The Fire Ant Gazette

Driving Mr. Crazy

Everyone who drives slower than me is an idiot, and everyone who drives faster than me is a jerk. –Me, and probably every other driver in Midland, Texas Last week, while driving home after work, I encountered the following at consecutive intersections: A driver in a pickup turned left in front of me after the… Continue reading Driving Mr. Crazy

Nest Report

One of the guys at work claimed he’d seen a hummingbird nest in one of the trees outside our new office building. I was skeptical; in all our years of putting up feeders and watching the little guys, I’d never seen a hummer’s nest. So, today after lunch, Debbie and I walked past a live… Continue reading Nest Report

Camera Sunday

I spent some time last Sunday afternoon wandering around the grounds, camera in hand, looking for photo ops. As usual, once I focused on the trees instead of the forest*, a number of interesting details emerged, most of which involved flying creatures of the six-legged variety. This insect goes by the rather unappealing name of… Continue reading Camera Sunday

Pardon me…could you spare some T-Rex urine?

MLB was trimming the ground cover on the east side of our yard and when she pulled back a section from the wall, this is what she found: As perceptive Gazette readers – which is both of you, I believe – will recall, we recently had a family of quail in our back yard, including… Continue reading Pardon me…could you spare some T-Rex urine?

Lose your place in a maze of fonts? Wordmark.it

Me : fonts = Prepper : ammo — Eric Siegmund (@ESieg) August 23, 2014 I have 23 folders named “fonts” on my desktop Mac. My default font library contains 500 font families. [Side note: Most of them are unfamiliar to me; I think they appeared when I upgraded my OS to Mavericks earlier this summer.… Continue reading Lose your place in a maze of fonts? Wordmark.it

Arachnophotos

I’ve never made a secret of my dislike for spiders. There are people for whom I have great respect who think spiders make great pets, but I’d just as soon invite a family of cobras to live in our bedroom as tolerate a single eight legged freak. We recently transplanted a couple of tall junipers… Continue reading Arachnophotos

Mockingbirdlets

I discovered a mockingbird nest in the lower limbs of the Chinese pistache planted in our back yard. I had been hearing odd chirps coming at fairly regular intervals over the preceding few days, but didn’t really think anything about it until Saturday afternoon when I noticed some unusually persistent mockingbird presence around the tree. … Continue reading Mockingbirdlets

Software Overview: Tonality, a black and white photo editor

I’ve always been enamored of black and white photography, dating back to the little Polaroid that I used in the Sixties. Seeing some of Ansel Adams’s work in Santa Fe only added to the attraction of that medium. All of my photography nowadays is in color, although I occasionally experiment with black and white effects… Continue reading Software Overview: Tonality, a black and white photo editor

Compressor.io: free online image compression

It’s been awhile since I posted anything design-related. There are a number of reasons for that, none of which involve a lack of interest on my part (although there might be the slightest bit of laziness at work). But I ran across a link to an intriguing website called Compressor.io that purports to shrink the… Continue reading Compressor.io: free online image compression