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.
Other creatures in our world
The bird box in the front lawn serves as a favorite perch for surveying the landscape:
The chipmunks seemed fewer and farther between this summer. It’s hard to tell with chipmunks, but they seem to spend more time looking around and less time paused in the middle of the driveway.
Taken with the DSC-H5 and 1.7 teleadapter, diagonally through two layers of cruddy 1955-era window glass.
A stray sunflower seed decided that the spot just outside the garden gate was perfect and gave Mary’s garden an attractive marker. It will eventually have a dozen blossoms, each one serving as a buffet for the local bumblebees:
Each bee makes several complete circuits of the florets, draining the nectar and collecting pollen as she goes:
Mary tucks the open gate inside the garden to avoid disturbing the pollinators, as wasps tend to have short fuses and multiple-strike stingers:
The bumblebee traveled clockwise and the wasp went counterclockwise, but I don’t know if that’s the general rule. I certainly won’t dispute their choices!
In a few weeks, long after the petals fall away, a myriad small birds will harvest the dried seeds…
Just because it’s a cliché doesn’t make it wrong:
Spotted at the U-Pick Blueberry Field Formerly Known As Secor’s.
At this instant, neither of us realized the other was present:
Despite what it looks like, the blackbird (maybe a starling) passed just beyond arm’s reach directly ahead of the bike at eye level:
And away!
At 60 frames per second, that’s 466 ms of elapsed time.
Stepping through the video, frame by frame, the bird’s wings flap at a consistent three frames per stroke = 50 ms/stroke = 20 stroke/s = 1200 stroke/min. A bit of rummaging produces a study suggesting a starling’s normal rate is 10 stroke/s, so the critter had the throttles firewalled at war emergency power.
It makes my pedal pushing seem downright inconsequential…
A few minutes after we started riding, an insect collided with my helmet. About 3/60 second before impact:
We paused in a park at the far end of the ride, rolled out, and another insect buzzed past:
Both of those flew within a few inches of the lens, far inside the camera’s fixed-focus near point, and it’s a wonder they look as good as they do. Looking at successive frames reveals wingbeats, although they’re surely flapping much faster than frame rate and therefore heavily aliased.
Fortunately, a Gas Hawk didn’t come that close:
All from the Sony HDR-AS30V in 1280×720 at 60 frame/s. The bug images were ruthlessly cropped to show the full-size dot-for-dot camera image, then stored with minimal compression.
This isn’t the first time I’ve been buzzed on the bike, but it’s a record for one ride.
We noticed far more sparrows than usual in the garden, some flying clumsily, then saw both adults feeding a nestling peering from the nesting box:
Our presence interrupted the regular feeding pattern, stalling the male sparrow atop the utility pole with a tempting snack in his beak:
Even when it’s time to leave, just thinking about growing up and joining the world makes you tired:
May they all eat many garden insects!
Taken with the Sony DSC-H5 and tele extender lens, zoomed all the way in, with a touch of manual focus and exposure override.
Just south of Lake Walton on the Dutchess Rail Trail, I encountered a barred owl with wings spread around something yummy in its talons (clicky for more dots):
The owl acquired weapons lock on me, just in case I might try to steal its fresh-killed meal:
My neck doesn’t turn nearly that far, so I lost the staring contest:
Owls being good folks to have around, we wish ’em well: may they raise many owlets!
The pictures were extracted from the Sony HDR-AS30V helmet camera with this incantation:
avconv -ss 00:05:30 -i /mnt/video/2015-05-15/MAH00389.MP4 -t 20 -f image2 -q 1 Image-%04d.jpg
The -q 1 parameter should produce an image with the same dots as the original, but that really doesn’t mean much in the face of the camera’s relentless video compression.
Here’s a dot-for-dot crop (at 100% JPEG quality = uncompressed) showing the tradeoff between wide field-of-view, detail, and compression:
Makes me appreciate my eyesight: I spotted that owl when it covered just a few image pixels. Of course, at first I thought somebody dropped a hoodie on the trail, then maybe it was a chunk of debris, so I eased off the asphalt onto the gravel Just In Case.
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 