Friday Glow Blogging: Uranium Glass

And now, it’s time for something a little different. It’s not only rocks that glow when exposed to UV light; a few summers ago we discovered that the scorpions on Coronado Heights glow with a soft creamy color. This brightly colored creamer is an example of uranium glass. Sometimes known as vaseline glass, depending on … Read more

Small Town Politics

The local paper has rescinded its three week moratorium on printing letters to the editor. It was a misguided attempt to control the political discourse in our community and it failed. Credit to the Lindsborg News-Record for making the right decision in the end (even if they can’t spell my name correctly). It’s interesting that … Read more

Thompson’s Vincent Black

Out for a drive late yesterday afternoon, Richard Thompson’s song, Vincent Black Lightning, started playing. It was just another song brought to us by iPod’s random song selector. Now, we’ve listened to this song at various times while driving across the country, and never really spoke about it. Yesterday, however, I suddenly felt it important … Read more

Friday Glow Blogging: English Fluorite

English fluorite is one of the brightest of all fluorescent minerals, and this fine, 1″ crystal specimen, illuminated by longwave UV light, is a very nice example, indeed.

Blue: Who Knew?

It’s been far too long since I’ve posted an interesting astronomy photo, and the one below, though subtle, is very beautiful. The image is of Saturn’s “northern” hemisphere and was taken by the spacecraft Cassini in early 2005, as it orbited the planet. It turns out that the atmosphere of Saturn’s “northern” hemisphere is blue, … Read more

Get Back Trackback

I turned off the trackback feature of this site this morning. Awaking once again to a mailbox full of blog related spam I decided today was the day to stop at least this one kind of spam. There are two kinds of blog related spam, comment and trackback. Comment spam is a pain, but two … Read more

Mike’s Simple Hi-Tech Glossary

Based on recent comments and observations, I’ve come to realize that many of the acronyms encountered in the online world aren’t as well known as as many authors might wish. Herewith is a list of commonly encountered shortcuts, including some that are whimsical, obscure, and even a couple of historical interest: aob: Any Other Business? … Read more

Potatoes Sheryl

I don’t normally post two recipes back to back, but I created my version of the classic cheesy potato dish tonight, and it was so good, and so easy, I figured it was worth recording. It’s named for Sheryl, who requested I make something along these lines. I was glad to oblige, and here’s the … Read more

Monkey Bread

I made this scrumptious dessert over a week ago, and decided to share the recipe before I forgot. This is an extremely good variation of the classic cinnamon roll, and fun to make as well! I made the monkey bread using our KitchenAid stand mixer; to date I had been using our bread machine to … Read more

Friday Glow Blogging: Wernerite

This nicely cut piece of Wernerite is from Canada. It’s about 3 inches long and glows a very bright yellow under long-wave UV light.