I’m in the midst of significant upgrades on this server, including the operating system, the web software, and the blogging platform (note this also affects all other hosted sites on this hardware).
That said, don’t panic if you see an error from time to time.
Then again, if said error doesn’t disappear, please contact me.
Either leave a message on this post or, if that fails, send an e-mail to jason …at… xenogere …dot… com.
A month ago I began an informal series of posts showing some photographs I captured during the first walk I took with my new camera, a Canon S5 IS.
Now quite some time after that first post, I’m finally getting to the second part (and who knows how long it will take to get to subsequent installments…).
My lack of timeliness notwithstanding, however, I hope you enjoy seeing the fruit of my initial experience memorializing moments of time with this great piece of photographic equipment. The more I use it, the better the results, yet I couldn’t have been happier with what it accomplished on our first walk together.
A simple view of the lake with the sun rising behind me.
A small covert of American coots (Fulica americana) foraging on shore.
A beautiful, large male muscovy duck (Cairina moschata) keeping himself
between me and his lady friend standing just behind and to the left of him.
Four American white pelicans (Pelecanus erythrorhynchos), two
preening and two beaking (which is how these large birds establish
and maintain their pecking order).
Two ring-billed gulls (Larus delawarensis) in flight.
An American crow (Corvus brachyrhynchos) hunting for breakfast on
the wet floodplain.
I promise to get back to this set of photos soon so I can complete this series before 2015…
[Prev | To be continued…]
I’ve tried to be patient with Zooomr. Promises of a return to excellent services with the 2008 launch seem to have been empty.
Since Kris and crew announced the migration and upgrade to be complete, I’ve continued having nothing but problems.
Photos come and go.
My entire account vanished for several days.
All photos disappeared, followed by a rolling blackout of images.
The site is intermittently available (even now it returns either “500 – internal server error” or “502 – bad gateway” messages, and all photos are offline).
I have about 1,700 pictures hosted by Zooomr, all of them linked and/or displayed from this blog or xenogere unseen. Migrating all of them—including having to edit each and every post—is a daunting challenge at best, and a black hole that will suck up every bit of free time I have in order to get it done.
But what other choice do I have?
Zooomr is useless if it can’t provide the one service it claims to offer: image hosting. Since the Mark III debacle last year, it has failed utterly and miserably, and the migration to Japan along with the 2008 upgrade seem to have further crippled the service, making it essentially one large empty promise that delivers nothing but frustration.
I can continue hoping Kris somehow gets Zooomr back on track. Meanwhile, I’m left with a very ugly choice: Do I begin migrating photos or do I continue waiting in hopes they can get their act together (all the while letting an incapable service randomly disable thousands of images across thousands of posts)?
Moving to Flick would be arduous at best. It can be done though.
Still, I’ve never liked Yahoo!, and I like Microsoft even less. If they’re able to acquire the former, Flickr becomes yet another Micro$haft mess that feeds the monster. As someone who has vowed never to purchase MS products again, a migration could force me to migrate yet again at a later date—and to what?
Ugh. The entire situation seems dire and hopeless.
I just wish Kris Tate and his Japanese Zooomr crew would focus on making the service what it’s supposed to be, making it stable, making it work, and stop focusing on bombastic assurances that are as insubstantial as their service has been for quite some time.
The juvenile squirrel came back today.
Quite surreal.
It strolled through the patio fence and toured the area. Not hurried.
al-Zill followed closely, perhaps within a meter/yard of her at all times.
He seemed intrigued. As did I.
My astonished gaze followed them along the living room windows, then I leaped from my chair and ran to the bedroom.
As al-Zill sat patiently and watched, the squirrel looked through the doors, scampered around the cat carrier, and went on with her investigation of the patio.
Then the squirrel walked up to al-Zill, stopping for a moment with one front leg held up and nose outstretched like an English pointer.
The pause was momentary, yet the two were no more than a hand’s width apart.
The squirrel turned and walked back through the fence.
al-Zill followed.
Up into the photinia bushes the little rascal climbed, and all the while the curious cat watched.
I can’t be certain what it was consuming, but the squirrel sat in the shrubs for some time eating and grooming.
The feline? A short distance away lying under the tree, ever watchful, always listening, never threatening.
Then the squirrel climbed down and leisurely marched around the outside of the patio fence.
Marched right by al-Zill who looked on. He easily could have reached out and touched the passerby.
Once the rodent turned the corner, the hunter stood and followed.
Neither ran. Both walked.
I ran around the other side of the house to watch.
This peaceful encounter went on and on.
A bit of chase followed later. Not hunting so much, at least not that I recognized, and little physical contact was made.
Then more walking, more following, more watching and being watched.
The squirrel eventually climbed a tree, a casual, unhurried climb, and perched withing leaping distance of the cat who lay below.
One groomed briefly while the other watched. Then vice versa.
Bored or disinterested, or both, al-Zill eventually got up and walked away, after which the juvenile rodent climbed up until it disappeared in the dense cover of the treetops.
From start to finish, the event lasted more than an hour.
Sitting here now typing this post, I feel confused and fascinated. I keep taking a mental inventory to see if perhaps I’m high on drugs or drunk on alcohol.
Having done no drugs and having consumed no alcohol, I’m left even more perplexed now than I was while watching this bizarre demonstration.
If the squirrel doesn’t fear cats, it will die soon given the healthy colony of felines here at the lake.
Is it too young to know any better? Does it have some mental issue that interferes with its normal instincts? Something else entirely? I haven’t a clue.
As for al-Zill, he seemed more interested in play and satiating his curiosity about the strange little interloper than he did in hunting and killing it.
Does he need his own pet? Are his neurological problems partly responsible? Again, I haven’t a clue.
All I know is this: I witnessed an exceptionally odd interaction between predator and prey, between two creatures normally caught in the grip of a hunter/hunted relationship.
I don’t know what to think about the whole ordeal.
I definitely need a drink…
