Cuppacafe

Texas, in one photo. Okay, maybe two.

What I’ve been up to lately is trying to find oil.

This photo sums up one of the places I visited this morning as a way of finding out some information vital to the proposal of drilling an exploration well nearby:

Right next to that piece of walking steakburger’s head is a head of a productive oil well. Most wells in this particular field need a pump jack, and since this particular field has no limitation on the spacing of the wells, there were times when I saw at least five different producing oil wells, all with their pump jack heads a’bobbin’.

Across the road from where I took the steer photo was one oil well where you can see the pump jack, but look to the left in the background and you’ll notice the associated flame from the burning gas flare:

You would think someone would capture that gas and sell it because of the prices, but I’m told that sour gas is in the area, and it’s just too expensive (even now) to deal with the hazards associated with sour gas that can be produced with the oil on some of these wells. I can’t say for certain that’s what’s going on here, but it’s an easy assumption to make.

It took you a while to get to your point

But I see it now

From a story in Popular Mechanics, here’s two pictures of the planet’s most powerful laser system.

They blow up stuff with them. Most of the time, it’s a BB sized shell filled with hydrogen.
192 lasers, all pointed at the same place at the same time.

Someone ought to carve something on the face of the Moon. That would be neat!!

This one is for Walt

This morning I found this link over at Digg and figured that our resident sicnce and geologist geek, Walt, would love this, so I IMed him with the link, then I figured that everyone would want in, and figured that I’d post it as well.

What we are looking at is a high definition picture of the surface of Mars:

This breathtaking 3D landscape was constructed with high definition images taken by the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on board ESA’s Mars Express orbiter. The new observations show Hebes Chasma, a strange mountain region nested inside the canyon, with channel-like fingers reaching out into the Martian landscape. The imaged region shows features down to a resolution of 15 meters per pixel, an awe-inspiring view… in stereo!

(via: Universe Today)

More photos and story.

The Perfessor

CSI: Trail Ride Investigative Photography

Just a quick something I noticed while running through the pictures I took of the Salt Grass trail riders as they passed my neighborhood.

Here’s a trail rider and her friend following a wagon (the wagon is on the far right edge)

I didn’t notice anything,
but then…

I zoomed in a bit.

A handsome woman,
no doubt about it.

Shiny sunglasses…

I zoomed into her eyes,

and found myself…

literally.

Enhancing the brightness of her sunglasses, you can not only see me, but just the reflection of her other friend not seen in the photo.
She’s the one that’s riding in the wagon.
As a matter of fact, you can see past that friend sitting in the wagon,
through the wagon itself,
one of the two horses pulling the wagon,
and up the street ahead.

Yes, I am that geeky.

A Picture is Worth a Thousand…

…well in the case of this pic that I pulled out of a recent issue of Entertainment Weekly it is certainly worth something.

The image is of some starlet (Ali Larter) almost wearing an evening gown as she attends some Hollywoodland party.

Somehow, after doing a quick Google Image search on her I can’t help but to think that she’s wearing that dress backwards, but that could just be me.

The Perfessor

The Car Prank That Undoes Itself - if you drive fast enough

The car prank that undoes itself if you drive fast enough. (from CollegeHumor)

Star Wars is coming to a Mailbox near you.

That’s right Rebles and Federation Storm Troopers, soon (if not already) you will be able to be sending out your snail mail (hey, does anyone still send snail mail?) by stuffing it inside R2D2. Yep, the US Postal service is indeed issuing mailboxes in the form of the little droid.

That’s right, Mail is fun again! You see, the Postal Service is celebrating the 30th anniversary of Star Wars with these R2D2-style mailboxes.

All I can say about this is that I’m surprised that the Postal service is suborning federal crimes, because you just know that some hard-up (hard core) fanboy is — sooner or later — going to boost one of these little babies and that‘s when the fun is going to start, because diverting U.S. Mail is a federal crime, worse (if you can imagine it) than rape or multiple homicide.

Personally, I can hardly wait.

The Perfessor