One of the many additions to our new aquarium is a blue lobster we’ve named Mr. Schneider. (Bonus points to anyone who gets the reference.) Mr. Schneider is a rather industrious lil’ lobster. He has spent days (literally) creating a home for himself (we don’t actually know his gender) under a large rock. In the video, he is seen moving rocks around to help accommodate his new lair. Watch for cameos by a molly fish (R.I.P.) and a neon tetra.
I’ve written before about how we don’t get much in the way of weather ’round here. The pattern of boring weather was broken last Friday morning when a rare pop-up thunderstorm hit central California. Jen and I were both awakened by the sound of thunder. I first put it off as a truck or some other large thing rolling by the house. But once it happened again, I was certain that it was thunder. It’s always a nice surprise when something like this happens. And this storm was particularly surprising, as none of the weather forecasts I had seen recently predicted rain or storms. But a PG&E weather dispatched i received just before 7AM that morning confirmed the presence of actual weather:
A weak upper-level low, about 450 miles south of Diablo Canyon, continues to bring monsoon moisture towards our area.
The doppler radar at Vandenberg AFB is indicating a band of lighting and showers over northern San Barbara County moving west-northwest towards San Luis Obispo this morning. The SLO Weather lighting tracker indicates over 1,700+ strikes this morning mostly southeast of San Luis Obispo
As this band of thunderstorms moves over San Luis Obispo, it will produce mostly cloudy weather and lighting with a chance of rain showers. Precipitation amounts south of our area have been mostly light, with most of the rain evaporating before reaching the ground. (virga).
(Any spelling/grammar errors in the above block were copied over from the source.) Naturally, when there’s lightning in the sky, the smart thing to do is to stand near an open window, holding an electronic device that’s plugged into a wall outlet. And that’s exactly what I did, with the video camera. Watch for the time-lapse lightning bolt around 1:18:
The storm did produce a couple of really loud booms accompanied by bright lightning bursts (not on the video, unfortunately) but it mellowed out not long after I turned off the camera. It tried to come back strong a couple hours later, with a few boisterous thunderclaps just passed 10AM. And then it was done. That’s probably the last storm we’ll have for awhile. Still, I’m looking forward to the next one. Even if it doesn’t happen until sometime in 2009.
Another video made with footage from our trip to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Music in this video is by Colin Gazeley. You can also see another short jellyfish video here.
This video was made from footage I shot at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. The video features sharks, prawns, rays, a flounder and some other fish. Music is by The Gorskys.
In this video blog, I talk about my new drug, Prozac. I actually recorded the video a couple weeks ago, but everything’s still pretty relevant. This is the second video I’ve edited using Final Cut Pro 5. I’m starting to get the hang of the software, and i think you’ll see the results here.
