Ed Nisley's Blog: Shop notes, electronics, firmware, machinery, 3D printing, laser cuttery, and curiosities. Contents: 100% human thinking, 0% AI slop.
Verily, ’tis the season for turtles on the move. This one clunked over the curb on Raymond Avenue at Vassar Lake, couldn’t find an escape route, and got smashed:
Smashed turtle – Raymond Ave at Vassar Lake – 2014-07-06
Turtle armor works pretty well against their usual predators, but can’t handle automobile tire impacts.
That’s a tight crop from the helmet camera, with terrible compression artifacts smearing the spalled concrete sidewalk.
For whatever reason, NYSDOT can’t do concrete sidewalks; the entire length of Raymond Avenue has lousy concrete. The fact that Vassar College B&G uses the sidewalks as their private golf-cart highway may have something to do with it, but that’s not the primary problem, because the concrete on DOT’s showcase Rt 55 between Burnett Blvd and Titusville Rd looks the same way.
For some reason, WordPress chokes when uploading the starting shape as a PNG file, so here it is as a JPG with a black border replacing the original transparency:
gel_shape
With the gel highlight:
gel_highlight
Adding a border:
gel_border
Adding text, shadow, and background:
gel_button
Adding the drop shadow may increase the image size ever so slightly, so the -repage 0x0+7+7 operation may require resetting the exact image size.
The smaller buttons came directly from The GIMP, with full-frontal manual control over everything. Obviously, that doesn’t scale well for many buttons that should all look pretty much the same, because you want to get your fingers out of the loop.
But, obviously, when you do this on a mass scale, you want better control over the colors and text and suchlike; that’s in the nature of fine tuning when it’s needed.
I’m not entirely convinced I want gel-flavored buttons, but it was a fun exercise.
We spotted another turtle while on a grocery ride:
Turtle on Love Rd – as spotted – 2014-07-02
Although this is certainly meddling in the turtle’s affairs, it seemed reasonable on a torrid day with plenty of hot asphalt to cross:
Turtle on Love Rd – pickup – 2014-07-02
I made the (possibly unwarranted) assumption that the turtle wanted to cross the road; I’ve been wrong before.
In any event, this must be what teleportation feels like:
Turtle on Love Rd – delivery – 2014-07-02
There’s not really much on that side of the road, other than an inactive oil spill site left over from when Love Oil ran a tank farm. That’s why it’s called Love Rd, of course.
Perhaps someone else will help the turtle cross the road in the other direction…
The 170° fisheye lens on the HDR-AS30V action camera protrudes from the front of the case, the better to view the passing scenery:
Sony HDR-AS30V Action Camera
Unfortunately, that means there’s nothing to protect it when the scenery gets a bit too close.
Mounting it upside-down in the skeleton frame provides a bit of protection, by putting it inside the straight line connecting the helmet brim with the top of the frame:
Sony HDR-AS30V camera on bike helmet – inverted
That won’t protect it from severe impacts, but perhaps a casual drop won’t scar the lens. You can tell from the scuffs that the helmet does get dropped every now and then.
When you remove the skeleton mount from the helmet, grip the camera between finger and thumb while releasing the latch with your other hand. The mount will dangle from your fingers and the camera won’t slide out; if you don’t have both hands free, don’t mess with the camera.
Even though it doesn’t look at all like a GoPro Hero, everybody recognizes the “camera on helmet” meme and, in general, behaves a bit more circumspectly. I didn’t see that coming, not at all.
Much of the boat traffic on the Hudson consists of barges shuttling bulk commodities between the Atlantic and the Port of Albany. I think this is a crude oil barge, based on the Christmas Tree plumbing that was more visible when it passed under the Mid Hudson Bridge:
Walkway and Barge – from Mid Hudson Bridge
We crossed the Walkway Over the Hudson westbound, where a work crew was tending a crane. That’s how they do repair and inspection:
Walkway Inspection Crane – from Mid Hudson Bridge
The Hudson River has far fewer power boats than in years gone by, probably due to their gallon-per-minute fuel consumption:
Power boat on Hudson River – from Mid Hudson Bridge
In what’s surely a change intended to better meet the needs of their customers, the newspaper changed the crossword layout just a little teeny bit, so my previous script needed a tweak:
That’s a fairly large snapping turtle in the middle of the Dutchess Rail Trail, between Morgan Lake and the Violet Avenue tunnel.
Snappers can move just under the speed of light for about a foot in order to latch onto you, but they’re not quite as fast while turning around: always pass to their rear. You do not attempt to save them from their folly at being in the middle of the road / trail / driveway: they have absolutely no patience with meddlers.
Turtles lay eggs around this time of year, which means they’re on the move, which means they cross roads, which means they get mashed. We’ve seen maybe half a dozen smashed turtles on our usual routes.
Quite some years ago, we found one of its relations in the flower garden beside our house, where it climbed at least 18 inches of vertical concrete block to see what was inside. It was about two feet long, jaws to tail, and obviously a survivor:
Snapping Turtle on wall
Those missing plates probably didn’t help its attitude in the least.
It eventually klonked down to the driveway without our assistance:
Snapping Turtle on driveway
After a pause for gimbal unlocking and compass recalibration, it ambled off toward the Mighty Wappingers Creek. The wall gets much shorter to the right, which is likely where it climbed up.
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 