Category: Miscellaneous babble

Random mutterings

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Nexus 5 colour shifting artifact

A few weeks ago the pictures coming out of my Nexus 5 started having this weird colour shifting artifact.

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Note how the green is bleeding off to the right. Look a little closer and there’s a strange colour shift across the entire image. Also on the left side of the image is a bar of digital artifact of some kind. Strangely enough, it only appears to happen when taking pictures in portrait orientation. It doesn’t happen when I take pictures in landscape orientation.

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Even more strangely, it also doesn’t happen if I turn the N5 180 degrees (using the phone upside down).

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Not entirely sure what’s going on here, and so far my Google-fu has been unhelpful. I’m wondering if one of the tumbles my phone has taken recently might have messed something up.

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SpaceX (CRS-7) launch

We were out in Orlando for the weekend (more about that later) and as luck would have it, were able to find a spot to watch the SpaceX Dragon launch (CRS-7) off US-528 a few miles from the launch site. This was the first rocket launch I’ve seen in person and “up close”, so I was pretty excited. There were a fair number of people gathered at the same spot to see the launch too, but it wasn’t super crowded fortunately. The mid-morning launch also meant the sun was hot, but not unbearably so. I even had a random eyeball QSO with another ham who spotted me tuning around on my HT listening for any launch related radio chatter.

Managed to get some pretty decent pictures of the launch and the rocket ascending with my SLR and 300mm lens. The images are cropped in from the original with some histogram enhancement applied.

Launch time!

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About 20 seconds or so after the launch, the loud rumbling sound of the rocket firing reached us.

This was the last photo I took of the rocket before it disappeared behind the cloud. Not long after this shot, Connie told me the rocket had blown up.

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The crowd starting to leave the observing site after the launch.

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It was a very exciting first launch experience, although hearing about the rocket failure was very disappointing. I’m glad Connie found us a good spot to catch the launch from.

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Retiring from the Aquarium

After being a volunteer at the SC Aquarium for nearly 10 years and close to 700 hours, I decided it was time to retire and reclaim some of my weekends.

Being a volunteer there was a lot of fun and immensely rewarding. I got to get up close to a lot of cool birds, handled owls, hawks, an eagle, penguins, parrots and other birds there. The work I did was all behind the scenes stuff, nothing glamorous, but it was enjoyable.

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I’ll miss seeing the birds every other week, and seeing the other staff and volunteers there. Now I’ll have some more time to work on other things that have been waiting on the sidelines.

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Free National Academies Press publications

Something I rediscovered recently is that almost of the titles in the National Academies Press catalog are now available to read online for free or as a free PDF download.

The National Academies Press (NAP) was created by the National Academy of Sciences to publish the reports of the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, Institute of Medicine, and National Research Council, all operating under a charter granted by the Congress of the United States. The NAP publishes more than 200 books a year on a wide range of topics in science, engineering, and medicine, providing authoritative information on important matters in science and health policy. The institutions served by the NAP are unique in their ability to attract leading experts in many fields to join panels and committees charged with providing policy advice on some of the nation’s most pressing scientific, technical, and health-related issues.

There are a great many titles available covering a wide range of scientific topics. The catalog is an interesting place to browse and I’ve already grabbed a handful of publications including some previous BEIR (Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation) reports.

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Time to plan for car replacement

The Toyota’s seen a fair bit of work and has spent a fair amount of time in the shop so far this past year. Mostly things that have just worn out from age. Radiator, gaskets, engine mount, hoses, more gaskets.

Most receently, the check engine light has been persistently on due to issues in the emissions/vacuum system. Get one thing fixed, light comes back on with codes pointing at something else in the same system.

Now, considering the age of the car (15 years now), we’re starting to look at replacing the Toyota sooner rather than later.

Not sure what we’ll replace it yet, but it will be a newer older used car, probably about the same size. The folding rear seats with the opening into the trunk is very handy, so having that in the next car would be nice.

Car budget has taken a pretty big hit with all the recent repairs, so we’ll need to fill that back up before we go shopping.