What The Heck Is That Thing?

Time for a gear shift on the Refuge. Handy-dandy tip number 105: "How to keep ants out of your hummingbird feeders". I can't say that I blame the ants for swarming over the feeders. After all, who doesn't love a little sucrose in solution with water? Heck, as my brother, an avid cyclist at one time, used to say "I never met a carbohydrate I didn't like." Anyway, no matter how careful I am about not spilling nectar, the local ants always seem to find the feeders. I don't know if they bother the hummers (mostly ruby throated where we live), but as the feeders are hanging off of our decks, I'm…

The raspberry cane borer, Oberea bimaculata, is a particularly nasty garden pest and for some reason there seems to be an unusually large infestation of them this year. Our property contains all manner of cane berries including a large patch of local wild black raspberries (my favorite), wild blackberries, wild raspberries (usually too small to bother with) and various cultivars of red raspberry, yellow raspberry, and blackberry. Cane borer damage occurs pretty much every year but it tends to be isolated and infrequent. Several days ago I noticed that one or two of the red cultivars had…

As part of my continuing adventures in drumming symmetry, I have been working on a dual electronic hi-hat pedal. The idea is to have a single hi-hat pad respond equally well to either a left or a right foot pedal. It is similar to having both left and right kick drum pedals. For the hi-hat, this effect is sometimes realized through the use of a switch, but that requires some extra motion and it's not possible to use both pedals at the same time. These pedals (both an FD-7 and an FD-8) are used with a Roland TD20 drum controller. The hi-hat pedal uses a resistive position sensor to indicate…

What could've been the national symbol of the USA if Ben Franklin had his way, the wild turkey (meleagris gallopavo) is having a bit of a resurgence as of late. In our neck of the woods (central New York state) they have become a common sight and small bands of them are often seen crossing the country roads during the day. But we had a lovely surprise these past few weeks. Recently, I had begun clearing some trails through the woods behind our house. This project included building three bridges across a couple of small creeks (the construction of which may be the topic of a future blog post…

And now for something completely different, the tongue drum: The tongue drum is also known as the slit drum or xylo-slit drum. It is the modern descendant of the ancient log drum. This is a large 14 key unit tuned to a pentatonic scale in G. It can be played with mallets or your fingers (with somewhat of a quick, snapping-back style). The sound is very mellow and pleasing. Organic might be a good term. This particular item came from here. Besides the tone, what I find interesting about the drum is that unlike most musical instruments, it doesn't have a "normal" orientation. That is, the…

Humans have an ability to recognize patterns, even if they're not really there, like the face of Jesus in a pizza or Elvis on the side of a Holstein. Apparently, a local lumberjack recognized something in a certain tree trunk and decided to flip it upside down and paint it blue in order to help passersby see the illusion. This little bit of "found art" is located less than two miles from my house and I had a good laugh when I first saw it: Jesus on a pizza it ain't, but it sure is entertaining nonetheless.

How does a 7000 pound, 35 foot diameter chandelier using high-brightness LEDs sound to you? Well that's what was installed the other day at the Stanley Theatre in Utica, NY. The manufacturer, Meyda Tiffany based in nearby Yorkville, claims that it is the world's largest LED chandelier. Here are details from the local newspaper and from an industry magazine. The Stanley is one of those grand old movie houses from the 1920s, in an opulent style called "Mexican Baroque". It's one of the jewels of Central New York. I love going to the place and just looking around. Recently it has undergone a…

Check out this composite radar image from the National Weather Service, 20:18 UTC, February 10, 2008: This is great imagery of lake effect snow bands. For folks who live to the immediate east of any of the Great Lakes, this is a well-known effect responsible for significant accumulations of snow. The basic idea is that cold arctic winds blow across these large bodies of water and pick up moisture. This moisture is deposited on the opposite shore, particularly if the land is considerably higher than the lake surface. Lake effect snow storms tend to be very intense, especially if you happen…

In previous installments in the DIY NME series, I've looked at the application of symmetrical motor patterns using the drum kit. For this entry, the approach is a little different and says something about "handedness" as well. A few months ago I rearranged my semi-symmetrical drum kit into what I call the super symmetrical kit. The original semi-sym kit offered a centered hi-hat and three toms on each side, decreasing in pitch from front-center to rear. The remaining cymbals were arranged in a more-or-less typical configuration for a right-hander (ride to the right, crashes arrayed as desired…

Sometimes I can't seem to find just the right lab equipment I want for a particular experiment so I design it myself. Such was the case recently for a course I developed and teach entitled Science of Sound. This course is a natural science elective and deals with the physics of audio and acoustics. We start with a few very basic concepts such as harmonic motion. One of the laboratory experiments involves vibrating strings. I like this experiment because students can relate to it as most are at least familiar with guitars and other stringed instruments (the guitar players really like this one…

A previous post featured a short film about members of the Audiophile Club of Athens and the rather extreme sound systems their members have created. Some members spent in excess of $300,000 to build their systems. You may be wondering just what manner of gear that sort of money would buy, and would it really sound that much better than a more modest (yet still comparatively "high end") system of say, several thousand dollars. Before we go any further, let me state that in no way am I making fun of the way people spend their money. Heck, I've been known to drop some coinage on musical…

Steinn (Dynamics of Cats) reports that Mars Invades Peru. This must be smack-dab in the middle of physical-type scientists' radar screen since my Rocket Scientist(tm) friend sent a similar blurb from Yahoo News. I expect Scully and Mulder have been called in to investigate. Rocket Scientist(tm) mysteriously alluded to the Colour Out of Space in his e-mail, signing off with the baffling words: Ph-nglui mglw'nath Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn. The Thing From Beyond the Stars is either a meteorite that released volatiles or a man-made object containing similar gaseous substances as Steinn…

It's amazing the things you trip over while cruising the 'net. Consider this site. There's some fun stuff here, some good stuff here, and some downright crazy stuff here. For example, go to this page. You'll find the following passage: What are angels ? According to the Bible they are Gods messengers of light. But what are they really ? If you look up the words angles and angels you will see they connect to one another. Light comes down to the earth on an angle because of the gravitational pull of celestial bodies it passes. These angles of light are photons which scientifically are…

Regular readers of the refuge know that I've got a "thing" for audio and music, and that I've had some harsh comments regarding the poor quality audio that so many people tolerate these days in the name of convenience. But what of the other extreme? Who are the audiophile extremists? To what lengths will they go in their search for audio nirvana? Is 230,000 Euros enough, and what do they spend it on? Check out this short film of the Audiophile Club of Athens: Film about Audiophile Club of AthensUploaded by skaloumbakas Up front, I've got no problem with someone spending six figures on their…

A 53 year old Colorado priest faces indecent exposure charges for jogging naked at a local track according to the AP. The priest, Robert Whipkey, claims that he sweats profusely while running, and as he was running in the very early morning prior to sunrise, he didn't think anyone would be around to notice. Why does this sound like an old Monty Python skit? I can just see Terry Jones wearing nothing but the collar and shoes running away from a Bobby (Graham Chapman or John Cleese) who surprises him with a "What's all this then?"

And now for something completely different: There are a lot of intelligent folks out there in sci-blog gadget land, so please allow me to pick your brains for a moment. I am looking for some recommendations on a DV camera. I am looking for a fairly basic unit but not one that is totally stripped. A top end unit is right out. By comparison, I have two digital still cameras: a Fuji FinePix F440 which is a very compact point-and-shoot and a Canon Digital Rebel XTi SLR. I am looking for the DV version of the Fuji. I can throw the Fuji into my pocket when we go skiing or whatever and it takes up…

This week's NOVA Science NOW on PBS has an interesting piece on the Kryptos sculpture in front of CIA headquarters. The segment does a decent job of showing some of the basic techniques used such as substitution and transposition, in just a few minutes. I am not a cryptographer but it is an area I have studied a little. It's a great topic to introduce to my first and second year programming students. Some of them really perk up when we start talking about it. Invariably, someone will ask if I can show them how to "crack" protected software. I always tell them that, although I have the…

Last Sunday was the 30th annual Boilermaker 15k road race in lovely Utica, NY. This is perhaps the biggest event in central NY during the summer. This year, the Boilermaker attracted over 12,000 entrants along with an elite field of national and international talent. In other words, it's not your average Sunday morning 5k benefit run won in a blistering 19:36 by a guy wearing Teva sandals. If you're interested in the results, you can find them here or use the database found here to find results from prior years along with news clips and such. One of the things I like about this race is the…

When one thinks of a house mouse, a meek cheese-nibbling furry little critter is most often visualized Don't be fooled. These are nasty beasts. Just ask the chicks of the stormy petrel, Tristan albatross and Atlantic petrel. The vast majority of avian extinctions have occurred on islands. Rats, an invasive species on many islands, are often blamed for such extinctions. Mice were thought to pose no threats to seabirds' nests. However, once their ratty brethren were removed from the competitive scene, the mice moved in on delicious territory. The little fiends have been caught in the…

Curious about what's inside an iPhone? Well, the good folks at Audio Design Line (via EE Times) have a teardown. Mind you, it's not like the old days when you could just pop off the cover of your new electronic doohickey and look at the manufacturer's part numbers on the chips. These are the days of self-branded ICs. So what did the folks at the technology evaluation/investigation company Semiconductor Insights do? To get inside the chips, SI resorted to decapping, a process that involves immersing the chips in acid to dissolve the outer packaging and then manually scraping away any residual…