Cap'n Bob & the Damsel

Technobabble

Another New Camera

Canon SL1As sort of a late Christmas present to myself, I acquired this Canon Rebel EOS SL1 SLR camera. I have used the little point-and-shoot cameras for years, but thought that this would be a good time to upgrade to some serious hardware.

The package I bought included a Canon 75-300mm telephoto lens in addition to the standard 18-55mm lens. One really good thing is that all the lenses are interchangeable with Damsel’s Canon EOS T2 camera.

The new camera has a lot of advanced features that I hope to learn as I transition away from point and shoot. I still will carry the pocket sized A1400 Power Shot when it is not convenient to carry the new camera since it is possible to get some good shots with the point and shoot.

I expect that I can use the new camera to supplement Damsel’s outstanding talents with her camera, perhaps as having the telephoto lens installed when she needs a long shot on one of our planned excursions into the scenic west. Having the second camera ready just may help us to document our travels just that much better.

28 Dec 2014 by Entertainment Photography Technobabble

Powered Flight – 111th Anniversary

A hundred and eleven years ago today, Orville and Wilbur Wright made their first flights from Kill Devil Hill, close to Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Their history-making effort sparked the greatest period of technology in the United States and abroad.

I took my first flying lesson on December 16th, 1961, just a day short of their 58th anniversary. By then, the sound barrier had been broken, satellites were in orbit, the Russian, Yuri Gagarin had already orbited the Earth, and John Glenn would be in orbit within a couple of months. It was a great time to get into a career in aviation or aerospace.

First Flight

What makes Wilbur and Orville Wright’s achievement so significant is not only that it was the first time in history that a manned, powered aircraft completed a fully-controlled, sustained flight, but it proved to naysayers around the world that heavier-than-air flight was practical. After the Wrights proved their critics wrong, the field of aeronautical engineering was born. Governments, universities, and inventors soon began dedicating vast resources to understanding the science of flight and methods of building improved flying machines. In essence, every event and discovery in aviation either led up to or followed from the flight of the Wright Flyer, and it changed the way we live forever.

Image and text courtesy of AeroSpaceWeb.org.

Note: This article originally appeared here on December 17, 2007, and has been modified for the 111th anniversary of powered flight.

17 Dec 2014 by Aerospace Aviation Technobabble

Infrared Portrait

Infrared Portrait

While going through some stuff we brought from the old house, I ran across an old Polaroid photo of myself as seen through a Forward Looking Infrared Receiver (FLIR). The FLIR was part of the optical suite of instruments destined to be the night vision system on the Abrams M1 Army Tank. At that time, I was a Member of the Technical Staff at Hughes Aircraft Company in charge of the design of display symbology for the system.

The imaging quality of the FLIR is not as bad as the photo makes it look. Bear in mind that the photo is over forty years old and is one of those old Polaroids that required a coating of “fixer” to keep the image from fading. The coating made the image look blotchy.

That is my infrared signature as I posed, arms folded, in front of the FLIR for the photo. The image is “white hot” which means that the warmer temperatures are brighter. You can see the lenses on my glasses are a little darker than my face because they are somewhat opaque to FLIR detectors. The three horizontal lines are due to three dead channels in the IR detector array. The targeting reticule (my design) in the lower right is one of several symbols displayed in the image and is computer controlled to position itself at a point in the image where a fired round from the big gun would hit.

The Abrams tank saw action in Operation Desert Storm. The targeting FLIR easily found and knocked out several of Saddam Hussein’s Russian tanks of the so-called “Republican Guard” long before they saw our forces approaching in Kuwait. I take pride to know that between the Abrams and Hellfire Missiles, both systems of which I had designed in part, some of the Iraqis were forced to retreat back across the border and out of Kuwait.

14 Dec 2014 by Aerospace Military Technobabble

Real Time Lightning Monitor

Lightning Monitor

I ran across this interesting site last week while surfing. Blitzortung is a near real-time display of recent lightning strikes worldwide. The image above was from yesterday, but I just checked the site a few minutes ago and there is a line of strikes across the southeast US as I write this.

The color of the individual strike pixels is time-dependent; white indicates very recent strikes (less than 20 minutes), while dark red indicates oldest (up to two hours old). As you watch the display, each strike is surrounded by an expanding circle for a second or two. The green radial lines each extend to the location of a detector in the network reporting the recent strike and are also only displayed a short time.

I recall from my piloting days a device called a “storm scope” which also reported azimuth and distance information for lightning strikes. It was much less expensive than airborne radar and was effective for guiding aircraft around the more intense storms. Blitzortung is the first on-line display of this nature that I have found.

24 Nov 2014 by Environment Technobabble

Baby’s 3D Ultrasound vs. Post-Natal Pix

About 12 weeks ago, our grand daughter sent electronic copies of the 3D ultrasound pictures taken last June 30th. At the time, she also sent us a framed image of the ultrasound seen here that has been hanging on the wall above my desk in the office.

Slideshow image: click to alternate between pix.

Now that the baby is here, we saw the first images of him on the Book of Face and damned if he doesn’t look just like the 3D ultrasound that we’ve been seeing in the office for a couple of months. You can click on the image at the right to alternate between the 3D image and one taken yesterday in the hospital.

Medical instrumentation and technology have progressed to the point where we can get a preview of the little button nose, the pudgy cheeks and the shape of his face. Damsel and I can hardly wait until we see him in person next month sometime.

20 Sep 2014 by People Technobabble

Arthur

Arthur

We were watching some of the NASCAR practice runs for the races taking place in Daytona Beach, FL, this weekend. The officials suspended the raceway activities due to rain and lightning in the area. I went to the NWS National Composite Radar website to have a look at the extent of the shower activity in Florida. I was taken by surprise when I saw the radar image of Hurricane Arthur off the Carolinas. I read about Arthur when it was a tropical storm a couple of days ago but it is now a Class II hurricane.

The image is a screen capture from about four PM (AZ time) this afternoon.

03 Jul 2014 by Environment Technobabble

Our First Great Grandchild – Updated

First Great Grandchild

Our granddaughter had her prenatal 3D ultrasound scan yesterday. She said “Hey guys. I’m 205 days pregnant. That means, only 75 days left.” She emailed me a set of the images.

This is the face of our first great grandson as seen in his mother’s womb with the aid of advanced ultrasonographic techniques. I got curious about the technology, so I looked it up; there was a brief description on Wikipedia.

From Wikipedia:

3D ultrasound is a medical ultrasound technique, often used in obstetric ultrasonography (during pregnancy), providing three-dimensional images of the fetus.

There are several different scanning modes in medical and obstetric ultrasound. The standard common obstetric diagnostic mode is 2D scanning.[1] In 3D fetal scanning, however, instead of the sound waves being sent straight down and reflected back, they are sent at different angles. The returning echoes are processed by a sophisticated computer program resulting in a reconstructed three-dimensional volume image of the fetus’s surface or internal organs, in much the same way as a CT scan machine constructs a CT scan image from multiple x-rays.

01 Jul 2014 by People Technobabble

Categories

Archives