New Year Schrodinger's Photographs

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Happy New Year to both my readers. We had a great New Year’s Eve. Watched a Bond film, saw in the year with the fireworks and then went to bed.

Today we went out to Hornsea on the coast for a trip out. We do this most years. Pandemic permitting. The weather was very kind we took our instant cameras.

I took a bunch of pictures and dropped them into my pocket to develop as we went around. It occurred to me that they were kind of “Schrodinger’s Pictures”. They might have turned into great pictures in the pocket, or they might be rubbish. I reasoned (probably incorrectly) that the pictures existed in both states until I looked at them. I wondered briefly about embracing the uncertainty and never looking. That way I could claim to have probably taken some amazing pictures.

I’m not going to tell you how many turned out badly…

In the end curiosity got the better of me and I took a look. I’m still learning how to use the camera, but I’m pleased with what I got.

Quantum Thoughts

I’m referring to the “Schrodinger’s Cat” thought experiment in which a cat is placed in a box with a radioactive detector which will poison the cat if it detects a certain number of particles. The idea is that because you can’t predict whether or not the particles will be detected the cat must be both alive and dead right up to the point where you open the box and take a look. I don’t think this is the origin of the phrase “curiosity killed the cat” but it might be…..

This experiment doesn’t map onto my situation particularly well, in that the fate of the pictures is pretty much determined by what I did with them before they went in my pocket, but I’m enjoying pondering about quantum photographs, which is the important thing.

Keeping the customer happy

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I recently bought a couple of Lomo’Instant Square cameras. One for me and one as a Christmas present. When they arrived I noticed a fault with each. The lens cover was stuck open. After a brief browse I discovered that this is not an uncommon fault. I contacted the supplier and asked what they could do about it. I wasn’t expecting to get to talk to a person, but I ended up having a conversation with Jason from their support team. He was very helpful and in the end we decided that as compensation Lomo would send me a couple of light painters. These are great fun if your camera can hold the shutter open for a good length of time. I then ordered a couple of cheap lens caps for the cameras and all was well.

I’ve always liked the free and easy tone of the Lomography site. It is nice to discover that they do seem to care about their customers and try to make them happy. It’s a pity that the camera arrived with this fault, but it doesn’t affect the quality of the pictures and I’m a happy customer, which is the important thing.

The "Year of Metal Fatigue"

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Do you know what sound a fridge door makes when it falls off? I do. It’s most impressive. An initial crash followed by what I can only describe as “rolly tinkles” as bits of broken glass jar spread themselves around the kitchen. I’m not pleased that it happened. But I’m very relieved that it didn’t fail on Christmas day when there might been little people wandering around the kitchen. This seems to be the “year of metal fatigue”. I recently broke my rowing machine when a bolt failed. I’m now nervously looking at everything else around the house and planning what I’d do if it suddenly broke or fell off.

The good (and slightly amazing) thing is that we have managed to buy a replacement fridge which should be arriving tomorrow.

Remote Burglar Alarm Debugging

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Following on from the scary burglar alarm of yesterday I spent twenty minutes or so this morning on the phone to Chris, one of the support folk for Ring alarms. Interesting to see how support works these days. I used the app to authenticate the phone call so that by the time I was talking to Chris he already knew who I was and presumably what my system looked like. i was then able to send him a picture of the broken device (not sure what that told him) so that he could send out a replacement. I reckon that the true measure of a system is how well it works in failure mode, and by that yardstick I think that Ring did pretty well.

Scary Alarms

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So we were watching the BBC show “The Girl Before”. At the centre of the story is a spooky house which is totally controlled by a computer which is totally not going to turn out to be malevolent. And one of our burglar alarm sensors in our house started repeatedly muttering about being tampered with. Coincidence is a wonderful thing. The show is worth watching. We are half way in and pondering just where the evil lies. The alarm was much less fun. I’ve disconnected the offending sensor and popped its batteries out. If we get any tamper messages tonight I will be properly scared…

Console Nostalgia

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My PlayStation 3 ended up in my garage, not my loft. This is probably why it still works. Things I put in the loft tend to break. We got it out today and fired it up and were immediately transported back fifteen years or so. Mine is the first version of the machine, which means that it has memory card sockets, four usb connections and will run PlayStation 1 games. I think that PS3 was my favourite PlayStation iteration. It has a lovely glossy finish with just the right amount of black and shiny bits. The PlayStation 3 was the first thing we got with an HDMI connector, so it works just fine on our TV. Not sure what I’ll do with it, but it is nice to know that it still works. And Super Stardust is as awesome as ever.

To round off our nostalgia-fest we popped an XBOX 360 disk into number one son’s Xbox Series X. This just worked too. I think the game disk is just used to authenticate the download of a specially tweaked version of the software, but the experience was just splendid. Within a few minutes we had Dead Or Alive 3 running in what looked like very high resolution and even HDR. It was still extremely playable and a hoot. It’s interesting that the cut scenes now look much more dodgy than the in game action. I guess they can’t do much with the video, but with the game they can improve the textures and dynamic range.

Great fun.

Snoopy Calendar

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These people are selling Snoopy Calendars. This takes me back. When I was a student we all had ones which we printed on the university mainframe line printer. The best time to print them was at night, otherwise you might get told off for wasting resources. Unfortunately they seem to have sold out. The good news is that I have written a program to create calendars (any year you like). The bad news is that I seem to have lost the punched cards I wrote it on…..

Chain Reaction

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  1. If I’d not held my hand half an inch too low as I reached over to the toaster I’d not have knocked my coffee cup over.

  2. If I’d not knocked the coffee cup over I’d not have had to grab a cloth to stop the coffee from going everywhere.

  3. If I’d not had to grab a cloth I wouldn’t have moved the milk jug I was holding in the other hand.

  4. If I’d not moved the jug I wouldn’t have sprayed hot milk up the front of the coffee machine.

  5. If I’d not sprayed hot milk up the front of the coffee machine I’d not have had to give it a good clean.

  6. If I’d not cleaned the coffee machine I’d not have jogged a dial that sets the machine to expect ground coffee.

  7. If the machine expects ground coffee it refuses to work until you give it some.

  8. If you try to use the machine and it refuses to work you think it is broken and set about mending it.

  9. If all attempts to mend the machine fail you eventually get around to reading the manual (last resort of the barely competent).

  10. If you read the manual you find that the error display is telling exactly what happens and what you need to do to fix it. Hurrah.

Oh well, at least the coffee machine is cleaner now than it has been for a very long time.