Caturday 93: Sabine and Sarnia

We visited and spent time with Sabine twice this week because her humans have decamped to Southwestern Ontario for a week. Shauna takes the kids there to visit old friends in the place of her youth. They stay with her school friends who always take care of the kids well, and they have a pool, so the kids like to go too. At their present ages of 17 and 19, I am not sure how much longer these visits will be feasible, but they are enjoying them while they can.

Sabine is always quite happy to see us, and both Sue and I invariably snap a picture or two. I have two that I like. I took them with with the phone, of course, and I processed this first one right on the phone, cropping a lot. Ideally, both eyes would be in focus, but these, like most now, are just fun snaps, and I like the result quite a lot.

I also edited this next one on the phone, and I thought it looked good, but when I saw it on the computer, I didn’t like it, so I scrapped the phone edits and processed on the computer. Once again, I cropped, and in this case, I also asked Photoshop AI to fill in a nicer background (its choice, not mine this time), for I had shot while prone on the floor, and other than Sweet Sabine the scene was pretty sketchy. I like how Sabine looks, though.

One thing that I miss about Sarnia is chips under the bridge where the water is blue and when day is sunny and warm  A visit to the waterfront is always on Shauna's todo list when she visits  

And . .  . just so you all know, that is the St Clair river at Sarnia with Port Huron, Michigan on the other side. Before 911, we would cross regularly without hassle, but then everything got stupid. Things are even stupider now. Shauna sent this photo to show us the painted stones at the riverfront: something that began during C19, apparently. 

Our Persistent Ancestors

I have come across concept this persistence hunting concept in various anthropology podcasts, and when I came acroos this article, I decided to write a little post. Despite the linked article, I am just writing from my general memory and not the article itself. This is my unscientific and very sketchy memory speaking. :)

Furred animals don’t deal with heat as well as our furless species. This was very true in the African heat of ancestral times. It's hard for furry bodies to dissipate the heat. They largely adapt by laying low during the highest heat. Our ancestors, however, lost their fur and were able to cool themselves by sweating, and so they could actually be active during the day.

Our forebears also became bipedal which is a very effective way of getting around. Bipedalism plus the ability to sweat and cool themselves enabled early hominids to become good at travelling distances. They were built more for distance endurance rather speed.

The belief is that they learned that they could chase a potential prey over a long distance as the prey, say a gazelle, would have to keep resting to not be overcome by heat. 

When our ancestors eventually caught up with the exhausted animal, they had their primitive tools to complete their mission. I have seen persistence hunting re-enacted in a modern video in which, as far as I know, they did not actually dispatch a critter.

Well, that is my very unsophisticated description and explanation from what I recall. Please do not forward this to anyone who can explain this in proper scientific terms :)

However, I will leave you with a substantiating quote from the article.

The San people of southern Africa still show how persistence hunting works: up to this day, they run under the scorching heat of the sun, sweating consistently to cool off, and tracking the footprints of their prey, until they find them collapse from heat stress.

These types of hunts are not about speed; they are not sprints but more like a marathon. It is a battle of endurance, stamina, and internal temperature control, which our species has millions of experience in.

Years and years of persistence hunting likely further developed some traits that predate it, like bipedalism. By using their two legs more, our ancestors were able to unlock the ability to cover more ground with each step, withstand the repetitive stress and impact of running, and have a larger, more efficient lung capacity, which allows more intake of oxygen.

https://webpreneurships.com/before-fire-or-tools-humans-outran-their-prey-to-stay-alive-a-survival-skill-known-as-persistence-hunting

Flamingo Lily in an AI Setting

Weeks ago, our neighbours passed this plant on to us. It sat in the sun porch and has now made its way up to my den to adorn what was Lacey's podium. I took this photo in great light, but what a terrible setting!

I'd had no idea of what the plant was, but Apple informed me that it is a Flamingo Lily, a type of Anthurium plant. It has remained like this, with one single flower, ever since the plant was passed onto us.

Anthurium plants are native to the tropical rainforests of Central and South America, where they thrive in humid, warm environments under the forest canopy.

Flamingo lily care requires bright indirect light, warm temperatures (60–85°F), and well-draining, chunky soil. Water the plant when the top 1 to 2 inches of soil feel dry, and maintain high humidity to keep the glossy leaves and bright blooms healthy.

However, the main thing for today is not so much to talk abut the plant but to reveal the before and after photos. You've seen the former ↑ and this is ↓ the after.

I removed all of the distractions, just keeping the plant and pot before asking AI to put the pot and plant on a nice desktop with a large window behind that included a lake in the scene.

I don't do a lot of AI generation, but it is fun to dip my oar in periodically. 

AC Transfigured

At a recent stop at the Dark & Deadly cafe, I did what I often do and took a snapshot of one of the characters. Without doing a before and after, I will show how the finished product looked after I added a hellfire background (AI) although I don't recall the exact descriptive term that I used.

I liked it well enough but then had the notion to replace the skeleton's skull with my own head.

While the fire was an AI interpolation, the head swap was completed via old-fashioned, manual photoshopping.

Back in the Saddle Again

I am not sure when we last got the bikes out, but I know we didn't bike at all last year and possibly not the preceding year either. My last cycling endeavour pulled a muscle in my leg, I think from going up an incline too rapidly. We've been out twice now, keeping to smooth roads for the most part while pedaling gently and avoiding inclines as much as we can.

On day 2, I recorded our route and mileage. It's not impressive, but it still felt good.

We've been riding with the cute neighbourhood boy whom we keep between us: me in the lead and Sue keeping watch at the back. So far, it is good to have him with us because kid-sized bikes can’t go as fast as big bikes although we wouldn’t be booting it anyway at this point in our lives. 

We have our phones mounted, and Sue managed some photos to take some photos.

Here's a larger version of one of the above pictures as we cycled through the neighbourhood park. 

It feels good to get back in the saddle again. In my early days of blogging I wrote about our rides periodically if not frequently. We enjoyed riding pretty fair distances. It's different now, of course, but it is still a pleasant activity. As we approach our 80s (we are both 79 or will be very shortly), we feel secure in our balance and hope that our bodies allow us to continue this activity in its present, reduced form.

Resurrecting the Fiddle

Sue had another post for brown week that also called for hands. She chose to use my old fiddle for the brown part of the prompt along with my very own personal hands. Once again, these are her photos but my edits. I present this one first because it didn't work out as well as I had hoped.

I thought to render the photo b&w except for the violin, but I don't think that it worked for the hands. Oh well, we move on to try other edits with other photos.

For the next photo I made sure to darken the background a lot but keep the relevant part colourized. I am content with this image.

It was difficult to just get my hands and the fiddle both in the photo while eliminating distractions, so Sue had me hold the instrument differently and not as if I were playing it.

I think Sue used the last photo for her group, but her edit would different than mine. I post that conclusion pretty safely, even without having compared the two results.

The story with the violin or fiddle is that it has sat unused for a decade. When we first moved here, seeing as this is an area with a fiddling tradition, I did take some lessons and even showed up at a jam or two. Finger and back issues kept me from practising as much as I should before causing me to shut it down entirely. I did have quite a bit of enjoyment with the instrument for about five years although an old guy who couldn't practise as much as necessary never became very proficient.

My body, being what it is, and the instrument requiring a tuning and perhaps replacement of strings, I did not attempt to play a single note on the day of this photoshoot.

By the way, for those who don't know, a fiddle and a violin are exactly the same instrument, and so I used both words in this post. Fiddling is a certain style of music.

Saturday Morning

We weren't sure what to expect on Saturday morning after our neighbour informed us that we has a flat tire on Friday evening. Should we call CAA for an on-the-spot repair or perhaps even a tow, or should we try to fill it and take it into our tire guy just about a mile down the road?

We opted to fill it using the electric pump for our bicycle tires.

It worked and I was at the garage by about 8 o'clock. The big worry was whether we would need a new tire, and if so, should we replace the whole shebang. On one hand, the tires are hardly new, but on the other, our mileage was still relatively low because we are low-mileage kinda folk.

What with the many thousands spent on the roof and house this summer plus more than a thousand either spent or already committed on car repairs (mostly brakes but more too), I wasn't terribly keen an another major financial outlay.

It turned out that we had picked up a decking screw and that it was removed and the tire patched for a relatively modest sum.

Still early, we drove downtown to purchase two blueberry scones to go. Then, we drove through Tims for coffee, and we took our goodies to the park where we found a picnic table where we could enjoy our comestibles. Both the coffee and the scones were quite wonderful.

There were few passersby in the park, but there was much activity on the river with races being run via commands from a loudspeaker near us.

I took a short clip of one race beginning. What it does not show, in the interest of time and bandwidth is the jockeying and instructions to get the craft lined up in decent order. It took a fair amount of patience and cajoling, let me tell ya. (Edit; I see that the video is unavailable for some reason.)

I also took a couple of photos.

For fun, I asked AI for a watercolour version of the second photo. Curiously, it added a sky.

We walked a little, and Sue made friends with a dog.

After sitting on another a bench for awhile, decided to head back to the car because it was looking a bit like rain. The drops began to fall just as we got back to the vehicle.