randomwisdom.com » Linkage

Human optics

Jeff — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 21:54:10 +0000

I suspect this will only be of interest to a few of you, but if you work with photography or optics at all, it’s useful to correlate the performance of constructed optical systems with how the human eye works. What is the maximum resolution of the eye?

The following two links go over how human optical performance is measured, and the limitations in human optics. In a few ways, human eyes are superior to any CCD or CMOS sensor ever created; even in the presence of a very bright light source your eyes can detect a lot of detail in dark areas of the image. On the other hand, even a very basic consumer camera has a larger effective aperture than your eyes. It’s a very interesting read, and gives plenty of detail for jumping off into biology if you’re curious.

http://www.clarkvision.com/imagedetail/eye-resolution.html
http://webvision.med.utah.edu/KallSpatial.html

Chess Boxing

Jeff — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 02:34:13 +0000

I could not make something like this up.

Where the Hell is Matt?

Jeff — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 05:40:10 +0000

Now, Matt, I gotta say I had never heard of you before this afternoon. But, well…

Just take a look for yourself.

And here’s the newer one.

Really pretty inspirational if you think about it.

Helping Some Students May Harm High Achievers

Jeff — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 06:53:45 +0000

From the “No-Shit-Sherlock” department:

Helping Some Students May Harm High Achievers

Lucky.

Jeff — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 01:49:38 +0000

I think we really lucked out.

Building damage surprisingly low — Yomiuri Newspaper

Crash test

Jeff — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 02:00:28 +0000

Here’s a little something to make you think about the engineering that goes into controlling the destructive power of a traffic accident.

15 year old Volvo versus a modern subcompact

Major vulnerability in Adobe Flash

Jeff — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 04:06:46 +0000

A rather nasty bug has been found in Flash which allows a malicious website to run arbitrary code– for all intents and purposes what this means is the site owner can take complete control over your computer. I won’t explain botnets here, but typically computer taken over in this fashion function normally to the person using them but are also twisted to send out massive amounts of spam to both email hosts and to comment forms on sites like this one, host web sites used in online fraud (phishing), run hacking operations, and run extortion rings based on distributed attacks which can take down pretty much any website. This is done without the computer owner’s consent or knowledge. Pretty much every piece of spam you get is from one of these compromised systems. And we all hate spam, don’t we?

If you’re a responsible computer owner, you should make sure your browser and operating system are patched up, but usually the Flash player is neglected in these upgrades. (Flash is used to display videos on YouTube, ad content on websites, and interactive stuff like online games.) You can check here if your Flash player is up to date, and if the version is less than what’s listed on the chart you should download and install the latest version immediately.

You’ll not find a better Buddha

Jeff — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 04:45:28 +0000

A friend showed this to me the other day. It’s a deaf dance troupe performing; they’ve practiced for ten years together. It’s one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTKJiP_bdbE

Fingerprinting foreigners starts tomorrow

Jeff — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 02:49:51 +0000

Thinking about visiting Japan? You might want to think twice. Starting tomorrow, they’re going to start fingerprinting foreigners again at immigrations. By foreigners I mean tourists, students and business workers with valid visas, and even permanent residents. It’s expected that the lines at immigration will now take at least an hour, whereas those with visas and permanent residence could previously bypass the long and understaffed “foreigners” line. If this isn’t egregious enough, the fingerprints get stored in a database for an “unspecified time” (read: forever) and are available to every local police station and foreign government that requests them. Framing someone for a crime has never been easier!

Apparently they used to do this awhile back until the human rights groups (like Amnesty International) made a stink, and the law was repealed in 2000. But someone dropped the word “terrorism” and everyone’s brains magically turned off. It doesn’t matter that Japan has never been the target of a foreign terrorist attack. Remember the sarin nerve gas attack on the subway? Japanese radicals. Japanese Red Army attacks back in the 70’s? Oh, that’s right, those were attacks BY Japanese terrorists on foreign soil. Oops. Maybe I’m just dense, but I simply cannot see the connection between foreigners in Japan and terrorism.

Previous proposed legislation to fingerprint all Japanese citizens has been met with outrage. So why do they think it’s any more acceptable to do it to a smaller group of law-abiding people? I’m not a criminal. If Japan is going to treat me like one, it’s tempting to just not come back.

Edit: (I should make a note that Slashdot also posted my submission about this, so you can read the comments there as well.)

major soldering complete

Jeff — Tue, 01 May 2007 00:08:33 +0000

I’ve finished soldering the majority of my project, but not without some mental repercussions.