Chicago Harbor Lighthouse

Chicago Lighthouse Fresnel Lens

At least I think it's the lens in the Chicago Harbor Lighthouse. Google seems to think this lens is in the Grays Harbor Lighthouse in Westport, Washington. Looking at some images, I kind of think it's from Chicago.

Chicago Harbor Lighthouse

Chicago Harbor Lighthouse

Glitch

Glitch

The Village Hemorrhoid has several more examples.

Duck Duck Go

I watched this three or four times and could not figure out what it was. Is it a man in a wingsuit? Some kind of weird bug inching along on the snow? What is it?

Oh.

Via The Feral Irishman

Reflector Gunsights

Reflector Gunsights: the Fighter Pilot's Friend
Our Own Devices

This guy does a good job of tying all the bits on a complicated subject together. Only problem is I can't figure out how to pronounce his name. Near as I can make out he pronounces it 'Guy Messy' which makes me want to call him the messy guy.

Iceland Spar: the Mineral That Changed Science

Previous posts about the solar compass.

French Trucks

Cool Truck in Vatry France

A photo of a 747 air freighter on the ground at Châlons Vatry Airport got me started as I had never heard of this place. Turns out it is not that exotic, it's about 100 miles east of Paris. I go poking around in Google's StreetView just to see if anything weird of interesting turns up. Didn't find anything, it's just a little farming community, and then I turn a corner and boom! There's this six wheel (or is it eight wheel?) truck staring at me, so I just gotta share.

The town is about 4 miles northeast of the airport. The airport got started in 1950 as the Cold War was getting started. It became a civilian airport in 2000. Passenger traffic was non-existent until 2010 when it started picking up, possibly because it's only 65 miles from Disneyland Paris.

I Smell Smoke Part Three

 

Bright Red Sun

The sun appeared red and not that bright when I was looking directly at it this morning. Why the camera thinks it is yellow I attribute to techno mumbo-jumbo.

GIF of the Day

Wind turbines doing the digital camera dance

Via Bustednuckles

Refraction

De-icing a Gulfstream IV, Reno, Nevada

It looks like they are using a flame thrower to de-ice the airplane, but I suspect it must be a trick of the light. De-icing a small jet like this costs about $1500. De-icing a large airliner can cost $10,000. Most of the expense is for the fluid.

F35A at Nagoya Airfield, Japan

Given the amount of heat distortion of the background, I wonder if there might be another aircraft nearby, just out of the picture.

Aerospatiale ATR-72-500 departing for Guernsey from Manchester, England

Even turboprops produce a heck of a lot of hot air as you can see from the blurring of the background here.

Camera Obscura

Camera Obscura at Cliff House in San Francisco

Camera Obscura is Latin for 'dark room'. Let light from a pinhole or a lens into a dark room and it will project an image of the outside world on the opposite wall, so Camera Obscura is simply a fancy name for a very simple device. They have been around for millennia, Aristotle was familiar with the principle. Uniberp pointed out this one at Cliff House. Cliff House is a famous landmark in San Francisco. Those parking spaces out front are free, but there are only a few dozen, and being as this place is famous the odds of finding an open one there when you drive up are astronomical. Are you feeling lucky, punk?

Caption from image: The Camera Obscura, which is seen at many seaside places, is a striking example of how rays of light can be reflected in a different direction by a mirror placed at a slant. In the roof is a mirror at an angle of 45°, and this catches a reflection of the scene outside. The rays are directed upon a magnifying lens, placed in the right position to focus them, and the magnified view is cast upon a white table below. The top containing the mirror can be rotated by means of a handle turning a series of gear wheels, so that an image of the view all round can be reflected upon the table. The Camera Obscura was invented by a Neapolitan physician named Porta who found that by passing light through a double-convex lens he obtained a brighter image

ADDICTED TO LOVE (1997) - Official Movie Trailer
This reminded me of this movie (Addicted to Love) where Sam the jilted uses a Camera Obscura to spy on his ex-girlfriend. The images from the device make a few brief appearances in the trailer starting at the one minute mark. The movie is absurd. It was, however, entertaining. Comedy and stupidity are blood-brothers.

P.S. How to type a degree symbol on Linux: Ctrl + Shift + u (this will show an underlined u) and then the unicode value (in this case B0 ) and follow it by Enter.

Green Screen

Why you can't wear green on TV
You may have heard of movie scenes being shot in front of a blue or green screen. I knew that it allowed them to add the background later. These two women give us a very quick demo of the process in action. Via Dustbury.

Funny Scope

What kind of scope has an objective lens that looks like a 100 pin electrical connector? Or maybe it's the new insect eye scope that no one is talking about.

Update: It's a regular scope with something called Killflash mounted over the objective lens. Near as I can make out it is grid of narrow channels which ensure that the only light reaching the lens is coming straight in, or at a very narrow angle. The idea is to prevent sunlight from bouncing off the lens and giving away your location to the enemy. Its construction appears to be very similar to the innards of the catalytic converter you find on your car.