I got up late this morning. By the time I was outside with my Canon G9 in my garden the sun was blazing horizontally across the flora and fauna that make up our little private jungle.

I always check out my chilies each morning. They are a very small variety, only about two or three centimetres long. They are very sweet and not too hot, just right for chili chicken and several other dishes that require the flavour, but not too much heat – at least that’s the way I like it (uh-Huh, uh-Huh). This little chili was casting a brave shadow on the leaf of a Bird of Paradise plant:

One of my favourite posts on Madang – Ples Bilong Mi is an old short one about chilies. I’m not sure where my head was that morning, but I’d sure like to get back in that place.

Another popular denizen of my jungle is the Tickle Me Plant. Its leaves fold up and hide at the slightest touch, and its blossoms would please any high-school cheerleader into a giggle:

They’re a bit small for pom-poms, being only about 2 cm high. The branches are thick with thorns too, so I have to watch where I’m stepping.

As I was walking around our central garden in the middle of the yard, I caught a grasshopper in the open on a leaf. As soon as he saw me, he ducked behind the leaf to hide from me. Little did he suspect that I an an old Cherokee stalker from way back. Little escapes my attention or the merciless eye of my camera. Whistling nonchalantly, I eased down on my bum and surreptitiously snaked my arm around behind some foliage to snap this shot:

The grasshopper is lit only by the light shining through the leaf. I don’t think that it ever noticed the camera. Sneakiness is a valuable attribute for a nature photographer.

Ah, yes, the bees, the bees – the main topic of today’s nonsense.

Well, as usual, as soon as the sun hits these strange little whitish hibiscus blooms they open up. The blossoms last for several days and close up tightly each night. When they open in the morning, the bees are there to greet them and go mining for nectar and pollen.

It’s devilishly difficult to shoot them. They buzz all around me as I sit there on the grass. I have about a half of a second to catch one entering a flower. Since the G9 has about a half-second lag between punching the shutter button and actually capturing the image, it is strictly a crap shoot whether you will get the bee or not. I took about fifty exposures this morning to get these three.

Here is a bee approaching the hibiscus flower which has just opened:

This bee has landed and is on his way down to the pollen mine:

This one has collected all that was available and is leaving the flower:

Though is was exasperating at moments, I had a lot of fun trying to get good shots of the bees feeding. You can clearly see the orange globs of pollen on their hind legs. The shots turned out considerably better than I had hoped.

All in all, a good time in the garden to put me in the right mind to tackle:

The domain name “PBTPNG” might be a NetBIOS domain name.  If this is the case, verify that the domain name is properly registered with WINS.

If you are certain that the name is not a NetBIOS domain name, then the following information can help you troubleshoot your DNS configuration.

The following error occurred when DNS was queried for the service location (SRV) resource record used to locate an Active Directory Domain Controller (AD DC) for domain “PBTPNG”:

The error was: “DNS name does not exist.”
(error code 0x0000232B RCODE_NAME_ERROR)

The query was for the SRV record for _ldap._tcp.dc._msdcs.PBTPNG

Common causes of this error include the following:

- The DNS SRV records required to locate a AD DC for the domain are not registered in DNS. These records are registered with a DNS server automatically when a AD DC is added to a domain. They are updated by the AD DC at set intervals. This computer is configured to use DNS servers with the following IP addresses:

202.5.191.160
202.5.191.130
10.1.1.2
10.1.1.1

- One or more of the following zones do not include delegation to its child zone:

PBTPNG
. (the root zone)

Well, I know that something is awry with DNS on my two new Domain Controllers that I built. But what? I don’t want a lecture. I want a fix! Hopefully, something that I can actually understand well enough to accomplish.

Wish me luck. Anybody know where I can get a job digging ditches?

Two Ravens . . .     One sits on a coconut frond. The other flies around the tree. It’s a simple image, just the kind I like.

Most of my images contain more information than I prefer. Art, whether I’m writing or presenting images, speaks to me about freedom. I’m free to present whatever amuses me or whatever I wish to say. The reader is free to ignore it, interpret it, comment upon it, or copy it and change it into something else. (Have a look at the Creative Commons copyright notice in the footer.) The Two Ravens  shot, in a sense, transcends the subject of ravens and coconut trees. What would happen if I showed the image to one hundred people and said, “Tell me a little story about what you see.” Of course, I would probably get about one hundred different answers. Some of them would be mundane. Some would be revealing. Some would be transcendental.

This is what makes Two Ravens  more interesting to me rather than, for instance, the next image – a spider eating a bee:

I suppose that it is probably amusing to nearly anyone except the bee, but it is not the same kind of image as Two Ravens.

Well, what about a grasshopper:

Same thing. Oh sure, it’s pretty, I suppose. But, it’s too specific. The story is too obvious. It is an image of a grasshopper on a budding flower. That’s about all you can say about it. It requires no interpretation.  Therefore, it is less interesting.

One could say the same thing about the bee hovering at the heart of a hibiscus flower, its hind legs fat with pollen:

Once you have described what is in the image, the story is over. There is no mystery, no enigma, no gestalt.  Just a bee and a flower. The bits and pieces don’t add up to more than their sum.

I’m a compulsive image maker. One might say that I am an Image-O-Matic. Something catches my eye – out pops the camera. What you don’t see, patient reader, are the thousands of images that are pure visual drivel.

I save those for when I have time to make them more interesting.

My garden was a pleasant place this morning. the light was subdued. This pumpkin flower, as big as my hand, stood out as brightly as the sun:

It rained just before dawn – not unusual this time of year – and this reproductive gear of a hibiscus flower was dripping wet:

I have a compulsion to take photos of water droplets. On this Pandanus leaf, you can see the reflection of my camera in the larger drops on the left:

These checker board winged flies are crazy about these yellow flowers:

Flies and bees are always interesting subjects – if you can get them to hold still.

A daisy bud just broke open this morning. It looks strangely like something fancy that you might find on your plate in a very expensive restaurant. In the unfocused background, you can see how the blossom will look when it unfurls:

Other gardens entice me. Nevertheless, though my garden is so small, I’m always amazed that every day that I explore it I find something new.

I’m experimenting doing a post from my house this morning. It’s Saturday, so I have some time to spare before we go diving.

We now have a VSAT at our office. I’ve set up one of our servers with a modem on it so that I can dial into my office to get on the internet. I only get 33.6KBS, but it’s rock-solid. So, for K0.30 I can connect for as long as I please.

Also, I’ve tried combing several photos into a ZIP file to upload to a gallery. It work nicely. I can ZIP them and then walk away while I load the boat.

Here are some shots that I took in My Garden this morning:

The grasshopper shot has a bit of motion blur – I nearly deleted it. I was shooting stopped down to F8, so the shutter speed was a little slow, even for the anti-shake thingie.

I’ve been trying to grow a willow tree in the garden for about three years now. It’s just starting to take off.

When the Muse is attending someone else, I venture into my garden in the morning, camera in hand. There has never been a day that the verdant path has failed to provide inspiration and to present challenges to create images that please me. All it takes is a camera and desire.

I was blasted this morning by this stunning crimson hibiscus blossom at the absolute peak of its short life:

If you’ve been hanging around Madang – Ples Bilong Mi  for a while, you know that I have an unnatural fixation on water droplets. It’s like a dream – don’t bother trying to interpret it. It probably doesn’t mean a thing. This morning I found a couple of fine examples:

Many of these tiny beads of Dihydrogen Monoxide* are play-acting as lenses to focus itsy-bitsy images of the morning sun on the leaf.

The drops on this pandanus leaf are more sombre and dignified, as is appropriate for their pinstriped businesslike background:

You’ve probably also noticed that bugs of any variety amuse me. This little fly distracted me from matters that are more important (but far less interesting) for possibly ten minutes. Any respite is welcome.

He was devilishly difficult to photograph. As soon as I would get close enough, he would buzz to a nearby leaf – not far enough away to discourage me – and the sit perfectly still until I approached again. Finally, he seemed to tire of the game and settled long enough for me to compose this image:

It was worth the effort. As bugs go, he’s rather handsome, if a bit spindly around the legs. Did you know that Pierce Brosnan has chicken legs? Years ago when he was shooting Robinson Crusoe in Madang, he was staying with his son at the Madang Resort Hotel. Eunie does aquarobics at the pool there three mornings a week. She noticed him at the pool several times. She said he was very friendly and courteous, but his legs were painfully skinny.

By the way, you may never have heard that Brosnan did Robinson Crusoe.  That would not surprise me. It was horrid. I saw it in English and couldn’t get through it. Someone gave me a copy dubbed in German. It was better – I understand very little German.

This next image is interesting because of the lighting. The camera is pointing towards the sun, so the flower is lit from the opposite side. You are actually seeing the transparency of the petals. The spider is on the near side, but he is also semi-transparent. The combination creates a very interesting image:

I find traipsing around with my camera in my hand, searching intently for amusing images, a pleasant and productive way to take my mind off of my worries. Sometimes I think people spend far too much time worrying about things over which they have no control. I know that I certainly used to do so.

I like to remember that every time I click the button on my camera that I’ve taken advantage of the opportunity to create something beautiful that nobody else has ever done before. That’s why I carry my camera with me at all times. I don’t want to miss those chances.

Of course, 99% of the images will be mundane. But, when the magic caresses your lens, you’ve done something unique and truly worth your time.

* Yes, of course, it’s just water. The many attempts to bring to attention the public ignorance of basic science have been amusing, but futile.

I had a little stroll through my garden this morning, camera in hand.

I always check for insects. There are plenty of bugs that chew on my leaves, but I don’t worry much about foliage loss. Plants grow so quickly here that the insects can hardly keep up. If it were not for the bugs, we’d be buried in plants.

My insect inspection each morning is mostly so that I can see what might be posing nicely for a photograph. This tiny green spider is busy eating his breakfast – a juicy fly with polka-dot wings:

If you click to enlarge, you’ll see that the spider has eight eyes. I’ve shown other spiders on Madang – Ples Bilong Mi here, and here.

I have many varieties of Coleus in my garden. They always make intriguing patterns to photograph:

Fixing on patterns now, I’m stopping at a coconut tree to see what the lichens are up to:

Can’t get my mind off of patterns – probably leftover nitrogen from my last dive. It can make you a little trippy. These flame-tree leaves are too, too green:

This has to be the weirdest panorama that I’ve done. It spreads over more than 400°. You can see the house and car twice. It looks nothing like our front yard, yet everything that is visible in the yard is in the photo – just wildly distorted:

Oooo, head is spinning now. It’s Sunday. I’m going for a nap.

Oh, yes. The sun came up again this morning. It always reassures me so when that happens. We actually had a rumour here a few weeks ago that the sun would not shine for thirty-six hours. It made the newspapers, so I hear. I don’t know, since I don’t read the newspapers – too depressing. Eunie tells me what I need to know. If anybody has firm information about this rumour (hmm . . . is that possible?), please let me know.

Anyway, the sun did come up this morning and it looked like this:

Not too shabby, eh?

For me, a rousing good sunrise is like a kick in the seat of the pants. It gets me moving.

When I turned around to walk back from the boat where I do the sunrise shots, I saw this:

The shadows on either side are coconut trees.

How often does one actually notice one’s shadow? I must admit that I rather take it for granted. Even on a sunny day, I hardly acknowledge its presence.

I took a couple of shots that didn’t do much for me. Then I stuck my arm out and waved. That was much better. Sheba thought so also – she came to investigate the moving shadow on the ground. I think that she thought it might be a pigeon at first. She loves to chase them. There are a dozen or so pigeons that roost on a house a short distance away. They strut around in our yard in the morning sun. Sheba loves to run as fast as she can at them while being as silent as possible. At the last moment, she barks and runs around snapping at them as they lift off.

I don’t think she’s ever caught one. I hope she doesn’t. It would spoil the fun.

On inspecting my banana trees, I discovered this big fly with red eyes. It’s what we would call a horse-fly if we were in Indiana – which I am forever grateful that I’m not. They bite like crazy. You’ll end up bleeding if you don’t swat quickly.

This one was happy to bask in the warm morning sunshine while posing:

All seems well.

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