More of a Naturalist's Hallowen

These Halloween snapshots speak for themselves:

Sumac

Pokeweed berries with Cucumber Beetle

Jack O'Lantern Mushrooms

Dewy spider

Halloween Assassin

When I ambled out to the shed a few minutes ago, I was delighted to see the Halloween colors on these two Assassin Bugs.

Assassin Bugs are well-named since the curving appendage of their snout can be used to ambush a passing insect, stab it, and suck out its juices. These two are properly known as Reduviidae Pselliopus barberi. Larger specimens are apparently capable of delivering a painful sting if particularly annoyed by the paparazzi.

Hiking the Ozark Trail -- North Fork Section, mile 23

Yesterday Sue and I made a quick afternoon drive up into Missouri to hike part of the Ozark Trail along the North Fork of the White River. Here is a link to a nice map of miles 15 to 26.

We parked at the campground in Hammond Camp and hiked the lovely 1/4 mile over to Blue Spring. That first section of the hike has rocky Dolostone outcroppings, great views of the river, and lots of riverside wildflowers.

The spring itself create a beautiful blue pool, maybe 30 feet across. At least 7 million gallons of icy water bubble up from it each day. At some point in the past huge flat chunks of rock were carefully positioned around it to create a sturdy walking ledge and steps leading to an overlook above the river. This spot is worth exploring for at least a half hour . . . if not a full afternoon.

On the far side of the overlook above the spring, there is an almost imperceptible path that winds its way steeply uphill. This horse path / foot path eventually connects to the Ozark Trail, but first you will climb about 300 feet in a bit over a third of a mile. This is the most difficult part of the hike but it is not dangerous.

At the top of the hill this path intersects with the Ozark Trail, which is flat, level, and spacious in this particular section. The trail evidently follows an old road along the top of McGarr Ridge, but the woods have taken over so your hike will be shady and comfortable. The forest is mostly deciduous with lots of colorful maples and hickories at this time of year.

After about a half mile you will notice the trail gradually descending. The descent steepens a little and cuts through some sandy, deeply rutted areas of the flood zone before butting up against the North Fork River just at one of its most lovely bluffs. This is a good place to take a swim, eat a snack, and enjoy the view of the river before heading back to your car.

This is a short hike--not more than three or four miles in all--but every section of 

it is varied and interesting.

Lion's Mane Mushroom.

Reviewing the Amazon Fire HD 6--Almost the Perfect Tablet

My Fire hd 6 arrived Tuesday afternoon so I have just begun to test it. I've always loved small computers--netbooks, Kindles, and Android tablets--so this device seems almost designed specially for me.

First off, the tablet arrived in perfect condition, beautifully packaged. It was a joy to unbox and a cinch to set up. I plugged it into an outlet and watched as it automatically booted up for the first time. No problem. Neither was there any problem connecting to my existing Amazon account and gmail account. The system update took a while to download and install. And it took even longer to get the battery charged up fully (in part because I decided to use the tablet while it was charging.

The tablet itself is a solid, well-made slab. It feels like something that is not fragile and that will last. It's comfortable to hold in one hand with squared edges that don't jab into one's fingers the way the edges of my thinner Asus Memo Pad 10 tend to do. It is not a featherweight, weighting exactly the advertised 10.1 ounces (the same weight as the venerable Kindle 2 it will largely replace).

I purchased it primarily as an ereader and have tested that function. I rarely read in direct sunlight but often read in bed so the backlit screen is perfect for me. The text is very sharp and the entire Kindle reading experience is a joy. Text to speech in public domain books uses a pleasant female robo-voice. I'm quite happy with it. I haven't yet tried Audible books or audio books from my public library, but I'm quite certain they will work (after I fiddle around to install the Overdrive app). The single speaker is loud enough for most purposes.

The Silk browser is fast and smooth. I'm using it to write this review and am very pleased with the implementation of the swipe keyboard for writing. Word prediction is fairly accurate. Web pages come up as quickly as they would on any of my laptop machines--maybe even a little more quickly.

Amazon Prime videos load and play smoothly. The six-inch screen is big enough for pleasant viewing, given that I wanted a light device I could easily slip in a my pocket.

I took a few test photos with the camera. It works, but it is only two megapixels. Still, I have found my two megapixel cell phone camera capable of taking surprisingly good macro photographs of wildflowers and insects. My initial results with this tablet's camera were a bit disappointing. But I have hopes of figuring out how to take better shots and will report back tomorrow.

To be continued . . .

UPDATE

1. THE CAMERA. The camera itself does not offer many features, but it does have the basics. Since there is no flash, you need to make sure you have good light. In addition to the standard mode, you can switch to HDR mode for those occasions when when the background is either too dark or too bright. If you use the HDR mode, be sure to hold the camera very steady as it takes several shots sequentially. In addition there is a burst mode which you access simply by holding your finger on the shutter button.

While the camera is about as simple as a Kodak Brownie, you can do a lot to improve your shots with the photo editor. I won't discuss the many features; suffice it to say that you can easily crop and adjust your images. Nicest of all is the fact that Amazon offers to store for free all the photos you take with your Fire HD 6.

I like to take macro photos of wildflowers and insects. Surprisingly this camera performs quite well, as do most cell phone cameras. The trick is to place an inexpensive jeweler's loupe over the lens and hold the camera at the right focal distance--about two to three inches from the subject. What makes the tablet better than the typical cell phone is the six-inch screen. This screen image is much bigger than a cell phone's and thus gives you a better chance of achieving prefect focus. The screen is a bit dim in bright sunlight, but it is adequate. My close ups of wildflowers and insects are good enough for identification purposes even if they are not quite as sharp as the ones I take with my $350 digital camera. Note that the first two sample photos have been cropped; the third is full size.

Nature lovers may wish to know that the first photo is of Wild Blue Sage, the second is of Pokeweed, (note the two very tiny ants), and the third is of Small Morning Glory.

Now there is no doubt that the Olympus TG 3 is a far superior camera, but just for fun I thought I would compare it to our previous quality camera, a Sony Cybershot DSC-S730. That camera sports a 7.2 megapixel chip and a close-focus mode. Here are two pictures of a daddy long legs. The first is taken with the Fire HD6 and the second with the Sony. See what you think.

The tablet is also handy for casual photography. While using the camera app, you can push the power button to put the tablet to sleep. Pushing it again immediately awakens the tablet and a single swipe to unlock the screen brings your camera right up again, ready to use. Here are two shots I just took that illustrate the colors and range of focus.

The mushroom was very big--maybe six inches across, as was the sycamore leaf.

2. DOCUMENT CREATION AND EDITING. To create and edit documents, go to the docs tab at the top of the device and use WPS Office. You can save the file on the device and also share it with your Google Drive account. This pre-installed app is all you need for basic writing. The swipe feature here is also well implemented. The auto save feature helps to protect you from those maddening deletions of entire drafts. (If your keyboard becomes unresponsive, you need to wait a few seconds for auto save to complete its work.)

3. FILE MANAGEMENT (AND SIDE LOADING APPS).You can use ES File Explorer (from the Amazon App Store) to handle most file manager tasks and to access Google Drive and Dropbox files . . . but I don't recommend using it to edit files. Several times I lost entire drafts of documents while trying to use this app for writing. But the app does do a lot of neat stuff. It even includes a basic browser that is worth giving a try. There's one thing it can't do, however, and that is manage your apps. In fact, I have not yet found anything in Amazon's app store that does that. So here's the solution, borrow somebody's android phone or tablet. If it doesn't have the X-plore File Manager installed, download and install it from the Google Play Store. X-plore usually shows two panels side-by-side, and the last two items are App Manager and Show. (If you don't see App Manager, click on Show and tick the option to display App Manager.) Using App Manager, you can transfer any free apk files onto a USB drive. Now you will need a USB to micro-USB OTG (on the go) dongle to connect the drive to your Fire HD 6. Once connected you can install those apps. Note: they may not all work! And there is some risk you could create a problem that requires you to "factory reset" your tablet. I do know, however, that X-plore worked flawlessly for me in transferring X-plore, Fbreader, Fbreader tts+, and the Ted text editor to my Fire HD 6.

4. DOWNLOADING PUBLIC LIBRARY BOOKS AND AUDIO BOOKS. Download and install the Android Overdrive app (from the Overdrive website) to listen to audio books from your public library. Click on it in ES File Explorer to install it. (This is another way of side-loading an app.) The app did not initially show up in my apps, but I could find it and use it by searching my apps. Once I used it, it remained in my carousel, and now it is even visible in my apps. Because this tablet can fit in a roomy pocket, it is a very satisfactory audio book player.

5. THE SINGLE SPEAKER. I like the speaker. It produces a good volume of sound so that headphones aren't essential (though they do provide excellent stereo sound.)

This little tablet plays YouTube, Amazon Prime, and streaming public radio. It is an audio book player and an ebook reader. It is even surprisingly useful for writing documents and composing email. All in all, the Fire HD 6 is a great entertainment device . . . and a good deal more.

6. TO KEEP THE SILK BROWSER RUNNING SPEEDILY, I recommend that you go into Settings and clear the browser's cache regularly--perhaps even at the end of every browsing session. Past experience with my Asus netbook convinces me that devices with solid state drives can more quickly download information over a WiFi connection than call it up from the cache on the drive.

It does seem to me that the Silk browser is a work in progress. Its best feature is the "Reading View," but that only works reliably with a relatively small percentage of web sites. And in the regular browser view, text can be a bit small on the six-inch screen for my tired, old eyes. As a result I have side-loaded Opera and am currently using it for most browsing. With Opera you can go into Settings and tick a box for "text wrap." On most web sites that allows you to resize the text however you wish.