Wordless Wednsday: The Shenandoah River at Harper's Ferry, West Virginia

Stinkbugs on My Mind

No, not really, but they make good fodder for articles these days. Personally, I only see a few here and there in the city. They drop in through my bathroom skylight and end up in the bathtub. I hear from friends that actually have sheds and other outbuildings full of them. Plus, they are all over the news as the critters are busy worrying about summer crops, so I guess stinkbugs won't go away soon.

Last week I needed a quick article for Examiner and wrote "How to protect your garden from stinkbugs". Then I forgot about it and didn't post it until today, mainly because I was busy playing with Squidoo. I'm investigating this as a different source of residual writing. I used to get residuals from old articles I wrote for eHow. But, they had an author buyout recently because everything is now commissioned by Demand Studios (which I also occasional write for).

So far I'm enjoying Squidoo and the freedom to add lots of stuff. (I often end up with too much research to put in those 400-500 Demand Studios articles and Examiner also likes things short.) I never played with it before because it seemed a bit confusing. Well, I put aside other things on Friday and Saturday to just spend time learning and got my first Squidoo lens up. I called it "Stinkbug Invasion!" which is not the best title, but it works. I will add more later, but for now I just wanted to finish one for the expierience. I have other topics for there in the hopper, time permitting.

This great photo of stinkbug eggs and nymphs at various stages is by Gary Bernon, USDA-APHIS, on Wikimedia Commons. I couldn't find many decent pictures of stinkbugs but when I searched for the Latin name of the brown marmorated stinkbug (Halyomorpha halys) his excellent work came right up. I'm going to use some more of his work when I get a chance to refine the Squidoo lens.

A New Camera

I impulsively bought a new camera on Wednesday. Well, I never do anything impulsively and as my father reminded me, I’ve been drooling over this camera for months. It is a Cannon Powershot SX120 with a 10x optical zoom. I wanted a point and shoot that was both easy to carry but with better features for nature photography. The most powerful zoom I had before this was 5x so I was due for an upgrade. The zoom is always my favorite camera toy.

My first real camera was a Cannon, given to me by my father on my birthday, perhaps when I was 19 or 20. It was a film camera that I still have. I originally wanted one when I moved to digital but they were too expensive and so I settled for Kodak instead. I’m fairly happy with Kodak—they make great walking around cameras, but I’m glad I finally got my Cannon.