Prepare to become dumber

 AARRRGH, Crazy, dumbassery, Gah., history, Meh., religion, science fiction, youtube, ಠ_ಠ  15 Responses »
Feb 172017
 

Ugh. I feel several points dumber for having watched this. I shudder to imagine how idiotic I’d feel if I paid money to see the full thing.

It is pretty sad that so much time, effort and resources are expended on patently false nonsense. More than a century after the facts become universally available that shoot down the pillars of the argument here, people still trot this rubbish out. Sigh. But then, centuries after communism was shown to be disastrous, people still trot it out. Millenia after the Earth was shown to be spherical, flat Earthers still exist. Astrology. Ghost hunters. Dowsers. It seems that being objectively, provably false just makes some ideas immortal.

Especially sad that it is readily shot down, line by line:

 

 

 

 Posted by at 11:41 pm

More Flyover Country

 awesomeness, photography, spacecraft  3 Responses »
Feb 172017
 

First night I took astrophotos I tried  to see what I could get of the Pleiades. Sadly, they don’t come through all that well compared to telescopic photos, but  at least you can see ’em. On first glance I could see a satellite pass reasonably close to them – not as close as the Orion satellite, not really worthy of note. But on closer review, you can make out a second satellite trail… much shorter streaks, much fainter, much less uniform in brightness, sometimes not visible at all. This indicates something at a higher orbit and probably tumbling. I expect it’s less “satellite” than “piece of debris,” but who knows.  This particular trail *did* pass through the Pleiades, but I didn’t catch that, my first photo being several seconds after the passage.

The second satellite is just barely visible shooting out of the right of the Pleiades. It seemed that the best way to display this so it was visible was with an animated GIF. Since it turns out to be a 2 megabyte image file, I’ve put it past a “read more” break so it doesn’t clog up the blog. The animation is a bit clunky since the series of photos was a bit stuttered.

Continue reading »

 Posted by at 10:08 pm

Who wants some Spad (AD-1) photos?

 aircraft, awesomeness, history, photography, Utah  No Responses »
Feb 172017
 

As previously hinted at, some time down the line I have a project going that required the acquisition of a new camera. It has proven good at taking photos of the night sky, but that’s incidental to the project at hand. Relevant to the task was a short trip a week ago down to the Hill Aerospace Museum, where I took a bunch of photos. By “a bunch,” it’s somewhere in the area of just short of 400 photos of Hill’s AD-1 Skyraider, and around 140 photos of other aircraft. These are all 24 megapixel (6000X4000) shots, about 11 megabytes each (yes, I’m lame enough to point out that the first digital camera I ever worked with could squeeze half a dozen shots onto a single 1.4 megabyte floppy disk). The photos were uploaded to Dropbox, a process that took a day and a half (yay, old-ass netbook).

The photography and the uploading was all part of a test. The photos are going to someone who can hopefully do something pretty interesting with them… assuming the photography is up to snuff. If this all works, the project to come later should prove to be pretty interesting.

So, to the point: the camera cost money. There are a few more lenses and hardware I’d like to procure, which costs more money – a couple grand. The Big Contract Job that came along last summer finished a month ago (as in the contract was complete to everyones satisfaction), so spending like a Trump on equipment is out. So… capitalism! Who wants about six gigabytes of airplane photos? How’s five bucks sound? Use the “Tip Jar” PayPal link below, select at least $5 (what the heck, select $100 just to show up your buddies). There *should* be an opportunity to leave a note; if so, make sure to mention “Spad Photos” or something like that. I’ll then share the Dropbox folder with the email address associated with the PayPal payment.

 


Photo Tips


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 Posted by at 7:35 pm

My Friend Cayla is friggen’ creepy

 AARRRGH, Crazy, Gah., news, ಠ_ಠ  3 Responses »
Feb 172017
 

Yay, modern toys! I don’t recall the talking dolls from *my* childhood posing this problem…

German parents told to destroy Cayla dolls over hacking fears

Short form: looks like your standard plastic doll for little girls. Has some electronics in it… electronics that include a Bluetooth device that is hooked up to the internet. It can understand speech and will hold conversations with the child… apparently not unlike Siri or other modern voice recognition systems. On one hand, it is an obvious application of technology that is now several years old. On the other hand, it’s new enough that the basic idea still seems pretty creepy just on its own. But it gets better: apparently the Bluetooth system is not very secure and is readily hackable. This means a few fun possibilities:

  1. It can be turned into a listening device.
  2. Since it can talk, a hacker could use it to tell your children… things.

Imagine *that* one. A young child has a beloved talking toy that suddenly starts telling the child subtle and evil things. “Mommy doesn’t love you anymore.” “You’re too fat.” “Tell Daddy to vote for the Democrat.” “Pour gasoline on the puppy.” “Satan is your friend.” “Allahu ackbar.” “Give your little brother a special hug with the kitchen knife.”

Yeeesh. No wonder the German government is telling parents to simply destroy the thing.

 Posted by at 6:27 pm

Flyover Country

 awesomeness, Hmm..., photography, spacecraft  10 Responses »
Feb 172017
 

So once again I was puttering around outside tonight, pointing the new camera at those mysterious lights in the sky. Most interesting result came from pointing the new camera fitted with the old  300mm lens at the Orion nebula. With the old Nikon D5000 camera and this lens, the nebula was recognizable, but looked like garbage. Now it’s recognizable and still nowhere near publication-worthy, but for just lookin’ at purposes, it’s not half bad. In order to get the shot with only a few seconds exposure, the ISO on the camera was cranked up to over 20,000, which is moderately impressive.

These photos might have been worth a single note on this blog, but you’ll notice that there are three essentially identical copies posted below. The reason why there are three is this: if you look kinda close, you can see a satellite pass straight through the nebula. I suppose it’s no more special than a satellite passing through any other patch of the sky, but actually  nailing a known astronomical object just seems kinda cool.

 

Stacking the three images produced a slightly improved-quality version, reducing some of the noise. To really improve the image quality would require a motorized equatorial mount to track the motion of the stars; this would allow a longer exposure at lower ISO.

So is this sort of amateurish astro-photography of interest?

 Posted by at 2:06 am

The Hood

 art, awesomeness, photography, Utah  8 Responses »
Feb 162017
 

Panorama taken a few nights ago showing the Thatcher, Utah, megalopolis with Venus and Mars. This is reduced in size to 10% of the original… yeah, it’s a sizable panorama.

 Posted by at 4:01 am

Peculiar behavior for a satellite

 Hmm..., photography, spacecraft, Utah  14 Responses »
Feb 152017
 

In advance of a project a little ways down the road, I have procured a new camera (Nikon D5500), and have been running it through its paces. Last night I did some night sky photography, catching a whole lot of satellites. Upon reviewing the photos, one satellite seemed to do something a little odd. As far as I can tell it’s not due to the camera screwing up in any way.

 Posted by at 8:37 am

Spacecraft

 books, history, rockets, spacecraft  3 Responses »
Feb 142017
 

Because why not, here’s a link to a complete PDF scan of the “Vistas of Science” book from 1961, “Spacecraft.” Nothing too exciting… a book meant for kids. But it was a book meant to explain spacecraft to kids in a era when the future looked particularly bright for spacecraft.

Cynicism alert: one might be tempted to wonder why this has remained available on the NASA technical report server. Shouldn’t it have been removed as an ITAR risk?

Spacecraft

 Posted by at 6:43 pm

I have no problem with this

 awesomeness, news, politics  13 Responses »
Feb 142017
 

Tennessee bill would bar suits against drivers who hit protestors

“A person driving an automobile who is exercising due care and injures another person who is participating in a protest or demonstration and is blocking traffic in a public right of way is immune from civil liability for such injury.”

Makes sense to me. With the rise of violent protesters in recent years, many of whom think that blocking traffic is in and of itself a worthy goal, getting the hell out of Dodge is more important than ever.

 Posted by at 10:11 am
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