This bush is usually crawling in bees for a month or so while it blooms.

Its bloom cycle might have been a bit shorter than usual due to the drought, but the bees were happy while it lasted. They're off to the rose of sharron, which is one of a few plants exerting the energy to bloom right now.

I have no idea what this bush is called, but for three or so weeks out of the year it smells fantastic. Very sweet smelling.

A few days back, I wondered if I could achieve focus stacking doing the macro rock-your-camera-to-focus trick. For the uninitiated, the idea is that slight movement of your camera toward and/or away from your subject is an easier focusing method than using the focus ring on your lens.

I thought my logic was straightforward:

1. Focus breathing means that even if you're using a tripod photo stacking software will still have to deal with shot-to-shot variation in framing/perspective
2. My body does not support focus bracketing
3. My body does have high burst rates

Put the three together and here we are. The daisy in the post is 39 images fed into helicon focus 9. I've now spent a total of 10 minutes with this software and it's super easy. Here's one of the photos in the stack to give you a feel for how thin the depth of field was:

For kicks, here are two more stacks. They're not super compelling photos, but they do show that the concept is viable.

Everything in this post was shot at f/4 on a Sigma 35mm f/2 with 26mm of extension tubes in the great outdoors with no additional lighting.

Hopefully this will be the first of many I take this season. Hopefully^2^ I'll even take the time to break out my "real camera" at some point and go 🐝 hunting

Well, almost. I didn't give myself enough tolerance in the cutout for the speaker and it doesn't fit well. On to v1.01!

It will be a 240x280x70ish speaker stand. The first go ground with it flat and support free resulted in warping despite a 60°C chamber, so I stood it on its end, cut print speed by a third, and added the breaks to reduce stress.

This will take a while...

Note that the bottom has a chmafer, so although there's a shadow it's not warping.

I turned the grow lights on early this year to grow some potatoes, which I'm sure is a totally a great use of energy. I'm really hoping to grow another round of starts after not having a very good year this year due to keeping our potatos in smaller pots and us not getting a ton of rain. Next year I'll put them in a much larger planter.

I'm also trying to get some cherry pits to seed. I collected the cherries, which were delicious, from a tree in our neighborhood. I'm betting the mother tree isn't a graft given its location and age. If any of you have any tips, I'm all ears. The pits are now a year old and spent the time in dry dirt on this table.

Title basically.

One of my windows computers, which happens to be the one I happen to do the most CAD work on, can't upgrade to windows 11 due to having an Ivy Bridge era Xenon (it's an E5-1680 v2 for the curious, older used workstations are fantastic bang for the buck computers).

Switching to Linux on this computer has been in the cards for a while, but I hadn't been in a hurry to do it. Looks like my hand might be getting forced...

The coaster is shivering timbers at Michigan's adventure.

At least the Canadian wildfires are good for softer light. It's very surreal having a cloud free sunny day without the sun actually being that intense.

The scene smelled delicious!

We saw a pretty good amount of them in our yard this June. It was nice. I can't remember seeing many lightning bugs for years.

I'm going to have to track down a macro lens for my camera body after selling the micro four thirds kit I was using for bees last year.

I've seen Robbins around our lawn sprinkler before... I'll have to keep my camera more handy in case they show up again

Title basically. If anyone else wants to join the printer army feel free to reply.

Guardrails:

• You must provide a STL. Custom parts usually require an iteration or three, as well as hands on access to reference material (eg the failed part, the subject a part will be used on) to get accurate measurements. I could design you part, but odds are it won't be perfect the first time and I would prefer to save us both the effort and heartache
• I will print functional prints for you out of filament I presently have "in stock", which is mostly black or neutral ASA. I may have PLA or PETG in stock from time to time. If you want a different color or material you're welcome to buy a roll of filament
• Parts must be under 250 grams in total. I'm happy to help, but I'm not looking to give away filament. I am willing to barter some with the bullet below
• You must mail me something in return for the parts. This can be anything at all that you made - a cookie, a sketch, a thank you note from your SO, whatever
• I am going to impose a monthly quote of 2 "clients" a month. I have a busy work and home life and am not looking to make this a full time gig

This was about a week or so ago. We're starting to see some bees in the clover now too 🥰