Timelapse from my trail camera, showing the sun rising during a cold snap. You can also see a bird foraging in the lower right of the frame around 20-40 seconds in.

This is a floor cleaning robot I saw at the QT / QuickTrip travel stop. I wish I'd manage to get the sound of it talking, because it goes around repeating that it's cleaning. They also have a screen with little eyes that "blink".

I've been seeing more utility robots like this around when I go out. I noticed one earlier carrying trays of food at a restaurant.

I think the attempt to humanize it is interesting.

Waves lap at the shore of Lake Whitney in Texas, July 22nd, 2025. This is not the area that had flooding, but the lake was pretty full.

A peaceful bit of footage of waves coming ashore on Lake Whitney in Texas 7/22.

No voices. Just wind and waves.

Timelapse from my trail cam during the 2024 Total Solar Eclipse, in Texas.

This is not quite as I had hoped. I messed up the configuration, so it used memory faster than I had planned (it was also taking video snippets, which take up a lot of room -- and those were not very interesting, although I did use one of them at the end of this video). As a result, it cuts off during totality. I'm pretty frustrated by that, but it's not like I can try again!

Unfortunately, it's not really possible to see the dimming due to the eclipse, due to the camera changing exposure to compensate, until the very end, when it switches to "night mode" during totality. But that's pretty cool, isn't it?

The music is from Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition". A public domain performance from MusOpen, by the Skidmore Orchestra.

This is a "wild dill" or "prairie parsley" plant, growing just outside my office, which had several Swallowtail butterfly caterpillars on it -- too many, I think -- they're going to run out of food. Also this plant is in an inconvenient spot, and after this, I removed it.

But first, I migrated these critters to other plants in an area I don't intend to mow.

Swallowtails have a particular connection to this plant. They lay their eggs on it and then the caterpillars live off of it prior to forming a chrysalis to transform into butterflies, continuing the cycle.

One year we raised a Swallowtail from the caterpillar in a jar, and then released it once it hatched out of the pod. I like to imagine these little critters might even be descendants of that one butterfly!

I set up this camera with the intent of catching any critters munching on our veggies, but none of them would want to come out in this storm! But I got a nice dramatic video of the storm coming and going.

Trying out the video mode on the trail camera.

The SD card was failing, so this ended well before I picked up the camera. Also probably cut off that last video clip, which is a shame, since 3 dogs showed up at once, which is kind of interesting to know about.

Seems neighborhood dogs are visiting. Probably drawn by the rabbits, I guess. But I only caught one rabbit on the video this time.