My Daily Smile

Life is short - begin every day with a smile!

A video visit to Virginia’s Natural Tunnel State Park

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My home state of Virginia offers plenty of gorgeous scenery and fun things to do for those who come to visit.

Whether it’s sun and surf on the beaches bordering the Atlantic ocean and Chesapeake Bay on the state’s eastern coast, hiking or biking the mountainous trails in the west or visiting the many historic Civil War sites and quaint towns on the piedmont, Virginia has something wonderful and intriguing waiting for you to enjoy most anywhere you might happen to be.  [Read more…]

Guess what? Those ‘twinkling’ stars you see in the night sky aren’t actually twinkling at all

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If you’ve ever had the opportunity to view the night sky out in country where there’s no light pollution you probably noticed how the stars seemed to be twinkling.

The thousands of twinkling stars that shine down from the heavens have been fascinating and mesmerizing us humans all throughout our long history.

But there’s a strange truth about those twinkling stars: They don’t really twinkle at all.

[Read more…]

Time-lapse Video: New Zealand and the Milky Way in 8K

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If you’ve been reading my blogs and newsletters for a while you know that I’m a huge fan of time-lapse videos.

Unlike regular videos, time-lapse videos are created by combining many still photographs that captured the same scene over a period of time.

This process is very similar to the way cartoon artists used to draw thousands of pictures and combine them into a sort of flip-book arrangement to create an animated video.  [Read more…]

Ever wonder how people managed to wake up on time before alarm clocks came along?

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Before alarm clocks became commonplace in homes folks still had to wake up early enough to make it to work or school on time. Have you ever wondered how they managed to do that?

I did some research into this topic and discovered that there used to be an actual profession in which people called “Knocker-Uppers” would go from door to door and wake the workers and school children of the household up.

[Read more…]