The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning

Ed Nisley's Blog: Shop notes, electronics, firmware, machinery, 3D printing, laser cuttery, and curiosities. Contents: 100% human thinking, 0% AI slop.

Month: September 2012

  • Making a Black-on-Black Control User-Friendly

    After having discovered, once again, that the vacuum cleaner wasn’t cleaning very well because the suction control was knocked halfway down the scale, I made the normal setting on the damn thing visible:

    Samsung vacuum cleaner control labeling
    Samsung vacuum cleaner control labeling

    I don’t know why a label in dark-gray-on-black is such a wonderful idea, given that SAMSUNG stands out in pure white-on-red. Designers love subtle touches; I suppose they expect you to just puzzle it out and memorize the right answer.

    The embossed / raised black-on-black symbols don’t work for me, either. Did you spot the one to the left of the ON/OFF label? Didn’t think so.

    Those reflective tape snippets on unmarked stove knobs have survived many trips through the dishwasher; that idea is a keeper.

  • Turkey Tableau, With Fox

    Two turkey hens have formed a creche with seven chicks; if that seems a low number compared with the five in that clutch, we may have just seen the reason.

    The turkey flock came foraging across the back yard one evening while we were eating supper on the patio:

    Turkey Chicks - foraging
    Turkey Chicks – foraging

    The hens began behaving oddly and the chicks went into periscope mode while looking in all directions at once:

    Turkey Chicks - high alert
    Turkey Chicks – high alert

    After a moment, we saw this tableau:

    Red Fox and Turkey Hen
    Red Fox and Turkey Hen

    The red fox entered from the left, then made a great show of ignoring the turkeys while scratching an ear, licking its nuts, and examining the ground as the hens postured and threatened. The fox eventually trotted off to the right, through the grove in the rear, and away.

    The flock required a few minutes to stand down from the alert:

    Turkey Hen and Chicks - standing down
    Turkey Hen and Chicks – standing down

    And then they moved on, searching for yummy things in the grass as usual…

    The pictures are crap from the Canon SX230HS, hand-held at long telephoto, and ruthlessly cropped; the high-res originals aren’t much better than these. I’d expect better results in shaded sunlight, but for obvious reasons I couldn’t move any closer or pause to fetch a tripod. The fox tableau seems perfectly focused on the garden netting, which is what you’d expect from contrast-based autofocus; even if using manual focus would help, the bad picture you get is better than the good picture you didn’t.