Moon Pictures

I was able to go out and get some pictures of the moon tonight. The temperature is much warmer than when I was out last collecting pictures. There was quite a bit more light and the camera seemed saturated at times.

More Websites

A site with news for the science world that seems geared toward life sciences.
http://www.livescience.com/

I found this site selling solar energy equipment.
http://wholesalesolar.com/index.html

This website is quite a gem. It talks about incentive programs in Kentucky encouraging the use of solar water heaters and power generation. Starting this year federal energy tax credits are in place. This site has quite a lot of information about solar water heating. After reading some of this information, I definitely will consider installing a system. It would be tricky to get plumbing from the roof to the hot water heater with the house already finished though.
http://www.kysolar.org

Airplane Sites

I think this site has the neatest software. It tracks flights across the United States. The animated map showing all the planes as red dots over a 24 hour period gives an eye opening view of the planes in the air.
http://flightaware.com/

This site has lots of airline plane pictures.
http://www.airliners.net

This site has lots of airplane news.
http://www.landings.com/

Big Storm

Today we had a thunderstorm move though the Louisville area during the Gator Bowl being played by University of Louisville & Virginia Tech. The storm brought tornadoes and representation of trouble to the area's football team. Things went down hill for UofL in that 4th quarter. They had a good season and next year should be even better.

Here is a picture of the storm heading in. Since temperatures were in the 70s F, the cold front created quite an energetic storm.


After the storm, the sun came out and with evening storms that means a possibility of a rainbow. A double rainbow appeared as rain was continuing to fall. Very neat.












Close up of a rainbow. If I had a wide angle lens, the entire rainbow would appear in the image. It made a complete arc from visible horizon to horizon.

Microscope Images of Print Characters

It is the new year! I spent the day upgrading the locks on the house after reading the October 2005 Consumer Reports article on home locks. Home Depot and Lowe's have quite a number of items you can buy to re-enforce your locks. I could not find the brand of strike box the article said to use but I did find a strike box at both stores.

I also thought what would different print look like under the computer microscope. So I cut out samples to view from the Louisville Courier Journal, Wall Street Journal, and a HP Photosmart 2610 inkjet. Here are the images I generated.

The image on the left is the Courier Journal (CJ) s character magnified 60 times.










The image on the right is the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) s character magnified 60 times

Comparing the two, the CJ s is darker and has more ink spots or smudges. The fonts are different and of different sizes so an exact comparison is difficult.



Image on left is CJ dot magnified x200. There looks to be a blue fiber in the paper, I wonder if this means it is recycled paper?










WSJ dot magnified x200 times. Their press looks to be using less ink than the CJ press.









Image on the left is dot made by HP Photosmart 2610 printer. Not sure dpi setting when page was printed. A few stray black dots also font seems to produce square dots instead of round ones. Paper quality was much better than that of the newspapers shown in earlier images.