A slight break in the motorsports action...

...to bring you two new arrivals at Château Ricardipus. Introducing:

Penny:



and Bob:



Both photographs taken using a Nikon D5000 with the AF-S DX Nikkor 35mm f/1.8 lens, at f/2.0 and ISO 1,000 in available light. Penny: 1/80th sec., Bob at 1/40th.

Weekend Update

Today's news - nothing much, just a template re-design. The blog looks more modern, but still rather "like a Blogger blog".

The background will probably be changed, but it'll do for now. Suggestions welcome. In the meantime, here's a photo of a fish, from a recent trip to the zoo.



Technical details
camera: Nikon D5000
lens: AF-S DX Nikkor 35mm f/1.8G
exposure: 1/80th sec.
aperture: f/1.8
ISO: 1,000

The annual cottage trip, again

Just like last year, but with fewer fish.

Five adults and four children under the age of seven, all under one roof for a long weekend. It wasn’t restful, but it was fun, and a nice break from all of those reports I keep whining about. I think this is the twentieth year in a row we’ve done this on the August Civic Holiday weekend, but I confess that I haven’t really been counting since 1989 or so.

Except that this year, there were no fish to be caught. None. Probably because the only morning we all didn’t sleep in, it was raining, and if there’s something I like even less than getting up early, it’s getting up early and getting wet at the same time. By the time the rain had stopped, it was way too late and the fish were engaged in other pursuits, like hiding under the dock, lounging around chatting with each other, and generally not eating rubber and epoxy imitations of food items that they probably wouldn’t be interested in even were they made from meat and skin and bones and tasty, tasty worm-flesh.

How’s *that* for an image, hm?

Anyway, there were some nice fungi:



a walloping great insect or two:



a lot of trees and undergrowth:



and some really impressively curly birchbark.



As well as a rather nice white-tailed deer, running off into the bush, lots of very attractive orange-and-black Monarch butterflies, black-and-orange Netwing Beetles, and the usual not-so-attractive mosquitoes. Plus some rather nice spiders down on the dock. It always helps to have a friend who's a technician in the entomology department of the Royal Ontario Museum along for the trip to identify these things.

And no major quibbles, problems, hassles or other hiccups – just minor ones like slightly damaging the car’s front fender while executing a less-than-elegant three-point turn rather close to a large rock. Fortunately, my brother was around, and with his experience in rallying he’s become rather adept at fixing cosmetic (and not-so-cosmetic) damage to a wide variety of vehicles, including our aging Mazda Protegé, as it turns out. So all is well.

It wasn't, however, exactly a vacation in Antigua. And for that, I am thankful.

(More photos on Flickr).

Spot the difference

Gosh, all those long blog posts have left me completely tired out. So instead, you get this "spot the difference" photo quiz à la Misty:

Answers in the comments box, please.

Hint: one of the two started its life as a screamingly funny attempt to impersonate a fish. Well, Junior Ricardipus #2 was amused, anyway.