How Old is Your Hearing: The Mosquito Ringtone

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The Mosquito Ringtone came about after a crafty British man who invented a device called The Mosquito, the Mosquito is a device that emits a very high frequency tone meant to annoy teenagers (adults are unable to hear the tone). Some crafty students decided to convert the same technology into a ring tone that only they (teenagers) could hear! By utilizing this free ringtone, you can get phone calls and receive text messages while in class or school without teachers knowing it.

The highest frequency I could hear was 16.7khz. Maybe it's my speakers. You?

Link. (image by gravitywave via Flickr)

Astropix.com by Jerry Lodriguss

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Be sure to check out Jerry Lodriguss's web site astropix.com for a terrific gallery of extraordinary pictures of celestial objects, most shot with pro-sumer Canon equipment. But the best thing about his photos are that he tells you the details about each picture giving a wealth of information about the shot. Jerry is located in Philadelphia and is a photographer for the Philadelphia Enquirer.

Link.

Astrophotography, redux #1

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With the recent aquisition of the Canon 40D, I thought I'd put it through it's paces and try some long exposure to see what the noise was like. The results were very pleasing. I'm using a Canon EF 24-70 f2.8L USM lens which is a great lens, although a bit heavy. Click each picture for a larger view.

This first image is a composite of two shots, each 15″ @ f2.8, ISO 400, 24mm focal length. The bright lines at the bottom are caused by aircraft moving through the frame. The break in the line shows the end of one shot and the beginning of the next shot. The stars are just beginning to shift as the Earth rotates.

The second image is a composite of 30 shots over 10 minutes, also east 15″ @ f2.8, ISO 400, 24mm focal length. The stars have a more dramatic shift over 10 minutes. Still, the shift isn't smooth due to the time between images (I need a true intervalometer (Wikipedia) to make this work well). Several aircraft can be seen whizzing through the frame with their stobes flashing regularly.

1,301 Florescent Bulbs Lit Solely by Magnetic Fields

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I've heard stories that this was possible, but never actually saw evidence of it. High voltage power lines carry such an enormous amount of power that they give off a large magnetic field. In this case, large enough to light florescent tubes. I read a little backstory on this; the tubes don't glow very bright, these are all long exposures. But, the proof is there.

More information can be found here.

Link. Via Gizmodo

Your next band, album name, sleeve artwork in seconds

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Tired of having to come up with a band name? Then you have the album name. Let's not talk about picking out the right album cover artwork. How many bands have we lost to this task simply because they couldn't work it out?

Tire no more, Joshua Blankenship has come up with a no hassle way of taking care of all three in a matter of seconds. Trust the randomness in the system and you'll be amazed. The results of my 5 second trip are presented here. Nice.

Link. Thanks, Al!

Modifying AXIS 205/206 for correct daylight savings time

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Since AXIS discontinued support for the 205 and 206 web cameras, the internal clock in these units will not adjust DST properly (since the start and end dates were changed last year). However, you can manually adjust the DST parameters by modifying the config file yourself. Luckily, there is an internal application to modify the config files on the unit easily. Login to the admin side of your camera and browse to
/admin/config.shtml?group=Time.DST
From here, match your settings with the image below. I believe these to be the correct values. Tell me if I'm wrong!

The world just got a bit scarier.

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Sometimes you see a demonstration for something seemingly impossible that is a bit mind bending in the simplicity and elegance of the solution.

In the following two videos, you'll see how you can safely transport a computer without interrupting the power or shutting it off as well as dispelling the myth of RAM memory loosing contents as soon as the power is cut leading to the ultimate downfall of whole disc encryption.

These techniques demonstrate that for every difficult problem there's a simplistic answer.

WiebeTech HotPlug demonstration
Princeton University demos cold shot RAM scraping.

Freeze Frame! NYC Time-Stop Prank

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Over 200 New Yorkers recently walked into one of the busiest train stations in the world, New York's Grand Central Station, and at exactly 2:30 pm, all froze in place. There's one guy in the video who froze just as he was stooping down to pick up some scattered papers. Talk about commitment.

Link. Thanks, Jnova!