Your Today in Pictures...

[Steve Klare]

Oh...Deer!
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We went up to our local state park for a walk along the beach this afternoon. There was a crowd gathered along the boardwalk railing and we walked over to see what all the fuss was about. Then we saw these three deer (and at least two more in the brush behind them.)

These are a special sub-species of white-tailed deer you often see at selected local parks called "moochers": you see people were tossing apple slices over the railing and the deer were gobbling them up (-didn't even stop to wash the sand off first!)

Not all Long Island deer are moochers: you go to a park with a hunting season and you'd be lucky to get within 50 feet of them, meanwhile this bunch was lined up 10 feet away like an exhibit at a Natural History Museum. They were so close, that if they spoke English we could have talked with them!

Now, what you are seeing here is just a little-bit Jurassic Park. You see, deer went extinct on Long Island more than a century ago. Somewhere along the line some Gentlemen's Clubs decided they might like small contained populations to hunt on their reserves, so they trucked in some deer from the mainland and lacking predators (-also locally extinct) the deer soon got out of control and now there are thousands of them!

I'm a big fan of them, but I'll have to admit they are sometimes a nuisance. Some years ago a homeowner one town away from here was home on Halloween night. She heard a huge crash in her living room, yelled "Damn KIDS!" and ran in only to come face to face with the deer that just ran through her picture window.

Nature abhors a vacuum. We have this large population of deer without any predator to control their population. Meanwhile, there has been a gradual buildup of coyotes on the mainland. They can't swim across, but there are several railroad bridges between Queens County and the rest of the world and coyotes are crossing the bridges late at night when the trains aren't running. (Life will find a way!) Coyotes are now resident on western Long Island: tipping people's garbage cans and occasionally making them sorry they left their house pets out in the yard too long, and slowly moving eastward towards all those deer. They say the two populations will meet up in about 20 years, and for a change the top of the local food chain will be a carnivore once again.

[Graham Ritchie]

Been out and about the last few days but still managed to find time to work on a better light source for the Westar at Ferrymead Park. I came across this old carbon arc unit down there the other day, and that started me thinking if I could use it. I gave it a good clean and boy did it need it, used some "free all" on the workings and gave the mirror a good clean with IPA, it came up not to bad. I hope to get back down there soon, and see if this might work. The lamp I will use to begin with is a 24V 250watt to set thing up, in the hope I can do a bit of arm twisting with the good folk for a 36V 400watt lamp . I have a ready made power source for both 24V and 36V.

So will see... One if I can get it to fit,... Two get the lens/ gate and the center of the mirror to be dead center. If I can achieve those things first, then I can move on to the adjustments with the lamp and lens, there are certainly plenty that I can do, so will see what comes of it.

[Douglas Meltzer]

John,

That's a very pretty sign!

[John Burgess]

A good sign Summer is on its way !!

[Douglas Meltzer]

I realize the last two posts concerned DVDs, however I moved them to the What Blu-Ray did you watch last night? thread anyway. I think they'll be happy there.

[Graham Ritchie]

Plus a few others, this one going back to 1992 "Forever Young" was a good film.

seems like a million years ago now. The 90s had quite a range of good ones that came out

[Edward Nicielnik]

Elijah Wood Lord Of The Rings

[Graham Ritchie]

This photo appeared in our local paper today which I think is nice so will post it here. The owner of the small town supermarket of "Methven" noticed one of her customers at the supermarket as being someone special, and when approached he kindly went along with this neat selfie If you know your films, you should know who this person is, at present making a film up at Castle Hill near Arthurs Pass. Hint a former well known American child actor who went on to have a successful career as a adult.

[Steve Klare]

Cloud Gate
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We spent Easter week out in Indiana visiting our son at college. While we were there we went to Chicago and saw this astounding object sitting in Millennium Park near the Lake Michigan Shore. It is called "Cloud Gate", but more commonly just "the Bean". It's kind of disturbing to encounter, almost liquid, as if it's frozen in time waiting for someone to press "play" and rinse everyone in the plaza away!

As an Electronics guy it reminds me of about 10,000 lifetimes worth of solder, but it is actually many, many sections of stainless steel welded together and polished into a mirror surface.

Maybe appropriate for Easter, this end view looks like an egg, but it's actually an arch when seen from the side and if you walk underneath it, you can have the unique experience of basically walking inside a mirror!

[Graham Ritchie]

Been a bit of a rush paint job could be better, but decided to give the old girl a quick spruce up over the last couple of days, problem is I spend to much time taking to folk about projectors and films instead of getting on with it in saying that its nice to talk to people

Anyway not a perfect paint job but it will do, hopefully I will get the old girl running soon with my home made 20 minute 35mm digest of "Dolphin Tail". I used a DVD for reference at the time. The last time I watched it, I felt I got the beginning a middle and end of it just about right nice film nice digest

[Graham Ritchie]

Brilliant photo of the South Island, NZ, taken by NASA five days ago.

[Douglas Meltzer]

Graham,

Yes it is! At the Conservatory Water section of Central Park is a pond where people launch RC boats. This one has Snoopy on top of his doghouse at the bow.

[Graham Ritchie]

Doug is that a little model battleship making its way across the pond?

The spring colour's look great

[Douglas Meltzer]

Spring.

About time.

[Graham Ritchie]

Finished the screen area yesterday onto the projector next giving the old girl a spruce up, then get it running

In the beginning it was this, then got some wood, built a frame, painted it black, added a few thing like two B/H 8 ohm speakers, a couple of 2000 ft reels I found in the garage and gave them the gold treatment, found an old Snow White poster, that one came out when it was released on VHS many moons ago.

PS Every time I park my car at the Heritage park ,these particular two ducks come out the pond and follow me, so now I give them a little bit of bread, they even tap at the car door