Today was a reminder that computer setups rarely go as planned and almost as rarely never work the first time. Over at the shoemaker, there is limited front counter space and that means a very small computer footprint. So we dug out an old Canon monochrome that was the right size. Remembering the database itself was configured and tested on my excellent home equipment, the unexpected reared up when the Canon was connected.Any computer system that will take Win XP, a requirement for the database, does not have a resolution setting low enough for that monitor. In the past, we were able to get around this by using a high quality monitor to lower the settings, then plugging in the older unit. In this case, the setting must be 320 x 240, right off the bottom of the scale. That means the only realistic monitor is a flatscreen costing more than the computer.
We had an interesting visitor today, a lady looking for a private place. She really likes the place but was also much better looking than average, so I cannot discount that she may want a luxury place where part of the deal is fending off advances. Still, she was impressed enough to say she’ll think it over. I answered her ad only because it has been running apparently unanswered since early June and I kind of figured she would not find what she wanted for the low price she was offering. If you think you can rent a room for less than $400 in this area, you deserve what you are going to get. I suspect she’ll check out a few places like that before calling back. In the end, she never called back.
If you take away Ice Road Truckers and the Ax Men bunk on the History Channel, they sometimes televise information. One such was a series of experiments on invisibility. There is the art of tricking the human eye but that is not the true function of cloaking devices. I don’t doubt somebody is hot on the trail of bending light, which is the ultimate state of invisible. Light bends around an object, so you see what is behind it instead. According to Einstein, this is not only possible but should be easy.
I have my own theories on that one. I think it will take too much power to bend light for as far as we know only massive gravity can to do, such as the sun and I don’t want to stand next to that. I once thought deeply about practical invisibility, and I don’t agree that for most purposes that total invisibility is needed. Why 360 degrees when the side facing the “enemy” is sufficient? That is my hypothesis of how the British made a tank disappear. You place a camera facing what is behind the tank, and project that image in front of the tank, toward the observer.
As far as the Philadelphia experiment, where the navy destroyer disappeared and rematerialized between “100 yards and 100 miles away”, that is total bunk. That was in the 1940s and if there was anything to it, either some azzhole general would have used it in a war or some traitor would have sold it to the Ruskies by now.
My other premise, and this is science fiction for now, is a blanket of microscopic chips. The principle is the same as “noise canceling” headphones which emit an inverted wave that matches the frequency of unwanted sound. The two cancel out and the result is silence. Light behaves as a wave at the frequencies visible to the human eye. The chip would derive its energy from the incoming light itself, like an RFID chip, and instantly respond with waves 180 degrees out of phase. This is not true invisibility in the sense that what is behind the chips is not visible. You would see blackness the shape of the object wrapped in the microchips.
So you’ll have to rob Fort Knox at night.
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