Verna and Bob's Weblog

Bob

Mars in 3D

Mars in 3D

I generally look at the Astronomy Picture of the Day on a daily basis. Last week, I saw this anaglyph taken by the Mars Pathfinder back in 1997. It shows the Martian landscape and some local artifacts in stereoscopic perspective. Sorry, there is no 2D image available without me digging through NASA and JPL archives, so you better get a pair of 3D glasses to enjoy the image in full perspective.

From APOD:

From July of 1997, a ramp from the Pathfinder lander, the Sojourner robot rover, airbags, a couch, Barnacle Bill and Yogi Rock appear together in this 3D stereo view of the surface of Mars. Barnacle Bill is the rock just left of the solar-paneled Sojourner. Yogi is the big friendly-looking boulder at top right. The “couch” is the angular rock shape visible near center on the horizon. Look at the image with red/blue glasses (or just hold a piece of clear red plastic over your left eye and blue or green over your right) to get the dramatic 3D perspective. The stereo view was recorded by the remarkable Imager for Mars Pathfinder (IMP) camera. The IMP had two optical paths for stereo imaging and ranging and was equipped with an array of color filters for spectral analysis.

Click on the image to enlarge.

August 23, 2020 by Bob's 3D Stuff Nerdliness Panoramas

Cabela is 12!

Cabela relaxing at Desert Oasis

Today, our elder dog, Cabela, is approximately twelve years old. I say that since when we adopted her from the Humane Society here in town, she was estimated to be about two years old but her actual birth date was unknown. That was ten years ago this month at the time we were having our Arizona house built.

Cabela is probably a pure bred miniature pinscher “blue” but we have no history on her other than she was found near the rodeo grounds up in Constellation Park here in Wickenburg. We figure she was cropped and bobbed by her original owners who managed to let her run off somehow. I pity their loss. At the same time, we feel fortunate to have this little dog despite her high-strung personality and a tendency to bark at most everything. She truly must think she’s ten feet tall and bullet proof.

At twelve, Cabela shows few signs of growing old. She is quite active, can still jump and run at full speed and when on a leash can drag “The Daddy” along to where she wants to go. Despite being headstrong, she can be a nice companion here at home and still sleeps on the bed with us, sometime stealing the covers. She is quite the character and we love her.

August 3, 2020 by Critters Family Nostalgia Retirement

14th Blogiversary

14th Blogiversary

Image – Cactus Wren perched on Saguaro Flower Buds. Click to enlarge. For a full-sized image of the wren without the titles, click here.

As we said last year, we’re back to post about our 14th anniversary of vernabob.com/blog. During the past year, we have posted about various topics, intermittently of course. Some of the topics concerned, diet, flowers, wildlife, ancestors, wanderlust, a couple or three 3D pictures and so forth.

Since most of the last six months has been weird with COVID-19 and other disturbances, we haven’t been able to get travelling like we might have wanted to do. We hope that those things will soon be resolved so we might be able to get in a few miles on the road. We have a notion to head out to Texas and Oklahoma to visit whatever we find there.

So, again, we will be puttering along with the blogging until the fifteenth blogiversary.

July 17, 2020 by Blogosphere Retirement

Independence Day July 4, 2020

Flag Waving Wickenburg

Happy Independence Day from the little flag-waving town of Wickenburg, AZ!

Our local American Legion Post religiously plants flags all over town on every holiday as seen in the background image above. That image was taken (credit Verna) along the main part of Wickenburg Way (a.k.a. US 60) in the old historical part of town. I added the greeting with a graphics utility I use from time to time.

To celebrate the holiday, Verna prepared Star Spangled Chili for dinner yesterday. The dish included a medium-hot chili base with lean ground beef, sliced Hebrew National kosher franks and chopped beef tenderloin chunks garnished with avocado, sour cream and an olive. It was pretty awesome.

The beef tenderloin chunks were leftover meat from a whole tenderloin I butchered myself. Once you separate the “chain” and the “wing” from the main tenderloin, I set those aside to be chopped into the aforementioned chunks.

I cut the rest of the main tenderloin into steaks, a couple of small roasts (Chateaubriand) and tenderloin medallions or small steaks. There is a bit of fat and silver skin that goes to waste, but most of the meat gets used in some form or another. Considering that butcher shop tenderloin steaks (Filet Mignon) are upwards of $20 per pound, butchering our own saves us a considerable amount of cash.

There are a couple of pretty good videos on You Tube (here and here) that guide you through the process of butchering a whole beef tenderloin.

In the meantime, despite all the COVID-19 and BLM/ANTIFA chaos, we’re having a nice holiday weekend here in our little piece of the good old USA and hope that everyone else will be able to enjoy it like we are doing. Happy Birthday America – may she keep on going strong!

July 4, 2020 by Food and Dining Holidays

Hassayampa River in 3D

river3d.jpg

It’s been quite a while since I posted an anaglyph photo. Verna took an image pair of the riverbed way back in November of 2015 as we crossed the bridge over the Hassayampa River. I combined the images into the 3D anaglyph above. Click on the image to enlarge.

The river is dry above ground most of the year and looks as it does in this image or in its 2D counterpart (at the link in case you don’t have red/cyan glasses). During monsoon season or at other very heavy rainfall periods, this river gets quite full and flows with vigor downstream. This view is looking toward the north and upstream.

June 2, 2020 by Arizona Bob's 3D Stuff Nerdliness Photography

Updated Blog Banners

House Current Appearance

The blog header image we were using here has become obsolete because the appearance of our house has changed quite a bit since eight years ago when the original header was created. I went out today and got the image above with a 17mm wide-angle lens on my Canon SL1. I added the graphic titles and cropped the image as shown in the new header at the top of the page.

The old header, shown below for reference, contained landscape items no longer seen and much less mature xeriscape items. We removed several creosote trees and added a retaining wall by the lower RV drive and in front of the house by the road.

Old Banner

I also updated the banner on our Food Blog.

May 17, 2020 by Arizona Blogosphere Home & Garden Photography

Avalon 1998

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