Lassen Star Trails

By Robert Ellison. Updated on Saturday, February 19, 2022.

A timelapse two ways shot from the Manzanita Lake campground at Lassen Volcanic National Park (the second time I've visited and the second time that Bumpass Hell has been closed). First a regular 4K timelapse looking up from the campsite:

The second version is the same footage in HD where each frame is the cumulative maximum pixel value of all the frames up to the current frame (so it builds in star trails as the video runs):

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Draw the rest of the Hummingbird

By Robert Ellison. Updated on Saturday, February 19, 2022.

A genetic algorithm learns to draw a hummingbird:

The video is an animation of three thousand generations of evolution. It starts with a random mix of line segments which are then mutated by adding or removing lines and by changing the start, end and color of existing lines. Each generation has 32 individuals. The best individual is mutated to create the next generation.

For this implementation the best or fittest individual is the one with the least error on a pixel by pixel comparison to a stock art drawing of a hummingbird. Because I care more about the shape than completely filling in the drawing an error outside the figure is penalized three times more than a gap inside the figure.

Color is mutated each generation but not selected for, so it's just changing randomly.

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Book reviews for July 2018

By Robert Ellison.

Ancillary Justice (Imperial Radch, #1) by Ann Leckie

4/5

Ancillary Sword (Imperial Radch, #2) by Ann Leckie

4/5

Ancillary Mercy (Imperial Radch #3) by Ann Leckie

4/5

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Hoylake Beach

By Robert Ellison. Updated on Saturday, February 19, 2022.

Timelapse looking over Hoylake beach in the Wirral, UK.

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What if the Senate Voted Proportionally to Population

By Robert Ellison.

This is massively less likely than sorting out the Electoral College, but imagine for a minute that 100 Senators woke up tomorrow and decided to do the right thing.

Dianne Feinstein, the senior Senator from California would wield 6.04 votes. Mike Enzi, the senior Senator from Wyoming would have to make do with 0.09 votes.

Overall a party line vote would see 55.85 Democratic votes to 44.15 Republican, assuming normal independent caucusing habits. Not quite a supermajority, but enough to not send Kavanaugh to The Supreme Court for instance.

This is based on 2010 census figures from Wikipedia.

Not going to happen, but find my estimate of your State's fair voting power by Senator below.

State	Votes per Senator
California	6.04
Texas	4.08
Florida	3.05
New York	3.14
Pennsylvania	2.06
Illinois	2.08
Ohio	1.87
Georgia	1.57
North Carolina	1.55
Michigan	1.6
New Jersey	1.43
Virginia	1.3
Washington	1.09
Arizona	1.04
Massachusetts	1.06
Tennessee	1.03
Indiana	1.05
Missouri	0.97
Maryland	0.94
Wisconsin	0.92
Colorado	0.82
Minnesota	0.86
South Carolina	0.75
Alabama	0.78
Louisiana	0.74
Kentucky	0.7
Oregon	0.62
Oklahoma	0.61
Connecticut	0.58
Iowa	0.49
Utah	0.45
Arkansas	0.47
Nevada	0.44
Mississippi	0.48
Kansas	0.46
New Mexico	0.33
Nebraska	0.3
West Virginia	0.3
Idaho	0.25
Hawaii	0.22
New Hampshire	0.21
Maine	0.22
Rhode Island	0.17
Montana	0.16
Delaware	0.15
South Dakota	0.13
North Dakota	0.11
Alaska	0.12
Vermont	0.1
Wyoming	0.09

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Moorhen and Chick

By Robert Ellison. Updated on Saturday, June 7, 2025.

Moorhen and her chick at the village pond in Mapledurwell, Hampshire, UK.

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Badgers

By Robert Ellison. Updated on Saturday, June 7, 2025.

Badgers in Mapledurwell, UK. Captured by running a GoPro for hours looking down a suspected badger trail.

Badgers

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Bay Model Tide 360 Timelapse

By Robert Ellison. Updated on Saturday, February 19, 2022.

The Bay Model in Sausalito is a two-football field sized working model of the San Francisco Bay and Sacramento - San Joaquin River Delta. Here's a 360 degree timelapse of the model in action so you can see the tide coming in and out (best in a VR headset but you can pan around as well):

Shot on a Ricoh Theta S and post-processed in LRTimelapse and Adobe Lightroom.

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June Gloom

By Robert Ellison. Updated on Saturday, February 19, 2022.

A relatively pleasant Sunday in San Francisco, which means the second you turn your back fog and low cloud are going to swoop in:

The first part of the video is looking west toward the ocean. Once any trace of blue is obliterated we turn south to see fog rolling over San Pedro Mountain near Pacifica and increasingly gloomy cloud cover over the French Chateau Sanatorium (which I think of as the West Portal Retirement Castle). This is a deeply strange building, nestled in a hollow and surrounded by trees. Most of the time you don't see it and then suddenly, on the right street at the right angle you're startled to realize that there is a massive chateau hiding in the neighborhood.

If you're in the mood for more West Portal oriented time lapse enjoy: West of West Portal, West Portal Mosaic Timelapse, West Portal Timelapse of Timelapses and Spherical Sunset.

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