Everybody is bored hearing how busy I am. Hey, I’m  bored with it! We’re working frantically this week to get the new network rolled out and all of the computers switched over to it. When it’s done, I’ll be able to get back to what passes for normal. I’ve been in a state for the last few months. The old system went back to Windows 2000 Server for Domain Controllers and had been upgraded, patched, hacked, glued together and thrown into a mix-o-matic with a bunch of Linux monstrosities that were supposed to be “enhancements”. Never again!

The new system has dual Windows Server 3008 R2 Domain Controllers and all workstations will be running Windows 7. Most of it is working already and it is sweet, sweet, sweet. I just have three mission-critical machines to move over to the new network. Then we have to get the big network printers switched over, do a little prettying up of bits and pieces and we’re done.

Then I have to get cracking writing some magazine articles and arrange for some bush walks to gather new material. I also plan to ride the Harley more. I’ve only been on it a couple of times in the last few months.

Today, to amuse ourselves, I have a few miscellaneous images that tickled my eyeballs over the last couple of weeks. I’ll start with an unusual view of a nice red hibiscus blossom:

Those water drops caught my eye from twenty metres away. I never pass up a chance to shoot drops. I love the way that they reflect the light. You can see some interesting reflections if you click to enlarge.

Here’s another of my ongoing series of “crazy foliage” shots:Sometime when I was a child I was brainwashed, probably by a gym teacher who was assigned to teach science – a common enough occurrence in the U S of A – that plants are green. Despite intense therapy, I’ve not gotten past this crippling mental defect. Plants here are all kinds of nutsy colours and it is deeply disturbing.

The shots above came from Blueblood as did this one of a man hurrying home during a brief rain shower:You can see the base of the huge Kar Kar Island  volcano at the right side of the frame. Click to enlarge and you can see the rain drops hitting the water and even a few streaks of rain drops against the darkness of the canoe. I took all of these shots with my new Canon G11.

You’ve seen the flower of the Sensitive Plant or Tickle-Me Plant (Mimosa pudica)  here before:

This is the nicest shot that I have of it. I attribute that to the increased dynamic range of the G11. It seems to capture many more tones of colour and brightness than the G10, as it should, given the massive changes to the sensor.

Here is another familiar to regular readers. It’s my favourite spider:This fellow was distinctly grumpy on the dull day when I shot him. They usually try to hide by crawling around on the opposite side of the flower. This guy turned to face me and raised his front legs in a menacing display of aggression. I have to admit that I didn’t feel greatly menaced, but I didn’t mention it to him.

Oh, yeah, back to water drops:This is one of my favourite water drop shots. I have others that are sharper, flashier, more colourful, blah, blah, blah. This one, however, makes me feel very relaxed and mellow. I’m strongly affected emotionally by images, always have been. I think that is why I love photography so much. When I look at my favourite images, I feel good.

I love sharing those good vibes with you. I hope you dig it too.

Yesterday we took a break from diving with our friends from Belgium, Anita, Wouter and Anita’s dad, Jos. We drove  out the road to Lae and the highlands until the pavement ran out, about fifty kliks out of Madang. Along the way, we stopped at a small park which I have not visited for about twenty years.

The Balek Wildlife Sanctuary is the home of what we call The Stinky River. It is a sulphur spring which bubbles out of a cave in the huge limestone escarpment along which the road runs to the Gol Gol River. Here is a shot of the cave entrance and the emerging stinky river:

If you find the smell of rotten eggs unbearable, you had better stay away. Hydrogen sulfide permeates the air. The colour of the emerging water, however, is quite startling. It is an unearthly blue colour. I’d guess that it’s loaded with copper compounds.

Here is the place, not far inside the cave, where the spring emerges:The white stuff is some kind of algae or bacteria that grows on the rocks in long, hairlike strands. The small river that is formed by a confluence of springs contains what appear to me to be some variety of trout. How they manage to survive here is beyond me.

The “wildlife” in Balek Wildlife Sanctuary needs to be taken with a grain of salt. There are many claims extant on the web for a variety of critters. The only wildlife that we saw, aside from a rather ferocious looking spider, were these two young Hornbills which are the “babies” of this nice old man. With wings clipped to prevent escape, They could fly short distances, but obviously preferred to stay close to their papa:

I’ve observed that many Papua New Guineans treat animals roughly with no consideration of pain and suffering. This is not surprising nor objectionable for people who traditionally have considered anything that moves as a potential meal. This old fellow (probably about my age) treated these young Hornbills as if they were his grandchildren.

The Papuan Hornbill is a stunningly beautiful creature. The adults have a crest along the top of the beak:The eyelashes amaze me. In adults they are very long and delicate. They are very inquisitive and often act like unruly children. There was once a resident Hornbill at a local hotel. Its favourite pastime was to harass the hotel guests. I you had a bag beside your lounge chair at the pool, the pesky bird would hop over (they hop on the ground in a most comical fashion) and remove all of the contents of the bag, often tossing items into the pool. It also thoroughly enjoyed biting toes. As long as you were careful not to allow it to get a toe into the back of its beak, where it could exert bone crunching strength, it was fun, in a creepy sort of way.

The garden is a bit sparse, but does include a magnificent display of Bird of Paradise plants:

There is also a huge pile of rocks in which lies the grave of Robinson Crusoe, so they claim. I find it amusing that they insist that this fictional character is buried here in our lovely Madang.

Other wildlife being scarce, we began to hunt. Wouter found this bizarre spider, about the size of a small coin:The Balek Wildlife Sanctuary is a nice spot to visit while in Madang. There seemed to be some doubt as to the proper entrance fee. I don’t think that they get many visitors. Since there were four of us, I offered K5 each and that was deemed acceptable.

Man, I can’t believe that it’s 2010 already. I just got used to writing year numbers beginning with “2″. Now I have to retain my hand to leave out the “00″ in the middle. What a bummer! I’ll probably jump ahead and start writing 20010. Hey wasn’t that a “thirties-something” TV series? No, wait, it’s the ZIP code for Washington, DC. See, I’m aimlessly rambling already. I hope that that’s not an omen.

Anyway, let’s start with things that are not  fish. This is not a fish:

As any fool can see, it’s a spider, a very familiar spider, on a yellow flower. I cannot stop taking pictures of these amusing little spiders. They are certainly prolific. On many days there will be one of these little fellows on nearly every blossom. I suspect that it also has a very specialised hunting technique targeted to insects that feed on and pollinate these flowers. It is obviously an ambush predator, as are many spiders. It does not depend on its web, which you can see if you click to enlarge. The web wraps around the central parts of the flower and may or may not take part in the capture. These spiders eat tiny striped-wing flies on which I have often seen them feeding.

And, this also is not  a fish, though the name implies otherwise:

It’s a Starfish (Linckia multifora)  on the old catamaran at the Eel Garden near Pig Island.

And, neither is this a fish. I got this shot to illustrate that everywhere you look in the sea you find the spiral. It’s one of natures’ most common themes:It is, of course, coral. Specifically, it’s Acropora clathrata.  Now you know. Isn’t that a relief?

Now, these are  fish. This rather disorganised mob of Striped Catfish (Plotosus lineatus)  are regrouping after being startled out of their tiny wits my me attempting to get close enough for a picture:They will shortly resume their normal feeding habit of marching above the sand in a line like soldiers policing up cigarette butts.

And, this is also a fish, the Pixy Hawkfish (Cirrhitichthys oxycephalus):A very pretty fish it is. These look very much more interesting against a dark, blurred background. You can then better see the delicate structure of its dorsal fin, an exercise in excess detail. You can see what I mean in this post featuring the Dwarf Hawkfish, a closely related species. By the way, this is the red variation of the species. The other variation is less colourful.

So, let’s finish up with everybody’s favourite fish – Nemo:Nemo, a Clown Anemonefish (Amphiprion percula)  is here with friends and me today to wish you a very happy New Year.

Now I have to start thinking seriously about my New Year’s Resolution.

You may not have been holding your breath, but I’ve been patiently waiting for Steven Goodheart to put up his third blog, Goodheart’s Extreme Science. I can barely keep one journal going. I can’t help wondering if he has a time machine stashed away someplace. I can’t imaging how one could find time for three journals. Anyway, pop over there to wish him luck. Give him a bookmark. People like us need all the breaks we can get. If there are any therapists out there, you might want to have a little chat with him. I think he needs help.

My pathetic little contribution to science (and art, I dare say) comes in the form of these two images that I captured yesterday morning. I’m trying to take the perfect picture of this spider. It’s been featured here before here, here and here:

I think that I’m getting close. I can’t wait to get my hands on my new Canon G11 when Rich Jones brings it back from Canada for me.

Taking a break from science for a moment, a loving grandad has to show off this image of my granddaughters. I just received it this morning:

That’s Pippa on the left and Audrey Rose on the right. The little critter is Jack the Dog. The biggest bummer in my life is that I get to see them only once every few years.

In this shot of a red-eyed fly I managed to get also another fly and an ant. I hadn’t even noticed the ant:

The play of light in this shot is very nice. I love shooting in the early morning when the sun is low and the colour of Chardonnay. It gives a warm glow to my images and casts interesting shadows.

To finish off here, I’m filching something directly from Steven Goodheart’s Metta Refuge blog. I found it amusing:

HOW ENLIGHTENED ARE YOU?

IF….

If you can live without caffeine,

If you can be cheerful, ignoring aches and pains,

If you can resist complaining,

If you can understand when your loved ones are too busy to give you any time,

If you can take criticism and blame without resentment,

If you can ignore a friend’s limited education and never correct him or her,

If you can resist treating a rich friend better than a poor friend,

If you can face the world without lies and deceit,

If you can conquer tension without medical help,

If you can relax without liquor,

If you can sleep without the aid of drugs,

If you can honestly say that deep in your heart you have no prejudice against creed, color, religion, gender preference, or politics,

–Then you have almost reached the same level of spiritual development as your dog!

I’m feeding you seafood tomorrow. Don’t forget the tartar sauce.

This morning started out with a mind-blowing sunrise. The sun is actually rising up over on the right side of the shot, just to the left of Faded Glory.  However, there was a huge cumulonimbus cloud thumping with lightning flashes over in the northwest. This shot covers nearly 180°. The glow in the cloud is not from the lightning in the thunderstorm, but from the reddish light from the rising sun. This is one of the more unusual sunrises that I’ve seen. It certainly started my day nicely:
It’s worth a click on the shot above to see it full sized. I even caught a few birds flying around over the harbour.

I had a little walkabout in my garden. Yesterday, I showed you this little green spider hiding from me. Here it is waiting on a flower for a tasty insectoid aviator to land nearby:

It has noticed me fooling around near his territory and attempts a bluff to scare me off.

It didn’t work. I didn’t go away. So, he did one of those, “Hey you! You lookin’ at me? You want trouble? I got yer trouble buddy!”:

It still didn’t work. I took its picture anyway. The spider was humiliated and retreated to a greener place to sulk in camouflaged silence.

Now this is a spider to be reckoned with. I did no teasing here. I stood back respectfully, flicked my flash on and coaxed in a little telephoto:That is a shot of his underside. Notice the “fake-out stripe”.

Here’s a better shot of the spider sitting in the middle of his metre-wide web. I know little about spiders, but I’m pretty sure that the white webby stuff is what I think of as a “fake-out stripe” I think that it’s supposed to fool insects into thinking that there’s no spider there at all – it’s just a funny looking stick or something – no danger here:

Well, that’s enough Araneae  for today. I don’t want to creep anybody out.

I’m tossing in a variation of a sunrise that I did a day or two ago. I like the colours better on this one:You can’t improve  on nature’s beauty, but you can interpret  it.

I like to start off every day with a sunrise. Considering my proclivity for this, I must be the luckiest guy in the world. During most of the year, at least one day out of two will provide fodder for my famished camera. Some days are better than others, but every day is different.  This is part of my thinking time for the day. I usually get fifteen to thirty minutes to contemplate the newness of the day and what it might bring:

Then I have a little walk around my garden to see who’s awake and what they’re doing.

In the same bush in which I found a beautiful green lizard the other day, I spotted this tiny bug hiding under a leaf. The sun was shining through the leaf and making the little fellow glow. I tried to get the shot without flash, but there simply wasn’t enough light:

The little guy is only about a centimetre long.

Over at the Bird of Paradise plants I found a similar sized spider. It kept trying to move around on the other side of the curled-up leaf to hide, but finally tired of that and submitted to my photographic zeal:

The shot really appeals to me compositionally. Its simplicity is powerful. Getting one or two shots a day such as this one, which really pleases me, lifts me right off the ground. Photography is a powerful emotional stimulant for me. I must be neurotic. No, wait. Of course  I’m neurotic!

This spider is vainly attempting to hide from me. He nearly pulled it off, except that I saw it moving down from the flower on which it was waiting for a meal. You’ll see more of this little spider tomorrow:

I’ve featured this lovely green spider before here.

I never know which orchids in the garden are going to bloom next. The blooms last for an incredibly long time compared to most flowers, sometimes for a couple of weeks. I know absolutely nothing about orchids and I’m happy to allow them to be a mystery to me. I overanalyze the underwater world and pretend to be an expert. I think that it’s nice to appreciate some things without knowing everything about them. It leaves room for awe and wonder:

The sun was coming in from the back of these blossoms. I turned my flash on to give a little fill light in the dark areas to punch up the colour. I’m quite happy with the shot.

The best thing about walking around in my garden with my camera is that, if I wake up the next morning, I know that something like this will be waiting for me.

Lucky? Blessed?

You choose.

I didn’t have enough space a few days ago to show the remaining images from my last trip up Nob Nob Mountain. I’m usually the one assigned to haul visitors up there so that they can have a village experience and look down at the beautiful Madang coastline. Let me tell you, aside from the somewhat scary ride, it certainly beats slaving away in the office. It also never fails to feed my camera some tasty treats.

Here is a view to the west from Guntabag, where my old friend Tagtap lives with his family:

The brownish patches are gardens. Slash and burn agriculture is practiced heavily here because it’s the only way the people can feed themselves. Unfortunately, the population pressure will soon make this method unsustainable. Increased incidences of land slides and severe flooding are a direct result of the disturbance of the thin tropical topsoil by agricultural methods and timber cutting.

Here is a very nasty image of the Madang wharf taken with my Olympus SP-590UZ in the hazy afternoon at least five kilometres away at full (26x) optical zoom:

Unless you’re a spook looking for secrets, it’s useless as a photograph. Still, why waste pixels:

A few minutes with Photoshop gave me a pretty image.

Here is a scary spider:

The wavy background is a corrugated iron water tank, in case you’re wondering. I enjoy photographing spiders. There are so many different species here that I’ll never run out of new ones. Most of them are fairly large, so I can get very detailed images of them with my cheap cameras. I don’t have to spend a fortune on a DSLR and an expensive macro lens.

You would not think that this image would be difficult to get. That is, until you realise that these are African Tulip tree blossoms and they are growing about twenty to thirty metres up on top of the tree. So, how did I get the shot:

Well, it wasn’t by climbing up in the tree. I’m not averse to risk to get a shot, but I’m not suicidal. I was standing on top of the mountain shooting down at the top of the tree.

There are all sorts of crazy looking plants here. I don’t know what it is about the tropics that gives plants the idea that they don’t have to be green. Whatever it is, I like it:

What’s with those colours, eh? Personally, I take it that Someone  has quite a sense of humour.

Speaking of colours, have a look at this outrageous rooster:

If I were a rooster, I’d want to look like that!  This dude shows his lineage back to the Wild Red Junglefowl (Gallus gallus)  which is believed to be the direct ancestor of all domestic chickens.

I feel a long bush-walk coming on. I lost both of my big toenails as a result of bad-fitting shoes on the last one. This time I’m going barefoot!