Divergence In Orbit

Linsis, my older sister by another mother, sent this to me to share with you... it is breathtakingly beautiful! The music track is "The Black Parrot" by the artist Divergence. The footage is yet more amazing imagery from the International Space Station (ISS), not to be confused with ISIS.

Ew!

This is truly one of the funniest things I have seen in quite some time! For those of you who don't know these two gentleman, the white guy is Jimmy Fallon of Saturday Night Live fame (1998-2004) and now host of the Tonight Show. The black guy is will.i.am of The Black Eyed Peas fame.The two recently collaborated to produce this satirical gem that pokes fun of how girls talk these days... and this is how they talk more and more in a sort of Post-Modern Valley Girl-Speak.

Iceland's Bardarbunga By Drone

The Death of Tanker 81

This past Tuesday a CAL FIRE S-2T tanker crashed while fighting the Dog Rock Fire on the western margin of Yosemite National Park within the park boundary near El Portal, CA. The crash killed 62 year-old Geoffrey "Craig" Hunt who piloted Tanker #81 based out of Hollister Air Attack Base in San Benito County serving San Benito-Monterey Unit (BEU). Below is a sequence of three images captured by an unknown (to me) photographer which I found on FirefighterCloseCalls.com's "Secret List".  The fourth image down features a view of the crash from the perspective of up the hill from it. The final five images were captured from the same general area as the first three and theoretically might have been taken by the same person. They show the new wildfire started by the crash itself and the effort to suppress it by rotary-wing aircraft following the initial shutdown of all fixed-wing aircraft following a crash of such as is a standard operating procedure in such cases.

Note: as the viewer can see in the first image it appeas most of the left wing is not attached to the aircraft. According to an initial FAA document this crash is being preliminarily described as an aircraft crash caused by a wing striking a tree.

Tanker 81 is at left sans left wing while air attack circles above it to the right.
Photo courtesy of FirefighterCloseCalls.com.

Flaming debris raining down on Highway 140 below and out of view of this image.
Photo courtesy of  FirefighterCloseCalls.com.

Note that the wildfire burn area is adjacent to the crash site.
Photo courtesy of FirefighterCloseCalls.com.

Photo by Donald Talend courtesy AP (all rights reserved).

Photo by Ken Yager (all rights reserved).

Photo by Ken Yager (all rights reserved).

Photo by Ken Yager (all rights reserved).

Photo by Ken Yager (all rights reserved).

Photo by Ken Yager (all rights reserved).

The North County Has 11 New Viticultural Areas

Today the federal government will officially begin recognizing the above 11 new viticultural subdivisions of the pre-existing Paso Robles AVA. Technically, I'm in the Paso Robles Estrella District.

"Midnight Sun" At Midnight's Dark

This trance track "Midnight Sun" by ATB was one of my musical obsessions last summer but I never got around to sharing it here for whatever reason(s) although it does appear in set in my post "Actually, This Is My Favorite Trance Set". I used to listen to this artist all the time in the heyday of my trance obsession in the early 2000's and had lost track of the latest goings on it until the past couple of years or so. I was happily surprised to see ATB still making some decent tracks.

This is a clubby song so crank up your speakers and if possible listen to it in the dark of night as such music is inherently nocturnal. Note: there is a great drop/breakdown/whatever it is called at the 1:30 mark.

Picture of the Day - Cactus of the Cthulhu II

Recently I spotted a cactus garden on the west side of Cal Poly near and just west of Building 5 (Architecture & Environmental Design). I shot some images of it and when I got home and looked at them this particular plant caught my attention and immediately reminded me of something out of the Cthulhu mythos.