Posted 3:24 PM by Angie Schultz

Foto Friday: Cerulean Blue

Boy, am I angry.

Ha ha. OK, that's a little joke that I'll explain later, if I can. Meantime, let's look at something cool and soothing.

Emerald Bay, Lake Tahoe, Aug. 1998

Not the most stunning picture I've ever taken, but so soooothing, no? The blues and greens, so caaaaaalm. Ceruuuulean bluuue.

The print of this photo is very intensely blue and green. The scan was much wishy-washier, with the greens looking kind of yellow and raggedy. Probably more like they did in real life. So I fiddled with the colors to recover the lush greens. Didn't quite make it, though. That makes Me SO--- No, no: calm.

Labels: California, Foto Friday

Posted 11:41 AM by Angie Schultz

Foto Friday: Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory

What? Friday already? Bah. Well, reflect on this:

Glory of Haleakala, Maui, Sep. 2003

Here's a close-up:

Close-up of Haleakala glory, Maui, Sep. 2003

The colors are a bit subtle; I tried beefing them up but didn't like the result.

I didn't get to see Haleakala Crater, but I did get a nice glory out of the deal. Glories are the result of backscattering of light by water droplets. They appear when the sun is low behind the observer and the clouds below are (fairly) near. Here's a site with many glory photos, all -- harrumph! -- much better than this. Look at the links on the left for more pictures, an explanation of how glories are formed, and info on other optical phenomena. Turns out that simple reflection is not sufficient to explain the glory. Surface waves are required in order to explain the effect. That is, the light hits the surface of the water droplet, and, instead of bouncing off, travels for a short distance along its surface before being reflected. (The diagrams in the link make this clearer.)

The glory phenomenon is often seen from airplanes (see the side links at the Atmospheric Optics site). It's frequently associated with the spooky Brocken spectre (WoooOOOOooo!), and is related to heiligenschein, easily seen on a dewy morning. Like the glory and Brocken spectre, heiligenschein only appears around the position of the observer. It's sometimes referred to as "Cellini's halo", because artist (Warning! Wikipedia!) Benvenuto Cellini thought the phenomenon was a sign of his own genius.

Some people, eh? The first time I noticed the heiligenschein, I realized it was an optical phenomenon, and not anything to do with me. I guess only a great genius would make a dumb mistake like that. Reminds of the fellow who thought he had special powers, because he could make a computer monitor flicker just by humming. Turns out that the humming caused his eyes to vibrate at the frequency of the scan rate (or integral factor thereof) (these are CRTs we're talking about). (I figured this out on my own, too.) Wonder if he was a genius.

(That would be a really lame superpower, wouldn't it? Almost as lame as Turkey Volume Guessing Man. I wonder if someone's invented the League of Embarrassed Lame-Powered Superheroes. Probably. Many times over.)

If you want to make your own glories, you can get the free program MiePlot, which models Mie scattering. My inner pedant/show-off was tempted to try to simulate the glory here, but fortunately the program is a Windows program. I do not do Windows for scientific work.

Labels: Foto Friday, Hawaii

Posted 1:21 PM by Angie Schultz

Foto Friday: The Shrine

This is another from last week's set. I was struck by the spookiness of this photo. There's a sense of unease about it, as if, in exploring some public space, you'd stumbled into a private one, or onto a grave.

It would make a good album cover.

Laurentine Hamilton Courtyard
Mt. Hamilton, CA, June 1995

This is the Laurentine Hamilton Courtyard up at Lick Observatory. You can take a virtual tour of the observatory. Here's the Hamilton Courtyard page. Click on the picture to see a close-up.

Laurentine Hamilton is, of course, the fellow for whom Mt. Hamilton is named. He was a Presbyterian-turned-Unitarian minister. In 1861 he went up the mountain with a surveyor friend; they had to hike the last three miles. Since the surveyor and his assistant were burdened with instruments -- and Rev. Hamilton was not -- he was able to make it to the summit ahead of them. Ha ha ha. And so the mountain was named for him. He dropped dead during an Easter sermon in 1882. (And that's what sprinting up mountains gets you.)

In the 1990s his granddaughter, Clara-Belle Lorraine Hamilton, gave the money for this courtyard to Lick, and she also gave money for a spectrograph.

This was taken on a windy day, so windy that the fountain was bent to the right, and water was blown all over the concrete. You might be able to see the motion blur in the trees, too.

Here's a St. Louis blogger who has some pictures of the courtyard and observatory.

Labels: California, Foto Friday

Posted 5:16 PM by Angie Schultz

Ashes to Ashes, Stardust to Dust

The fact that I'm posting this means I'm really bored, and desperate for something to post. I also think I stole this title, but I can't remember from where.

Today Lileks displays a postcard (scroll down) of the Stardust Hotel in Las Vegas, which was demolished yesterday (nice pictures at that link). I have a postcard from a different era:


There's no date on this card (it's unused), but there's a space on the back for a six cent stamp, which marks it as being made during 1971-1974. The cars in the lot are from that era, too.

You can see that the planet sign Lileks admired so much is gone, and the top of the building has been redone as well. (And the cars in his postcard are much, much cooler.)

I also have a postcard of the show:


Giant plumed bird-women are popular in these shows. Why?

This card was sent in 1963.

One day, if I get energetic, I'll tell you about my trip to Vegas, and contrast it with those whiners over at Alien Corn. (My trip featured aliens, but no corn that I can remember.)

Labels: Postcards

Posted 9:23 AM by Angie Schultz

Foto Friday in Black and White

I have shot precisely one roll of black and white film -- as an experiment, back in 1995. I finally got around to scanning some things, and decided to do this roll. The results were less than exciting when printed, and they're not any better on the computer screen.

Lick Observatory, June 1995

I took several photos of Lick Observatory, and then went on to Yosemite and finished off the roll. When I went to the lab to pick up the photos, I said something to the clerk about how, gosh, I took these in black and white, and they still don't look like Ansel Adams. Huh.

This provoked an angry response from the other clerk. Adams was a genius! How dare you...! Amateurs! Sputter! Sputter! The clerk I was talking to, who knew a joke when he heard it, stared at him. I hope he switched to decaf and felt better.

This was the Adams photo I was thinking about when I took it. That was taken to the northeast of wherever I was standing when I took this one. I think he had to climb a fire tower to get that angle.

Of course, Adams could make nice pictures because he had fancy cameras and special filters and stuff. Plus, he knew what he was doing.

So, it isn't exactly Ansel Adams, but it does have a sort of 50s-scifi-movie look to it, and I guess that'll have to do.

The Lick Observatory site is supposed to have a gallery of Lick images, but there aren't really very many there. There is a set of pictures taken during the big snowfall of 2001. I particularly like this one, which looks like a scale model of something.

This site is supposed to have a bunch of Lick photos, but they aren't up yet. The one it does have is a doozy, though. It rarely storms in Northern California, and I sure as hell wouldn't want to be gadding about in one like that. I'm willing to go pretty far in pursuit of a good shot, but carbonization is too far.

Labels: California, Foto Friday

Posted 4:32 PM by Angie Schultz

Foto Friday: Lahaina Sunset

I am a lazy dawg today. So here's something to make you feel lazy, too:

Sunset from Lahaina, Maui, Sep. 2003

That's the island of Lanai in the distance there. I probably shot twenty or thirty pictures of this sunset -- half on slides, half on print film. Got some nice crepuscular rays. If you look hard you can see some boats in front of the sun, too (click for a larger image).

Labels: Foto Friday, Hawaii

Posted 1:32 PM by Angie Schultz

Damn You Charles Johnson!

OK, in addition to being a neocon nazi zionist phallofascist tool of occidental hegemonic capitalism, or whatever this week's slur is, he's also unleashed unto the blogosphere this little harbinger of the Apocalypse.




That is the music video for Israel's entry for the Eurovision song contest, "Push the Button" by the group Teapacks. (Apparently in Israel they're known as "Tippex", which is the British name for White-Out. I figure there's a copyright issue here somewhere.)

The worst part about this song is that it's horribly catchy. Don't click unless you want an ear bug the rest of the day. Most of LGF's commenters say that they're fixating on "POOOOSH the but-ton", but I get:

And I
Don't wanna die
I wanna see the flowers bloom
Don't wanna go kaput kaboom

Who could argue with that, eh?

YouTube counts down the time, so that part comes at about 2:16 -- i.e. with
2:16 left to go. That's when you discover that the lead singer actually has a beautiful voice. I actually looked around reflexively to see who was singing.

One of the LGF commenters found the lyrics here in Hebrew and badly-spelled French and English. The French part translates (more or less) to:

There's much suffering
In the streets there's too much violence
And there's a good chance
[Two lines I can't decipher]
Tactical advance
of a fanatic regime
Tragic situation
that puts tears in my eyes

My French is not up to the orthography on that page, and Babelfish is likewise
useless.

LGF commenter WriterMom formed some sort of group translation orgy and came up with a translation for the Hebrew lyrics here and here, but she's obviously not 100% confident of the accuracy. Commenter cba finished them off.

Zombie identifies the genre is "Nerdy Jewish Apocalyptic Cabaret Rap". Pretty much.

Disturbing aspects:

• The way they're all dressed.
  
• The creepy/comical German-y accent on the lead singer.
  
• The accordion player(!!) keeps pointing his pipe at me. Make him stop.
  

Naturally the Euros are springing into action to ban the song:

"It's absolutely clear that this kind of message is not appropriate for the competition," said Kjell Ekholm, an organizer of the contest.

Naw, just tell 'em that Bush is the "crazy ruler" and all will be well.

UPDATE: Pardon my French! French speakers at Rantburg correct it in the comments.

Labels: Music for the Apocalypse