Cataracts?

Car Headlights

I drove to the hospital Tuesday morning at o'dark thirty and a couple of cars I encountered looked like this. I suspect I may be getting cataracts, I am getting old, so it's a possibility. But then again, maybe it's just the stupid headlamps on new cars. I was kind of surprised because I don't go out much at night. And how would you get a picture like this? I suspect your typical phone-camera is just going to show a couple of bright spots, it won't fill your whole field of view with starbursts.

Mirage

Aegir Deepwater Construction Vessel (DCV)
Binnenvaart & Transport Nederland

There is something funny going on in this video and I don't know what's causing it. The camera is pointing at a big ship that is some distance away. As you watch the video you can hear the wind blowing and when it does, the towers on the ship seem to wave back and forth. Now I am sure you could create that effect with some fancy video editing software, but I don't think that's what is happening. Is the camera wobbling? I don't think so, if it did, the whole scene would wobble. The only thing I can think of is that the density of the air changes as the wind blows, and that change in density is enough to change the index of refraction and so distort the image. It also explains why only the towers are affected - air that is closer tot he ground is not going to traveling as fast and will not be subject to the same changes in density. Air that is higher up will be moving faster.

Glitch

Glitch

The Village Hemorrhoid has several more examples.

Watch the Arc

Welding visualization system uses intense pulsed lighting to outshine electric arc, laser cutter
Applied Science

Pretty cool. Pretty cool price, too:

Kron Technologies Helios Welding Visualization System $10,000

Difference Filter

vidmods diff1
Elliot Leonard

My friend Elliot writes computer programs that displays colorful stuff on computer screens:

"This is creepy as heck, but I am having fun with it. This uses a difference filter that I have written from scratch using Windows Media Foundation. The filter was inspired by some sci fi that I read, which posited that dinosaurs could only see movement. When you stop moving, the image sort of fades away..."

 

Color Engraving

Unboxing xTool F1 Laser
ToolsToday

Witchcraft! Is this real? Seems to be. Didn't find much information about it. Wikipedia has a page, but it is very short and is not very helpful. Found this on MonPort:

Color laser engraving technology utilizes high-powered lasers to etch intricate designs and patterns onto metal surfaces. Unlike traditional engraving methods, color laser engraving offers the ability to create vibrant and multi-colored designs with precision and accuracy. This is achieved through the modulation of laser pulses to control the depth and intensity of the engraving, resulting in stunning visual effects on metal substrates.

Found this on Xtool:

In the first method, the surface of the metal is turned into a molten form using a very powerful laser. During the melting process, oxidation also occurs. The surface of the metal oxidizes due to the high temperature and reaction with oxygen. 

The melted material solidifies again, but due to oxidation, a special-colored layer is created on the metal, which looks like colored engraving. Therefore, you see vivid colors on the engraved surface rather than the normal engraving color.

Broadcast Tower Strobe Lights

Broadcast Towers on Mt. Suappoa, Phoenix, Arizona

RobertaX tells an entertaining story about strobe lights and acorns.

Via Tam

Mesh Goggles

Improve Mesh Chainsaw Goggles with a Sharpie
Ravenglade Axe Co

Mesh googles. Who'd a thunk it? Okay I guess for wood working. If a wood chip is small enough to get through the mesh, their mass is so little they are unlikely to do any damage. Shoot if they are that small they probably won't even get to your goggles. Probably fall to the ground or get blown away. No so good for working with metal or stone. Still, pretty good trick painting the mesh black.

Technicolor

The Biggest Lie in Hollywood | Technicolor
NationSquid

Crazy movie making technology. There is an ad for Bespoke Post that starts at the three minute mark and runs until 5:25.

He's right about the cameras.

Technicolor Motion Picture Camera

Same camera mounted on a dolly in sound proof box

Another view of the camera showing the very large film magazines

P. S. For another monster movie camera see Jackie Gleanson's Electronicam

Jump Spider, Jump

What Jumping Spiders Teach Us About Color
Veritasium

The techniques they are using in microbiology these days are out of this world.

Crossing the Line

Weird POV effect
Chris Long

The video title says it all.

Sunlight

Sunlight coming through the leaves

I was sitting outside during the late afternoon and I saw a spectacle. Light from the sun was shining through a hole in the leaves of the trees and it formed a starburst of a multitude of thin rays of light emanating from the center. I tried to capture it with the camera but didn't quite. If you embiggenate the image, you can kind of see some of the effect near the center, but what I was seeing extended out so far that it would have filled the whole frame. It might be the shortcomings of the camera, or it might have been a trick of the eye. In any case it was pretty cool.

The hole in the leaves must have been pretty small because I could look right at it with my unshielded eyes. I probably avoided focusing on the center, but I could see it and it didn't produce any after effects.

Special Effects from the Dawn of Time

Amazing Effects in Classic Films - How Did They Pull It Off?
Film Riot

Just all around great.

In the Dark Season - Netflix Series

In the Dark Season 1 Trailer | Rotten Tomatoes TV
Rotten Tomatoes TV

Fairly lightweight, semi-comedic drama, might be a murder mystery, but we're two episodes in and the body is missing, so maybe not. We've got a very pretty, young, blind woman who's a little bit lost. Smoking, drinking, screwing just about anyone she can get her hands on. But then this kid she used to hang out with goes missing, so now maybe she has some purpose.

Famous Billy Squier tune of the same name.

Optical illusion - Video Short

This will *CONFUSE* you! 😵‍💫
MoreAliA

Iridescent

Glamnetic Tweezers

This looks to me like these tweezers have either cadmium plating or a chromate coating, both of which can be iridescent. It also looks like the false color images you get from infrared cameras. In any case, I've seen this kind of thing on cheap metal parts, but I've never seen it used on tools. Leave it to the fashion industry to show us the way.

LED's

Building DIY LED lights
DIY Perks

I'm looking for a way to upgrade the light in the new exhaust fan we installed in the bathroom a couple of weeks ago. Yes, I know, I should have looked for a fan that had a better light to start with. I did look, a bit, but I didn't find anything, and the fixture looked like it might be okay. Too bad, it's in now and we certainly don't want to go through that again just to get a better light. There ought to be a way, so I'm looking around and I come across this video. He has some good information about LED's.

There is an ad in the middle of the video. It starts at 6:45 and runs to 8:00. Can't say as I blame him. I doubt he is getting anywhere near the number of views that some of the more popular channels are getting.

I posted another video of his a few months ago just because it was technically cool. He used a big LED in that project as well.

Stupid LED's

CIE Standard Illuminant D65
Spectral power distribution

The future is stupid. Used to be, back in the bad old days, you could go to any grocery store and pick up a light bulb. They had a complete selection from a low of 40 watts to a high of 100 watts. The selection was complete because that was all there was. Now light bulbs have gone the way of nuts and bolts: there is a different bulb for every application. 

Chromaticity diagram by David MacAdam
also known as the CIE 1960 Color Space
D65 appears near the 8000K line
Note sure what this means, but it makes a pretty picture.

They don't just come in a different power (watts) ratings, there are different sizes, mountings, technologies, and CRI-s (Color Rendering Indexes). Remember the Wall of Diapers at Toys R Us? That's what the light bulb display at Home Depot looks like now. I spent ten minutes there the other day looking for a Halogen bulb for a work light and I could not find it. I finally had to ask someone. Took him a minute but there it was, right in the area I had been looking. Confused by the packaging I was. Must be getting old, starting to talk like Yoda I am.

Old fixture: Broan 9427P 500 Watt, 4.0 Sones, 70 CFM

We just replaced the light fixture / exhaust fan in the master bath with a new one. Nothing wrong with old one other than it was noisy. Didn't bother us when we built the house 25 years ago, but now my wife is at war with the mold growing on the ceiling (see those itsy-bitsy, teeny-weeny black spots on the ceiling?) and she wants a new exhaust fan. Normally this would be a simple fix, there are a wide variety of exhaust fans available as long as you want the standard size, which is about a foot square. Ours is not, it is a fancy-schmantzy one with two flood lights so it's about a foot by fifteen inches. We could have replaced it with a standard one, but that would have meant patching the drywall which would have turned a day long project into a week long one. Effing drywall.

New Fixture: Utilitech 7123-02-L 1300W, 1.5 Sones, 80 CFM

Looked around and found one the right size that should be quieter, but it only has room for one 60 watt light bulb and it is like turning on the dark. So I got a 100 watt equivalent LED and plugged that in. Doesn't really help, it is like turning on the dim and it's still that ugly 'cool white color'. Next step might be to replace the light fixture with a pair of LED fixtures designed for mounting in the ceiling. That's going to require some chopping and hacking to make them fit and considerable finesse so it doesn't look like a hack job.

LED 100 Watt Equivalent

After we got the fixture installed we discovered that the fan wouldn't run. Seems that the old fan had an old timey motor and it worked fine with the electronic timer, but new the fan has a fancy new motor and it required a different kind of timer. The essential difference is that the old timer did not require a neutral wire connection and the new one did.

TORK In-Wall Countdown Lighting Timer

P.S. On every other exhaust fan in the world, the bezel / grill is attached with springs so all you need to do to remove it is pull it down a bit and then reach in and disconnect the springs. The bezel on the new Utilitech exhaust fan is attached with a screw, a screw that is hidden behind the light bulb. So in order to remove the grill, you must first remove the lens, the light bulb and the screw. Now that the grill is loose, you can reach up and unplug the wire to the bulb. Now it is finally free. Bah, double bah and humbug.

P.P.S. Does the heater in the new unit work? I can't tell. I could definitely tell when the heat lamp in the old fixture was on.

What Kind of Sorcery Is This?

Stolen entire, title and all, from The Feral Irishman. It's a little unsettling seeing it move when it is just a static image.

Smokin'

2019 Raikoke volcano - NASA / ISS

There is a string of islands that heads northeast from Japan until it reaches the Kamchatka Penninsula that hangs off the east coast of Russia. Raikoke is one of those islands. Blew up last month and NASA snapped this photo.What I noticed is the cloud of smoke and dust from the eruption has a relatively flat top. Why would that be? Could it be there is a limit to how high a cloud can go, even if it's an explosive cloud? I suppose it could be that smoke particles need a certain density of air to support them, and eventually you get so high and the air gets so thin that it won't support even microscopic smoke particles.

Thinking about microscopic smoke particles reminded me of a weird thing that happened a couple of years ago. Every summer, the forest fires spring up all over the western USA. One summer it had been particularly bad (this year maybe?). The air had been hazy and you could smell the smoke, even though the nearest fire was hundreds of miles away. But then the next day the sky was blue and the smell of smoke was gone, but the sky sure was bright. On normal, sun shiny day, I don't need my sunglasses. It's only when it's overcast that I wear them. But on that day the sky was so bright I needed my sunglasses, even though it was clear and not overcast. The sky seemed to sparkle. It wasn't something you could put your finger on, no bright spots appeared in my vision, but there was definitely something going on. Very weird.

Via Starts with a Bang!