Gelato, coffee and bikinis. Definitely a beach town!
Author Archives: Kelson
Not sure how this landscaping is supposed to work
I’m still not sure how this new landscaping is supposed to work. My best guess is that the lower area is supposed to collect runoff and seepage from the surrounding lawn and other plants (and the street gutter behind me, interestingly enough) in order to reduce water usage and actually do something with water that would otherwise be sent into storm drains — a good idea in drought-stricken California.
There does seem to be a drain so that it won’t totally fill up in the rain, like it did a few months ago before they had all the plants in: Continue reading
Hiding the Thirteenth Floor
Hiding the thirteenth floor by renumbering everything above 12 always seemed like a silly superstition…but then aren’t they all when you really think about them?
Pizza Place Preps for Pi Day
The local Round Table Pizza is advertising using Pi Day (3.14). I love that this has gone from being a geeky meme shared around Facebook to something you can see out in the real world.
Update: We made our own pi.
Halo achievement unlocked: Spotted a parhelic circle.
Sun halo fragments, clockwise from upper left:
- A sundog to the left of the sun.
- Part of a 22° circular halo to the right.
- Part of a parhelic circle (I think) in the opposite direction.
I spotted these just walking to lunch today, shortly after noon (well, DST noon). I wasn’t sure what I was seeing at first with the parhelic circle. It was clearly too smooth and regular to be part of the clouds surrounding it, but I’d never actually seen one before. Sundogs and 22-degree halos are a lot more common, even in the Los Angeles area.
After looking around for other halos, spotting the sundog and the 22°, and checking the height of both the sun and the mystery arc, I realized it was probably part of the parhelic circle, which when complete is a white circle running around the entire sky at the same altitude as the sun.
It wasn’t clear to the eye, but in the (slightly contrast-enhanced) photo of the sundog, it looks like the circle extends through it…which suggests to me that maybe I have seen it before. I’ve seen what I thought were elongated sundogs, but maybe they were sundogs with small fragments of this halo.
Halos like these are caused by reflections of sunlight inside ice crystals, sometimes near the ground and sometimes, as in this case, up in the sky. Different shapes, sizes and arrangements of crystals create different paths to the eye, which make different halos.
No Pie For You!
Sure, it’s been done before, but this is the first I’d seen this meme in the wild.
For the record, I didn’t have any pie, but I did have an awesome Belgian waffle drenched in blackberries.
Fallen Tree
A tree in a city park, knocked down during a heavy storm.
What struck me most about the view from this side was the patch of sod hanging off of the exposed roots.
You can see where the first tree knocked over another tree.
Yes, one tree fell on another and knocked it down too. Or maybe one fell and then the other fell on top of it – it’s hard to tell, since we weren’t there at the time.
Originally posted on a mix of Instagram and Flickr.