[ flora ]
I wish I knew more about plants. Or more specifically, I wish I knew the names of more plants (shrubs, flowers, trees). I wish there were a website where you could go and start looking by leaf shape: rounds, ovals, pear, serrated, thin, holey, then you could delve down deeper by category until you find the thing you are looking for.
Not that I am particularly interested in botany per se, but it would be nice to call the things I photograph by their name, rather than "the small tree with the red fruit vaguely reminiscent of lychees."
Maybe such a site exists, and I am just searching for the wrong thing.
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[ searching ]
I love search engines. I used to drive AltaVista like an old Cadillac - huge, and you have to keep watching the corners, but it rides like a boat. Took me a while to be convinced of Google, perhaps just because I was so tied to AltaVista before. When I took the jump however, I took it with both feet!
If you can adequately describe that for which you are searching, you can get great results. I'm normally pretty good at this - not world-class or anything, but I find what I want within the first five pages usually. Sometimes it takes two or three tries, but I still call that pretty good.
But sometimes I just can't get anywhere with a search. I have found that this is mostly the case where the topic has a specific nomenclature around it.
Take yesterday - I was looking for the official reference of all the java classes and packages, with the definitions, inputs and outputs. Took me more than half an hour of fruitless searching. I finally went back to my old university website, because I know the Java courses there had a link to it. "Class Index!" Well, I did know that it was called that, but for a little bit yesterday the phrase slipped my mind. And no matter how much I tried to search around it, I just couldn't get it. With the phrase, I found what I needed immediately.
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[ Autumn ]
Leaves are turning everywhere now, and we have passed the equinox. Since the "actual" date of equinox depends on the geographic location, our days are still about ten minutes longer than our nights, but not for long. Soon I will be driving to work before sunrise. After the clocks are set back, I would be driving home after sunset. And at some stage, both!
It does make for wonderful views with the steeply slanting rays of the sun very early or very late - perfect for setting off the Fall colors.
The rain has cleared away and we're back up in the high 70s, sometimes even going beyond 80. It is almost as if the weather is playing optometrist with us, putting on her red and copper and golden coat, showing us the wintry rain and temperatures, and then summer shine and warmth, saying, "Which is better: this or that? Look again, this one, or that one?"
