Stuff you didn't know and probably don't care about

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IronWing

No Lifer
Jul 20, 2001
69,371
27,560
136
Many diamonds fluoresce under UV light. Some diamonds phosphoresce as well. Phosphorescence is fluorescence slowed down by the presence of "forbidden transitions" where spin polarity prevents electrons from expeditiously returning to their ground state after being excited to a higher energy state through the absorption of a UV photon.

Let's talk about those diamonds that fluoresce but don't phosphoresce. Normally, fluorescence without phosphorescence indicates that forbidden transitions aren't an issue and all the electrons that got bumped to higher energies simply crashed back down to ground state more or less instantly. It turns out that many of these diamonds that don't phosphoresce have electrons stuck good and hard in higher energy states. So much so that they can go days to weeks and longer with the charged up electrons all revved up with no place to go. Giving these diamonds a dose of infrared light can bump the electrons up to slightly higher energy levels, change the spin polarities, remove the forbidden transitions, and allow the electrons to drop back to ground state, triggering phosphorescence long after the UV light was removed.

Seeing it in person is really impressive. I'll be working on a video.
 

Red Squirrel

No Lifer
May 24, 2003
67,786
12,299
126
www.anyf.ca
It's crazy how fast they can do it. Went to a Nascar race once and it was interesting watching the pit stops. You'd glance at a car going in and the crew getting to it, glace over at the rest of the race, glance back at the pit and that car is already leaving.
 

Red Squirrel

No Lifer
May 24, 2003
67,786
12,299
126
www.anyf.ca
Drywall edges along the 8 foot factory edges have a taper. I honestly did not realize this until recently. Makes taping a bit easier if you have two factory edges against each other. This particular example shows a non tapered edge against the tapered edge to show the difference. To the naked eye it looks like one sheet isn't in all the way but level shows it's actually continuous. Plaster and paint will fix this.


 
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lxskllr

No Lifer
Nov 30, 2004
57,595
7,816
126
I'm not sure if I knew that or not. That isn't something I'd want to shut off. You can get an idea of where things are failing or slow when you hear the connection. On a similar note, I miss the browser progress bar. It gave an indication of where things were hanging on unresponsive pages. Now all you get is the spinning circle of despair.
 

highland145

Lifer
Oct 12, 2009
43,464
5,882
136
Drywall edges along the 8 foot factory edges have a taper. I honestly did not realize this until recently. Makes taping a bit easier if you have two factory edges against each other. This particular example shows a non tapered edge against the tapered edge to show the difference. To the naked eye it looks like one sheet isn't in all the way but level shows it's actually continuous. Plaster and paint will fix this.


View attachment 93768
Nope.
 

Kaido

Elite Member & Kitchen Overlord
Feb 14, 2004
48,516
5,333
136
In 1997, Pokemon aired an episode that induced photosensitive epileptic seizures, which sent more than 600 Japanese children to the hospital:


As a result, the Pokemon show went into a nearly four-month hiatus. The following week's episode was pulled & didn't air until the year after, causing audience confusion because the Pokemon in the show were out of order. The New Year's special that year was also pulled & was never seen by audiences. Despite Pikachu's abilities causing the seizure-inducing strobe effect, the Porygon character was permanently pulled. In addition, changes to television standards were made:

Many Japanese television broadcasters and medical officials (along with the United Kingdom's Independent Television Commission came together to find ways to make sure the incident was not repeated. They established a series of guidelines for future animated programs, including that flashing images, especially those with red, should not flicker faster than three times per second; if the image does not have red, it still should not flicker faster than five times per second; flashing images should not be displayed for a total duration of more than two seconds; and stripes, whirls and concentric circles should not take up a large part of the television screen.

The Harding test for content that now airs on Japanese TV and streaming sites ensures no more than one flashing light occurs every 10 frames, reproduced at 29.97 FPS, where "flashing lights" are classified as extreme changes in colors from one frame to the next. Footage may either clear or fail checks, or "pass with a warning" in which case the video's luminance is automatically adjusted to mitigate potential effects.

A couple years later, the Simpsons spoofed the incident with the "Battling Seizure Robots" episode. I remember seeing this clip, but had no idea it was because of Pokemon!

 
Reactions: igor_kavinski
Jul 27, 2020
17,523
11,291
106
I actually like to hear the modem sounds, so I know what's going on.
Yeah it's very soothing but can be very high pitched. Also, sometimes you can tell that it will connect at a lower speed due to some connection instability from the slightly different handshaking sounds it makes. I think the noise is only until the handshaking is complete. Once done, the modem speaker would automatically turn off. Sometimes, it was possible to pick up the phone in another room, hear the weird noises and not have the connection get disturbed. But that was rare I think. Raise your hands if you ever shouted in dismay at the top of your voice when a family member picked up the phone!
 
Jul 27, 2020
17,523
11,291
106
In 1997, Pokemon aired an episode that induced photosensitive epileptic seizures, which sent more than 600 Japanese children to the hospital
Woah! The flashing in that Wikipedia page video clip is disorienting even for someone who doesn't suffer from epilepsy.

Who in the hell thought that would be cool???

I wanna see what that dumbass looks like.
 
Jul 27, 2020
17,523
11,291
106
On a similar note, I miss the browser progress bar. It gave an indication of where things were hanging on unresponsive pages. Now all you get is the spinning circle of despair.
During the dial-up days, I used an awesome tool called Naviscope.



It's also mentioned here: https://vsubhash.wordpress.com/2014...a-britannica-ultimate-reference-dvd-in-linux/



See how it's showing what's being downloaded? Anything being downloaded over http would show there. Multiple downloads would be multiple lines and they would be color coded depending on the file extension. I guess the red color here means that this is an executable file and it could be dangerous. Now suppose you were on some suspicious site. You would see that it is trying to download some EXE. Just click that red bar and it would kill the download. Or suppose it was an FLV flash video from some site that was loading and you loved that video and wanted an offline copy. Just right click the download bar of that FLV and you could copy its URL and then save to disk. For me, it was an absolutely indispensable tool at the time. I don't know why I stopped using it at some point and not sure if it will work fine in current Windows versions. I kinda remember it worked fine till Windows XP.
 
Reactions: lxskllr

Charmonium

Diamond Member
May 15, 2015
9,447
2,798
136
“VHS Tapes Are Worth…WHAT!?” Why I’m Kicking Myself For Throwing These Away!

View attachment 93858
https://www.geeknewsnow.net/index.p...hy-im-kicking-myself-for-throwing-these-away/
Both me and mom (bless her) have always been huge pack rats. But we've also always been very cheap pack rats so buying media is something she definitely never did. I did give away a couple boxes of VHS tapes years ago, but those were just for recording. Oddly enough, my VHS spank bank disappeared at around the same time
 
Reactions: igor_kavinski

Red Squirrel

No Lifer
May 24, 2003
67,786
12,299
126
www.anyf.ca
This one is right in the feels.

This is the mating call of a bird that is now extinct, at the time it was the last remaining one alive. The pauses were for a female to respond, but there was none so it's just silence. The bird flew away and apparently when the person recorded it replayed it to make sure he got the recording, the bird came back thinking there was another one around.

 
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