Monday, January 10, 2011
Saturday, January 08, 2011
Scanners! Where The Wild Things Are.
Not all of the old black and white negatives and prints are of ex-girlfriends, ex or current wives, school friends or acquaintances. Sometimes they'll be total strangers, as in this selectively colored image from around 1971 from a camera club shoot set up by a Detroit model/talent agency. I'll probably post a few others from this event if for no other reason than to illustrate the amazing changes in cameras in the last 40 years!
Friday, January 07, 2011
I Was Wrong A Lot In 2007
Oh, was I ever.
Last three years not exactly as I envisioned them.
UPDATE: Just so you know how positively nuts it can get around a big time athletic factory in the throes of a coaching search... the denizens of the interwebz are tracking private planes all over the country and creating scenarios from whole cloth. Crazy!
Last three years not exactly as I envisioned them.
UPDATE: Just so you know how positively nuts it can get around a big time athletic factory in the throes of a coaching search... the denizens of the interwebz are tracking private planes all over the country and creating scenarios from whole cloth. Crazy!
My Mistake. The Mystery Deepens.
A while back, I wrote a post here, titled "Winner... and still champion", voicing my amazement, and consternation over what I said at the time was the single most viewed post in the history of this blog. I wondered at the motivation of people from all over the world who would want to view an image of two deer fu... mating.
Well, Blogger has new stat tools, and it turns out that I mis-identified the December 2007 post that everyone was looking at, and had I been more observant at the time, it would have been clear to me that they were all looking at this one*:
..and it's obvious when you look at the Google search terms used that brought all these people to the site, they weren't coming (no pun intended) for the article. But, at least I have a little more respect and understanding for these sad, lonely men from around the globe.
So, case closed?
Not exactly, because when I look at the Blogger stats, I find that in their history (which, unfortunately, only goes back to May of last year), the most viewed post, by a very, very big margin... is this one!
I just don't get it. I really, really don't.
*Of course, posting this image again, means it will turn up in Google search results twice as much. Well, driving traffic to the blog, for whatever reasons, is what I want. More eyes on the blog, means potentially more eyes on the ads. There's a method to my madness.
Well, Blogger has new stat tools, and it turns out that I mis-identified the December 2007 post that everyone was looking at, and had I been more observant at the time, it would have been clear to me that they were all looking at this one*:
..and it's obvious when you look at the Google search terms used that brought all these people to the site, they weren't coming (no pun intended) for the article. But, at least I have a little more respect and understanding for these sad, lonely men from around the globe.
So, case closed?
Not exactly, because when I look at the Blogger stats, I find that in their history (which, unfortunately, only goes back to May of last year), the most viewed post, by a very, very big margin... is this one!
I just don't get it. I really, really don't.
*Of course, posting this image again, means it will turn up in Google search results twice as much. Well, driving traffic to the blog, for whatever reasons, is what I want. More eyes on the blog, means potentially more eyes on the ads. There's a method to my madness.
Thursday, January 06, 2011
Field Of Dreams.
This coursing season started back in October, with a few posts, like this one, about the lack of jackrabbits in all the usual places. We had days where we'd walk and walk and only scare up one in a couple of hours, and it would usually suffer a quick fate, because it couldn't move any faster than the dogs in the unusually thick and high cover.
Things were looking grim.
Then, towards the end of October, I piled the crew in the Mitsubishi and headed out to explore an area that Margaret and I had found almost by accident last Spring while attempting to take shortcut from the highway by the Aerostat station about 20 miles southwest of Deming, to the Victorio Mountains some 25 miles west of Deming. As it turned out, it was shorter, but took about 90 minutes longer than if we had just driven around on the normal highways and county roads.
The area is huge, and is about 99% Federal and State land, leased for grazing some pretty large herds of cattle. The cover is much more reasonable than any of our usual fields this year, and the ground is as walkable as a walk in the park, meaning there's no "bunchgrass", or big holes, or boulders. It's flat.
That's all well and good, but is meaningless if there are no jacks! My first exploratory trip was to the area we'd first driven through in the spring. Jackrabbit "sign" was plentiful, but I saw no jacks. I did some more exploratory driving and discovered that there were at least a half dozen distinct separate areas where one could hunt, including a mammoth, flat plain that seemed to stretch out forever in all directions. It was time to bring in Dutch and his dogs to see if there were, indeed, rabbits in this ideal area.
The first couple of trips were fruitless, and I think Dutch was losing faith as he would prefer to go back to the old places, rather than make the long drive out to this field. But I kept at it, trying out new, different sections, and finally started getting some races. Got Dutch back, and for the last two months we've been getting in some really exciting races, with about a 25% catch rate. In that time we've probably seen and/or run close to 40 jacks, and we're really only scratching the surface. Dutch is now so confident in the fields that he has decided to run his famous Pack Hunt and Desert Hare Classic on them.
The new fields also came with an unsuspected bonus! With such a large expanse of flat, open land, the opportunity for great coursing photos was like nothing we've experienced in any of the other fields we hunt in southern New Mexico! The hounds actually have an opportunity to turn the hare many times, and often back in the direction of where they started.... where I wait with my camera.
The images below, are all from a single run on January 5, 2011. The dogs weren't lacking for opportunities to catch this jack, first with Willow in the lead, and later with the black and white Saluke, Bisa, who had several opportunities, but as we saw with the hare in the previous post, this field is starting to establish a reputation for strong jacks that will take anything your pack of hounds can dish out! This was another 3 minute marathon, that ended when the hare made it to the safety of the creosote bush patch on the north side of the draw, and Willow with a very sore foot.
Things were looking grim.
Then, towards the end of October, I piled the crew in the Mitsubishi and headed out to explore an area that Margaret and I had found almost by accident last Spring while attempting to take shortcut from the highway by the Aerostat station about 20 miles southwest of Deming, to the Victorio Mountains some 25 miles west of Deming. As it turned out, it was shorter, but took about 90 minutes longer than if we had just driven around on the normal highways and county roads.
The area is huge, and is about 99% Federal and State land, leased for grazing some pretty large herds of cattle. The cover is much more reasonable than any of our usual fields this year, and the ground is as walkable as a walk in the park, meaning there's no "bunchgrass", or big holes, or boulders. It's flat.
That's all well and good, but is meaningless if there are no jacks! My first exploratory trip was to the area we'd first driven through in the spring. Jackrabbit "sign" was plentiful, but I saw no jacks. I did some more exploratory driving and discovered that there were at least a half dozen distinct separate areas where one could hunt, including a mammoth, flat plain that seemed to stretch out forever in all directions. It was time to bring in Dutch and his dogs to see if there were, indeed, rabbits in this ideal area.
The first couple of trips were fruitless, and I think Dutch was losing faith as he would prefer to go back to the old places, rather than make the long drive out to this field. But I kept at it, trying out new, different sections, and finally started getting some races. Got Dutch back, and for the last two months we've been getting in some really exciting races, with about a 25% catch rate. In that time we've probably seen and/or run close to 40 jacks, and we're really only scratching the surface. Dutch is now so confident in the fields that he has decided to run his famous Pack Hunt and Desert Hare Classic on them.
The new fields also came with an unsuspected bonus! With such a large expanse of flat, open land, the opportunity for great coursing photos was like nothing we've experienced in any of the other fields we hunt in southern New Mexico! The hounds actually have an opportunity to turn the hare many times, and often back in the direction of where they started.... where I wait with my camera.
The images below, are all from a single run on January 5, 2011. The dogs weren't lacking for opportunities to catch this jack, first with Willow in the lead, and later with the black and white Saluke, Bisa, who had several opportunities, but as we saw with the hare in the previous post, this field is starting to establish a reputation for strong jacks that will take anything your pack of hounds can dish out! This was another 3 minute marathon, that ended when the hare made it to the safety of the creosote bush patch on the north side of the draw, and Willow with a very sore foot.
Monday, January 03, 2011
Scanners! Gut Wrenching.
Since this metal man was photographed on the Notre Dame campus many years ago, perhaps he is bemoaning a tough Irish loss. I wonder if he's still there?
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