Category: Photography

The High Altitude Slug Project

The High Altitude Slug Project

No, this isn’t some banana slug snuff project, the slug this uses is the Linksys NSLU2 wireless USB storage device. After a little firmware hacking you can convert your ‘Slug’ into a web server, streaming MP3 server, or eve a VoIP PBX!
Not to be outdone by others, these guys are planning on sending theirs up in a tiny R/C airplane attached to a weather balloon. The plan is to release it at 100,000 feet and have it fly home. On it’s way down the craft will take photos and make temperature and barometric readings. All this will be run by the 266MHz XScale computer in the NSLU2. Pretty darn impressive for a simple wireless USB port!

The High Altitude Slug Project

First Fridays Photo Success

Thai Giant

Every first Friday of the month about 90 galleries in the downtown Phoenix area open their doors and let people mill about and have a look at what has been going on in the art scene. There are generally a few dozen people with tables set up in parking lots selling their goods. Hand bags made out of ties, laser prints of sketches, music, a locally produced horror film, and even a video game. Tonight my wife and I were there with a few prints and a couple of flats of bottled water.
Things went pretty well, we sold four prints (thank you!) and a bunch of the water. I’m going to restock and come up with a bunch more prints for next time.
I’ve made a page up with the photos that I sold, I’ll be adding more there as I select and have them printed. (you can also get to the page from a link on the right)

Backscatter X-ray Scans

By using a flying beam of x-rays this company can quite literally see through walls! The technique is very much like how the picture on your TV is produced. A narrow beam of x-rays are projected to the target (like an electron gun in your TV) and the energy that is reflected back is recorded from exactly where the beam intersected the target (like how the phosphor glows in the picture tube when the electrons hit it). This builds up a picture of what is in side of the object being scanned. Items with low atomic numbers (such as explosives, drugs, cigarettes, and people) are shown in stark contrast to their surroundings.

AS&E Z Backscatter Scanning

Eyestilts

eyestilts

Now when haven’t you wanted to be able to see thing from the perspective of a giant? These clever guys built a device that tricks your brain into thinking that your eyes are about ten feet apart and not the normal 2.5 inches. The effect is enhance the stereo effect and ‘shrink the world’. You can do the same thing with a camera by taking two photos of the same thing (it has to be large and far away) from two points that are separated by a few feet. But looking at photos isn’t the same as seeing it in real time with your own eyes, you lose a lot of the coolness.
Building one of these and putting it near the Grand Canyon or Niagara Falls and charging a quarter for a look would make you rich.

eyestilts

Fake Nikon Batteries Explode?

This might be true of just the latest up and coming urban myth. The idea here is that you try and save some money by buying off brand batteries for your Nikon D70 and because they are a little short on the safety features they can explode in your camera if they fail. I can see how if a device decides to pull a huge amount of current and the battery isn’t limited somehow it might be a problem, but then again batteries naturally have an internal resistance so there is only just so much power you can get from them at any given moment.

Fake Nikon Batteries Explode