Monday, December 14, 2015

Coyotes

After another few days with the Primos 02 Trail Camera I have continued to have great luck. Placing it where I would not expect to find much it consistently finds animals. This weekend, it found a coyote four times, a skunk, and a squirrel:

Coyote:

Coyote:





Fox Squirrel:

The camera consistently produces identifiable pictures even of relatively small animals. It does trigger a lot on wind, but that sort of adds to the excitement of going through images. Since it can store 80,000 photos a few extra won't be an issue even if I send it off to the jungle for a month or two.

Rorabaugh Census Data

I decided to go download a bunch of old census data.

The earliest references I found which is plausibly my ancesstors were two entries in the census, one in the 1810 census for John Rorabaugh which is plausibly my 6th great grandfather . In that era it doesn't have much information beyond that he was in Scipio New York.



In the 1840 census there were two plausible entries, another for John Rorabaugh, and one for Nathan Rorabaugh which is plausibly my 6th great grandfather. Again these entries provide little information.




The 1850 census starts to get more interesting with an entry for Nathan Rohrbought and family. In this era, at least they give information about the names of all family members:


The 1860 census has the same, an entry for Nathan Rorabaugh and Family:


The 1870 census has an entry for John Rorebach and family. By this time they say profession and net worth.


In 1880 Nathan Rorabaugh shows up again, this time living only with his youngest son:







For some reason there was an 1885 census in Iowa which found John Rorabaw and family.



1900 through 1930 finds John W Rorabaugh and his quickly growing family. I was not able to find names for all his 21 children, but I at least found all the ones from his first wife:





Henry Emmett Rorabaugh shows up in the 1930 census. I particularly like his Occupation: "Odd Jobs" Industry: "Any Place" entries.


Thursday, December 10, 2015

Composite Images for Photo Spheres

I have started trying to use a camera instead of a cell phone to make photo spheres to submit to google maps. The basic idea is simple, take photos in every direction, then stick them into Microsoft Composite Image Editor. That can turn them into photo spheres relatively easily.

This is turning out to be a lot harder than a cell phone though. It is easy to miss a spot or two since you do not have feedback when you took photos in every direction. Also, the exposure to get the sky is not the same exposure to get the ground. So if you don't take a lot of care you end up with patches where one or the other look bad. For example, this photo sphere managed to do great on the pictures perpendicular to the sun. However into the sun, there is a big ugly patch where the exposure is wrong.

Trail Camera

After some debate on which trail camera to buy, I purchased a Primos 12MP Proof Cam 02 HD Trail Camera. This is a neat way to try and make iNaturalist submissions. It opens up a whole lot of species that I am just not going to find any other way.

So far it has only spent three days in the hills near me. It was pointing at a completely boring patch of earth which animals would have little reason to visit. Still, I managed to find a couple birds a rabbit and this skunk:



Friday, December 4, 2015

Rorabaw Quack Medicine

More impressive than the pictures of my fourth great grandfather, are some of his handbills:



Old Photos

Ran into a collection of old Rorabaugh family photos online. Most are only of minor interest. These pictures of my fourth great grandfather, John Mitchell Rorabaugh are pretty classic though:



According to the caption, he built whatever farm vehicle that is.