Monthly Archives: June 2012
You're Gonna Like It Here
Look Who Popped Up for a Visit
I was reviewing the footage I shot (mostly dragonflies) this weekend while out geocaching, and saw this. I had never gotten a fish jumping out of the water on camera before.
Infant Search Algorithms
My darling 2 year old wearing my head cam, and playing hide and seek
A 2 year-old’s pattern seems to be “look in last hiding place first”, indicating a single-item information buffer.
NOAA's Really Making It Happen Out There
Wow, four records! Keep your eye on this kid — he’s going places.
Four Major U.S. Heat Records Fall In Stunning NOAA Report
According to NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center, the spring of 2012 “was the culmination of the warmest March, third warmest April, and second warmest May. This marks the first time that all three months during the spring season ranked among the 10 warmest, since records began in 1895.”
Move Along at c; Nothing to See Here
MINOS reports new measurement of neutrino velocity
[T]he new MINOS study significantly reduces the systematic errors of its earlier work with detailed measurements of the behavior of the experiment’s GPS timing system, improved understanding of the delays of electronic components at every stage of the MINOS detectors and the use of upgraded timing equipment, designed and implemented with the assistance of the National Institute of Science and Technology and the United States Naval Observatory.
Applying these improved understandings, the MINOS collaboration measures a neutrino arrival time for travel between Fermilab and Soudan, Minn., that is consistent with the expected travel time at the speed of light. The difference between the measured and calculated times is -15 ± 31 nanoseconds, indicating no observable effect.
Gotta include the plug for the home team.
From The Far Side to Jurassic Park to Reality
Driving without a Blind Spot May Be Closer Than It Appears
It’s not hard to make a curved mirror that gives a wider field of view – no blind spot – but at the cost of visual distortion and making objects appear smaller and farther away.
Hicks’s driver’s side mirror has a field of view of about 45 degrees, compared to 15 to 17 degrees of view in a flat driver’s side mirror. Unlike in simple curved mirrors that can squash the perceived shape of objects and make straight lines appear curved, in Hicks’s mirror the visual distortions of shapes and straight lines are barely detectable.
(Yeah, I know that the “objects are closer than they appear” gags were on the passenger side, which does have a curved mirror)
She's Got It, Yeah Baby She's Got It
NASA SDO – The Venus Transit
Reminiscing About Dialup
The Mechanics and Meaning of That Ol’ Dial-Up Modem Sound
Of all the noises that my children will not understand, the one that is nearest to my heart is not from a song or a television show or a jingle. It’s the sound of a modem connecting with another modem across the repurposed telephone infrastructure. It was the noise of being part of the beginning of the Internet.
…
This is a choreographed sequence that allowed these digital devices to piggyback on an analog telephone network. “A phone line carries only the small range of frequencies in which most human conversation takes place: about 300 to 3,300 hertz,” Glenn Fleishman explained in the Times back in 1998. “The modem works within these limits in creating sound waves to carry data across phone lines.” What you’re hearing is the way 20th century technology tunneled through a 19th century network; what you’re hearing is how a network designed to send the noises made by your muscles as they pushed around air came to transmit anything, or the almost-anything that can be coded in 0s and 1s.
Kind of a Drag
Cloudy, with almost no chance of Venus, ended up being the weather yesterday. I did manage a glimpse through a telescope, during one of the brief interludes when the clouds thinned. I also snapped this, with my transit/eclipse glasses covering my iPad camera lens
A somewhat pixelated Venus might be that dark blotch in the upper left, just inside the rim. Maybe. It was taken about the right time for it to be there, I think. But it might just be part of the cloud.
We had an OK turnout and it was fun talking to people, play with some of the other kids and I even got a chance to tour our 26″ telescope, which I had not previously visited.