Paul Ganssle @pganssle@qoto.org

They seem like a good match for these photos taken recently in NYC: https://urbanhawks.blogs.com/urban_hawks/2020/09/black-throated-green-warbler.html

Here are some pictures of the yellow-headed warbler I saw yesterday (managed to snap a few not great pictures through the binoculars this morning).

I think they are black-throated green warblers, despite the fact that none of the ones I saw were actually black-throated.

#birding

@ted Yeah, that's another option, but it does seem like when you mount your phone to binoculars or a scope, you get these circular photos, like the one from this review: https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R2HL520KIX1F6W

I'm thinking maybe this one could work? https://www.amazon.com/Canon-EF-S-55-250mm-F4-5-6-Cameras/dp/B078GQTWFX

I'm not entirely sure how to translate the focal lengths of the lenses into an equivalent of my experience using binoculars. If I could get photos that were somewhat equivalent to what I see when I use my Athlon Midas ED 8x42 binoculars, I'd be very happy.

#birding #photography

Any #birding folks have suggestions on how to take pictures of distant birds without spending a huge amount on it?

Not looking to become a professional wildlife photographer, just to have some identifiable pictures of the birds I've seen.

I have a Canon T4i, but I'd probably be as happy or happier to just get a little clip-on telephoto lens for my phone if a decent one exists.

I think the warbler may have been a black-throated warbler, but I couldn't get a picture of it and I don't remember if it had the black throat.

It's been hanging around here for the past few days, so I hopefully I can catch it again.

Lots of birds in my backyard this morning:

- Pileated woodpecker
- Downy woodpecker
- Bluejay
- White-breasted nuthatch (?)
- Warbler with yellow head and back
- Some sort of hawk

#birding

@bkastl I also think it was refreshing to see a take that was orthogonal to the "is the algorithm biased" take.

@bkastl That's sad. I thought it was very interesting. ☹

Head's up: Major breaking change coming to tzlocal, as in the next version it will return zoneinfo time zones: https://github.com/regebro/tzlocal/pull/92

Anyone using `tzlocal` should test against master. If your application doesn't break, you are probably using tzlocal wrong anyway.

#python

@shit I tried, it's a very different experience and the pictures don't come out great. 😥

Now I need to get a telephoto lens for my phone or camera, because I keep wanting to take pictures of the stuff I see in the binoculars.

Just got a pair of nice 8x42 binoculars (Athlon Midas ED) and #protip: they make #birding so much better.

I don't know why no one thought to use these to look at birds before I came up with this wholly original idea.

@freemo I heard Ohm got that law passed with a lot of help from Tamminy Hall, so I'm not surprised to find it on shaky ground, TBH. 😉

Tip: On Cinnamon (and probably other Window managers and OSes), Alt + ~ is the same as Alt + Tab, but restricted to the currently active application (e.g. tab between Firefox windows).

Learned this from @LarryHastings@twitter.com last year and I've probably used it every day.

@brainwane I feel a caper coming on.

<Googles "how to break into a zoo">
<Googles "discount clam outlet">

Having a pulse oximeter is kinda fun, though it's disconcerting that the pulse number starts blinking when it falls under 60 bpm, considering my normal HR is usually something around 50 bpm.

@meejah Yeah, that seems a bit of premature optimization for variable literals, though. I'm pretty sure it will always be faster and more compact to use chaining on the "is" case even if the number of elements grows:

if a is b is c is d:
...

This doesn't need to construct a tuple, a generator, or invoke a function.

For the `is not` case you need N - 1 "None"s to compare N variables, so:

if a is not None is not b is not None is not c:
...

So there's a stronger case for `all(x is not None for x in (a, b, c, d))`.

Context here is #python, if that wasn't clear.