Life of Dave

Life of Dave

Thursday, October 31, 2013

Superheros Halloween

Well, it's all over (no, I'm not talking about Rob Ford) but the fireworks.

As I type, our neighbourhood is besieged by firecrackers and all manner of fireworks. As has been mentioned in local news this week, fireworks aren't a big thing for most towns and cities in Canada. We seem to have cornered the market here in Vancouver. I must admit I threw my share of fire crackers in my youth, but I just can't seem to get into it anymore.

These days I'm more into pumpkin carving. I figure it's the least I can do. There are several impressive front yard displays in this 'hood. I don't have the drive to compete. Besides it would take one heck of a concerted effort to be considered in the same league.

But I can carve. And the Internet provides a treasure trove of carving ideas.

This year I received quite a compliment actually, in a backward sort of way. Shauna went out to move our pumpkins closer to the front sidewalk as we weren't getting many kids to the door. She was returning to the house when a little girl walked past with her parent and said, "I don't want to go there; it's too scary."

It's not that I want to scare kids away, but I mean it was only a Spiderman-themed pumpkin. But I hafta say I'm kinda proud that my selection of what to carve, and what I did carve, had that  dramatic of an effect.
This year's theme was Superheros; Spiderman and Superman.
 Another successful Halloween. Oh yeah, and a record number of trick-or-treaters; 130.

Thursday, October 17, 2013

Skynomena


I’ve really got to coin a term for these things. Maybe Skynomena?  
Here’s another update on a skynomenon I experienced recently. Remember I described a bright slash though the dark ceiling of nightfall recently? Well OK; a meteor trail. (Reading so much Game of Thrones lit lately has inspired my attempt to step up my rote descriptions a notch.)
Discovery of similar accounts of lights in the sky recently prompted me to repeat the Youtube process for my recent meteor experience. And guess what? Someone else saw exactly the same thing I saw, but went a step further and was fortunate enough to have recorded the image. But interestingly, it wasn’t in Vancouver. It was in New Zealand!
According to the date on the video clip this occurred in 02/04/2012. (This date format drives me crazy. Is it Feb. 4th or April 2nd? I’ve seen both) The woman caller into a TV (or radio) program described it as thinking she was seeing the wreckage of a helicopter fall from the sky. But there was no sound. Just like the one I saw.
Another similarity is that both streaks were preceded by a greenish flash at the tip.
In the end, I'm no astronomer. Was it a meteor, or wasn’t it?
This Youtube screen shot looks exactly like what I saw, only the evening sky was darker.

Wednesday, October 9, 2013

Sky Lights (not to be confused with skylights) :-)


Youtube is quite the resource. I don’t even remember now why I accessed it recently. But I got sidetracked and ended up doing some searching for an unexplained phenomenon I experienced this past summer in Zurich. We happened to be there to coincide with Zuri Fasche, which only happens every 3 years.

A main draw to the weekend festival is the massive fireworks display that spans two evenings. On the first night we’d set up our deck chairs too early; 10 p.m. instead of 10:30. I was on the deck, and the condo we were staying in was on a hillside enabling me an elevated view. Before the fireworks began I noticed illuminated spots on the north horizon close to the direction of the airport. I blogged about these lights in July and asked then if anyone could confirm if the illuminated spots were hot air balloons participating as part of Zuri Fasche. I received no replies (not that I’m claiming a huge  readership base, mind you).
If the Youtube videos I viewed can be trusted (which I’m finding easier since I saw what I saw, and photographed it) it would seem that quite a few other people have seen a similar occurrence recently. It makes me wonder how long such lights have really been visible since it’s only been in relatively recent years that cell phone cameras have been prevalent. These days if something significant happens, you can be pretty sure someone has it stored in pixel format.
I viewed some short Youtube video segments of similar unexplained lights in the night sky in Wiltshire, UK; Quebec, California and Florida. Last summer in Zurich I chose not to use video format to capture the images of the lights I saw simply because I was confident I’d get a better still-shot, and I didn’t want to run the camera batteries down to nothing not knowing how long the lights would remain in the sky. Plus I wasn’t thinking at the time the lights would end up being inexplicable.
Posted below are some screen shots from a few videos I watched, compared with what I saw in Zurich in July. Whether you believe me or not is irrelevant (to me at least) but I know what I saw, and the friends we were staying with saw the same lights that I did. Feel free to comment if you’ve seen anything similar. 
Wiltshire, UK

 Apple Valley, CA



Zurich, July 6, 2013.