Going widescreen

It seems all of us have a lot of time to get caught up on TV and movies we might have missed. Today’s picture puzzle fits into that, in some way. Is that a good enough clue? It seems like a pretty good one. This is something most of us have interacted with. Perhaps not recently, as it has been relegated by newer technologies. But everyone is still familiar with it. Scroll for the reveal.

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It is a VCR! And not just any random old VCR. As you can see, this is a fancy 4 head VHS HQ unit. So, instead of looking horrible, movies on this unit look not completely horrible. It was quite the upgrade.

I kid, because wow we have been spoiled with HD and 4K. But wow did I get some mileage out of VCRs back in the day. Years, and years, ago, before the adent of DVRs or Tivo, I had a gig in Alabama for a couple months. Not knowing what my cable situation would be in the deep south, I had a schedule set up with three VCRs for my roomate to manage while I was away. Tuesday, swap the tape in VCR 2. Wednesday swap the tape in VCR 3, etc. I returned from Alabama and embarked on a binge that would make Netflix raise an eyebrow.

FLASH! Ahhh Ahhhh

Ok… this is likely impossible. I don’t even know that I would get it, and this is my light. But I really like the close-up, so here we are. What you are looking at is the flash tube for one of my monolights, and the little spring that holds it in place.

I could go on about what a monolight is and the difference between a monolight, a strobe, and a speedlight. But even under quarantine, none of us have time to listen to that. For our purposes here, you can just think of a monolight as a big flash unit. It looks like this:

That black outer ring is just over 6 inches in diameter, for perspective. The yellow dot in the center is a 60W LED modeling lamp and the flash tube gives this an ouput of 320Ws.

The title today comes from the theme song for the 1980 Flash Gordon film. I saw it again recently and it actually holds up surprisingly well!

Getting back to basics

This is a cool one. The computer and camera focused (HA!) photos can be a bit tricky for those that don’t work with those devices every day. That is not the case here. Today’s picture puzzle is of something literally everyone who is reading this has touched. Maybe not today, but most likely very recently. Can you pick out what it is? Scroll for the wide shot.

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It’s ice! Specifically, ice in my fancy thermal tumbler that works so well that there will still be ice in there tomorrow. The brown colors might have thrown you off. This ice is chilling some cola. I’m a bit fascinated by all the little bumps and ridges that just go unseen until we zoom way in.

I might have put my foot in it this time

Another Friday picture puzzle, but I think I might have gone a little too inside baseball with this one. It’s something I use all the time, and that most people have taken advantage of at some point. But they might not have actually interacted directly with it. I guess we’ll find out how bright an idea this photo puzzle was after you scroll to see the wide shot…

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It’s the foot of a flash. One of my Flashpoint speelights, to be exact. Those are the contacts that not only fire the flash, but enable things like TTL and high speed sync. Although, truth be told, it is a rare thing for me to actually use those contacts. These flashes are fired by radio signal 99% of the time.

Have a great weekend!

Classic IBM PC trivia

The OG IBM PC could address up to 1MiB of memory, which seems laughable now, but was a huge amount in 1981. However, that address space was split between user accessible RAM (640KiB) and that used for video, BIOS, and peripherals (384KiB).

That 640KiB number is interesting. Chances are you have run across a quote attributed to Bill Gates where he says 640K is all the memory anyone would ever need. This supposedly happened in 1981, but the reality is that Gates probably never said it.

This quote seems to be one of those things that lives on the internet and is given credence because it has been around for so long. You can verify it against a mountain of attributions that are all verified against another mountain of them. But there is no actual original quote.

I suspect there was some mention from Microsoft, and possibly Gates, when discussing DOS on the IBM PC where they referenced how great having 640K was going to be. At the time, that was a big deal. Somewhere, that got twisted into the quote, and once something is on the internet…

Our picture today is a close-up of two 8 gig sticks, which, amazingly, is not a whole lot of memory now.

I like Ike

Really, the Eisenhower dollars are laughable. They are so huge, heavy, and nothing that takes coins will accept them. I carry 8 of them in a weird pocket in my motorcycle jacket (just because) and they weight almost half a pound.

These are all excellent reasons why production of the Eisenhower dollar was stopped in 1978. The Susan B. Anthony dollar (1979-1981, 1999) made much more sense, even if it was too easily confused with quarters. And the current Sacagawea dollar is the happy middle ground that doesn’t have the size issues of the Eisenhower, but is more recognizable than the Anthony. And you can pay for parking with them!

Above we have a super detailed shot of one of the Eisenhowers from my motorcycle jacket. 100,000 miles grinding against 7 more Ikes hasn’t been kind to it, but I like the look of the scratches and tarnish.

Like looking in a mirror

This one is fun. Here is another piece of technology most of us make use of weekly, if not daily. But we rarely see it from this perspective, which makes it a bit tricky to recognize. Can you picture what this is? The wider shot is below.

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It’s a camera sensor, not unlike the one in our phones that we use every day. This one is a bit bigger than the sensor in the phones. This is the sensor of my Canon M6. That is an APS-C sized sensor, where phones usually use something in the 1/2.55 inch arena.

We could go on for ages about sensor size and what the numbers mean and the benefits of larger and smaller sensors. For our purposes here, an APS-C sensor like in the M6 measures 22.3mm x 14.9mm. And the 1/2.55 like you would find in the Google Pixel measures 5.76mm x 4.29mm.

It’s a processor!

I’m not even going to try and have anyone guess at this one. It’s just too obscure and could be too many things. But I really like it, so we’re going with it. This is from the underside of a processor module for the RP7420. If you have a look at the bigger picture below you can get an idea of just how small those components are. That red box is about 22mm on the long side.

Something old…

A bit of an obscure photo today. I’ll give the hint that this was taken outside the warehouse. It is a common item, but being used in a capacity that most of us don’t interface with, and of a certain age, as they say. Scroll for the reveal.

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That is a very weathered and worn nail head holding a pallet together. It looks like something is starting to grow on it. Perhaps we will revisit this in a few months and track the progress. 🙂

Connecting the pieces

This is a tricky one. That is a photo of something ubiquitous that I am sure everyone reading this has held in their hands. But I may have gotten a bit too macro with it. I’ll remind you that this is super up close, and this is a very common item with no batteries or electricity of any kind involved in its operation. Did you put the things together? Scroll for the reveal.

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It’s staples. Approximately 58 of them in that top shot. They look much more refined when you get a bit of distance.