Bracken Bat Cave, home to the largest concentration of mammals on the planet with 20 million Mexican free-tail bats, is opening up to the general public for a brief period.

This is awesome.

A few years ago, Jen and I saw the surreal exodus at dusk. So many bats fly out of the cave to feed, they create their own vortex.

Express-News Photographer Billy Calzada shot a very cool video of the bats in action. Check out the time-lapse photos.

It sounds too good to be true, but did you know there are two John Tedescos roaming around in the world? It’s true!

This is all very confusing and for now I’m going to think of me and the other John Tedesco as the Good Spock/Bad Spock in that one Star Trek episode about an alternate universe. I’m assuming the other John Tedesco is Bad Spock because they both have goatees and a Vulcan death grip.

I will provide a full update when Colbert will inevitably make fun of me at some point in the future.

(Photo credit: Dave Friedel on Flickr)

Hat tip to Dean Lockwood: “Texas classic. LBJ ordering — explicitly — from Haggar in 1964. Listen for the belch , ‘nuts’ and ‘bung hole.’”

I’m a sucker for timelapse videos so I’m 100 percent biased, but I thought this video by the Texas Tribune was a creative way to give readers a sense of what it’s like in Austin during the first day of the 2011 Texas Legislative session. Cool idea and nice execution by Caleb Bryant Miller and Todd Wiseman.

I’m a sucker for cool time-lapse videos, and this one showing how much snow fell on the East Coast is no exception.

So I bought my first DSLR camera, a Canon Rebel T1i, and I’m having an absolute blast taking pictures of Pete with it. This thing is addictive. These are a few Thanksgiving pics I took, which is a fraction of all the pictures I snapped yesterday without even thinking about it.

Why is this so much fun? Why not use a basic point-and-shoot camera? What’s wrong with me? Those are all valid questions. Jen and I own some nice point-and-shoots. But I wanted really good portraits of Pete in natural light and with blurry backgrounds. Our basic cameras didn’t really do a good job at that task — especially indoors, where Pete spends a lot of time learning how to walk and find new hiding places.

When I plunked down $575 for the Canon on Amazon and said to Jen, “Guess what I just bought?” she gave me the arched-eyebrow look, which usually happens after every gadget purchase. When she found out how much the camera cost, she said she was glad we have separate savings accounts.

But we both quickly learned that a good camera with the right lens can be a lot of fun, and we’ve taken a ton of pictures of Pete that we probably couldn’t have taken otherwise. I like this shot Jen took yesterday of me and Pete:

Now I just need a new gadget to store our massive collection of digital photos …

Here’s one good reason to stay in school. Sweet video by Billy Calzada.

Sweet.

Hard to believe Pete was born a year ago. At the hospital, Jen’s dad suggested we take a picture of him every day to make a time lapse video. Here’s the result.

I’m glad we took the time to do this because the video shows just how fast Pete is growing up. It’s also cool to see how Pete began smiling and interacting with the world.

If you want to do this kind of project, all you need is a camera, a tripod, video editing software, and the patience to stick with it. There’s no way you can take a picture every single day — you might be out of town, or the baby might be sick, or you might just simply forget. But I’d suggest taking a picture every day in the first few months at least. That’s when they really pack on the pounds. As you can see, it didn’t take long for Pete to become a cute little butterball.

Happy birthday, Pete.

“But he smells like ranch dressing …” Awesome jam and video by the Black Keys.