Links for 2011-02-08

  • "There's a place where TV remotes are flashlights, Wii's are torches, and Snuggies are translucent. It's our kitchen. We modified a 3 dollar webcam to view in the infrared portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. We'll show you how, and what you can do with it."
  • "It's become an annual Mid-Majority tradition. I try to be the last man in America to know who won the Super Bowl, and the last man in America to know the score of the game. Together, these two pieces of data combine to form The Knowledge. There's no pastime like this: a race against yourself, a game played against the world. Short title of the game: Last Man.

    I've been doing this for 23 years, ever since I was in high school. But this is the fourth year the game has been played on this site. Feel free to play the game yourself. You'll never be the same. Keep Running. Avoid The Knowledge. "

  • "92% of peer reviewers deteriorated during 14 years of study in the quality and usefulness of their reviews (as judged by editors at the time of decision), at rates unrelated to the length of their service (but moderately correlated with their mean quality score, with better-than average reviewers decreasing at about half the rate of those below average). Only 8% improved, and those by very small amount."
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The Mid-Majority : Last Man "For the past 20 years or so, I've played my own game every year at this time. It's called The Last Man In America To Know Who Won The Super Bowl, or just "Last Man." It's a game heavily reliant on tactics, organizational skill, and evasive procedures. The object is to…
Beer Batter Is Better: Scientific American "If you've ever sat down at a pub to a plate of really good fish and chips--the kind in which the fish stays tender and juicy but the crust is supercrisp--odds are that the cook used beer as the main liquid when making the batter. Beer makes such a great…
Idle Question of the Day "Exactly what bad consequences would follow if laws were passed by the relevant countries rendering credit default swap contracts void henceforth? (That is, canceling all the outstanding wagers because the bookies went bust.) " (tags: blogs politics economics social-…
The Mid-Majority : Assistant Coach for a Night "[Northwestern State Coach] McConathy did things a little differently than most coaches -- he subbed his players five-in, five-out, ran an offense that was almost as old as the NCAA Tournament itself. He often allowed coaching friends and local…

You can't modify a webcam to see thermal infrared (~14 to 8µm), only near IR. (For one thing, glass lenses are opaque in the far IR where thermal radiation mostly lies. You need germanium lenses or polyethylene.)

I've been doing almost the same "Life in the Infrared" thing with an actual thermal IR camera (it's a FLIR i7) here.

By Andy Perrin (not verified) on 08 Feb 2011 #permalink