Pete The Elder

October 10, 2006

Sculptures

Mexico decided to give San Antonio a gift a few years ago. What did they give us?

This big chunk of steel painted bright orange to go in front of the convention center. Thanks Mexico.

It actually does not look that bad when you view it from the top of the Tower of The Americas, but that is a few thousand feet away.

Berlin also gave San Antonio a sculpture at some point. It is a lot smaller and actually looks like something. I think I might like it better if the bear was giant and the orange thingy was smaller.

Then there is this orange pile of steel beams statue that I kind of like in hemisfair plaza.

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October 06, 2006

Pictures

I spent about an hour taking pictures downtown today so I should have a couple dozen good ones to post over the next few days.

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September 26, 2006

Because You Demanded It

Here is are some pictures. The frog outfit is from today. The other one is from when he was still at the hospital two weeks ago.

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July 12, 2006

Gecko and Sunflower

I havenit shown any pictures recently so here are two good ones. The first is of one of the massive sunflowers I planted a few months ago. The summer sun is beating down on them pretty hard and they are wilting fairly quickly, partly because I bought the biggest type of seeds. The other is of a tiny gecko my wife found in the bathroom the other day. It freaked her out when she first saw it running. It was only the size of a penny, but my wife would not let me keep it so I had to let it go outside.

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May 14, 2006

Sunset Pictures

Here are some prettier pictures. There was one of the nicest sunsets I have ever seen because of the storm and here are two pictures of it, one with a railroad crossing and another with a lot of trees. Then there is a panorama of downtown San Antonio that is ok (it was cloudy) that I took about an hour before sunset. When I have time in the next few weeks I plan to spend a morning going around downtown taking pictures.

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New Bird Picture

I was on my home this afternoon in a hurry since there was another hailstorm in the area. As I was walking up to my apartment a neighbor told me to watch out for the bird. I turned around and there was a young vulture that was either injured or taking refuge in my stairwell before the full storm hit. There was no hail at my home, but I did get a very close picture of the vulture who did not seem very frightened of me. It is a fairly ugly bird and it was gone when I came back a few hours later.

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May 02, 2006

Hailstorm!

San Antonio is currently at the tail end of its worst hailstorm in years. The last hail storm I remember was about seven years ago. We have had marble sized hail the past hour and flash flooding across the city. As soon as I saw the hail warning I rushed out and moved our car that was not covered under cover and as I was walking back inside the first hail started to fall. The hail has passed for the most part and I was able to watch it from safety under cover, but it will probably keep on raining for hours. Pictures are below.

These first two are from about five minutes into the hail and then thirty minutes into the hail

Here is a series of intensifying hail.

This last one is of my neighbors hand for perspective.

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March 27, 2006

Flock

So I have some links and things I will post about when I have some free time in the next few days. Today was my day off, but I was working on house stuff since before 8 am and did not get home until after 3 pm. I am almost through with the Rise and Fall of the Third Reich and have started The Life of Sile Doty (an autobiography of a 19th century outlaw), American Gunfight (about the assasination attempt on Harry Truman), and State of Fear (the recent Michael Crichton book about environmental terrorists and global warming).

Meanwhile the birds I have been trying to photograph the past few weeks seem to have flown away. But I got a few good pictures of them right before they left.

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March 16, 2006

More Bird Pictures

One of the few downsides of moving is that I will not have such a nice view from my home. In my last apartment I had a nice view of the skyline of downtown San Antonio. In my current home, I have a nice view of the river (which is dry now) and several small groves of trees. For the past week there has been a flock of about ten large white crane type birds living in the pond that is normally the beginning of the San Antonio River. The birds are about 3 feet tall and startle easy, but I finally made good use of the zoom for my camera as they rested in the mud and in the treetops overhead. There is also a picture of a nice tree

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February 06, 2006

Bug Outline

A couple of days ago there was a huge insect outside my door. I do not know what type it is, but it was about two inches long and did not look friendly. Anyone know what type it is? This is the best picture I could get in the shade.

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December 23, 2005

Scion Part 3

Picked up the new car last night. I have already received one complement on it from a complete stranger who saw me getting out of it and told me she thought it was very pretty. This is my first car and although I paid twice as much for it as I did my last used car, it so far seems worth it. It drives differently from my last car and it feels much bigger, even though it is only slightly bigger. The thing I will have to get used to most is its instrument panel, which as you can see in the below pictures is right above the stereo in middle of the dashboard. The stereo controls are fairly small as well. Besides that it is fairly easy to drive.

Previous Scion post.

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December 19, 2005

Night Pictures

I tried doing some night photography with my camera and so far the results have been about what you would expect for a camera not designed for long distance night time picture taking. Hopefully in the next few days I will have time to take some good dusk time pictures around the neighborhood, but here is the one night picture that was ok after I messed with it some.

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December 12, 2005

Tea Gardens

Here are the pictures I took two weeks ago of the Japanese Tea Gardens here in San Antonio. You can tell in the last picture of the gate that these gardens were briefly called the Chinese Tea Gardens in the 1940's. Here are the previous pictures I took at the Tea Gardens.

These were all taken with my Kodak Easyshare Z700, which I recommend as a fairly good camera for under $200. It has 4 megapixels, 5X optical zoom, and an optical view finder. It also does not seem to use that much power as I put in some brand new Energizer rechargeable 2200 mAh NIMH batteries and have taken around 150 pictures with the first pair of batteries and they are still going. I got the Z700 on Amazon for $179 and they threw in a free 256 MB memory card. It also has a very good grip for your right hand so even though it is fairly small, it is easy to grip and use.

Update: To see all the photos I have taken with this camera, including the San Antonio missions, go here.

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December 05, 2005

Bird Photos

Here are some photos I took of birds at Brackenridge Park last week. The last photo is of a wild turkey I saw in the hill country over Thanksgiving. It was hiding in shadows at dusk and was fairly far away so it is not that clear of a picture.

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December 01, 2005

Terrorist Deer

Rick Brookhiser was a also a victim of a suicide terrorist deer attack over thanksgiving. Unlike my attack, his happened in civilization and he called the police. I am still not positive which county I was in when I hit the deer and our cell phones were not picking up any service so I could not have called the police if I wanted to. Also his car stopped working, while mine was just dented. My father in law banged out the dents for the most part and I am thinking of using a hacksaw to cut off some of the plastic to make the front look even, but the car still works fine. Brookhiser writes:

My Thanksgiving was dominated by the killing of my first deer--not with a manly rifle, though it is deer season (WELCOME HUNTERS say the signs on all the bars in my neighborhood) but with my car. The accident happened on Wednesday. The doe ran across a busy two lane road an hour before dusk. Didn't quite make it across the second lane--I struck her with the right side of my car (a Subaru Outback Impresza, going about 50-55). I saw the impact with my own eyes, and yet I can't remember where exactly she was hit. I have an impression she spun, or sprang up, but that may be an illusion. She fell in the front yard of a house along the road, as we pulled over, and lived for perhaps five minutes.

After watching more deer over thanksgiving, I think the deer I hit might have been a full grown doe, but that Texas white tail deer are a lot smaller than the mule deer I am used to so I thought it was younger than it was. Anyway here are some pictures of potential terrorist deer I saw over thanksgiving and a picture of my car. Here is a link to the original car picture to see the change.

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November 29, 2005

Hill Country

Here are pictures I took of the hill country over Thanksgiving.

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Flower Part 2

Here are some more pictures of flowers that I took yesterday.

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November 28, 2005

Flower

I downloaded a Windows XP ap that resizes your pictures for you so here is a picture of a flower that I took today at the Japanese Tea Garden. I also went to Mission Concepcion today and over Thanksgiving I was in the hill country so more pictures to follow in the next few days.

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November 16, 2005

New Category

I have added a new category on this blog for photos. I am still having trouble uploading some of them because moveable type keeps telling me they are too large. I will try to figure out how to fix that, but meanwhile here is a picture from my grandparent's backyard.

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November 07, 2005

Espada and San Juan

Finally, here are missions Espada and San Juan. At San Juan the batteries that came with the camera started to die, but I had been able to take about 65 pictures with them, 50 of which I took today. I need to go and get the fancy rechargeable batteries that drain themselves each time you recharge them and the fancy Kodak dock thingy too.

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San Jose Gargoyle

The old mill at San Jose was running and the guy there showed me how they still grind wheat there. The waterfall below is from the mill. Next is a gargoyle on the side of the church. The final picture is of the Espada aquaduct.

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San Jose Arches

Here are some other shots of San Jose and its arches.

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San Jose

It was too nice of a day to stay indoors today. So I got my new camera and went to the several of the San Antonio missions. First off is Mission San Jose. The first two pictures are of the church, while the last is of a stature of St. Mary above the church doors. I had to crop the pictures becuase they were to big to upload otherwise.

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