still active and emits steam and gases from fumaroles in the crater. It has not erupted in the past 100,000 years or so. Mount Meru, just 70 kilometers to the west, last erupted in 1910.


This 3-D perspective view (which I got from Nasa’s Visible Earth web site) clearly shows Kilimanjaro's multiple peaks. The image was generated using topographic data from the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission, a Landsat 7 satellite image, and a false sky. Elevation exaggerated two times.


The image above is from Space Shuttle mission STS-97 on December 2, 2000 and it shows the glaciers and snow cap. The bits that look like cotton balls are actually clouds, the snow and ice is in the center, more streaky looking. As you can see from these images below from 1990, the mountain is losing its snow and glaciers.


Kilimanjaro is one of the volcanoes in the East African Rift Valley. The Great Rift Valley is the result of the ongoing separation of the African and Arabian tectonic plates in the north and rifting of the African plate in the south. The region has several volcanoes and lots of hotsprings that have formed over hotspots caused by the thinning of the lithosphere and upwelling of mantle plumes underneath. Lots of academic debate is going on in this area!

Unlike the Great Rift Valley volcanoes, most stratovolcanoes form along subduction zones where one tectonic plate is diving down underneath another. When they erupt it is usually quite explosive. During active phases these volcanoes build up layers upon layers of lava, ash, cinders, etc into a steep symmetrical cone or cones and can get quite high. They erupt from vents which are conduits from a magma chamber deep inside the mountain.

When a stratovolcano becomes inactive for awhile or goes dormant, the softer material erodes away quickly, leaving the harder material which formed some of the layers and plugged up the vents. This erosion can result in landslides and even catastrophic collapses.

Mount St. Helens is an example of a stratovolcano that exploded when its north flank collapsed and released the pressure that had built up inside. I was sleeping in on the Sunday morning in May, 1980 when it blew up and the bang woke me up. At the time, in my muddled half-asleep state, I thought someone had fired a cannon at the Haida festival in New West. Of course, in hindsight that’s a pretty silly idea as any kind of gunfire at a Haida festival would probably be highly offensive! The Big Guy and I didn’t know about the volcano until several hours later when we finally turned on the TV.

If the explosion is large enough the entire top of the volcano can be blown away, the magma chamber empties and what’s left of the mountain collapses inward leaving a caldera. An example of this is Crater Lake in Oregon, the collapsed remains of Mount Mazama.


Shield volcanoes are another type of volcano. I think I'll write about them some other time. The Big Guy has supper almost ready...