holographyforum IRC channel?

Topics not fitting anywhere else.
Din
Posts: 402
Joined: Thu Mar 12, 2015 4:47 pm

Re: holographyforum IRC channel?

Post by Din »

lobaz wrote:This forum has a long history, that's why it uses quite old school backend. The best property of this forum is exactly THE history - almost everything concerning holography has been discussed here, and you can still find it here. I am not sure if it is possible to make e.g. reddit holography corner and transfer old posts there. Without this rich history, the forum means nothing.
Yes, agree. The history of the forum was what made it unique. There was a wealth of information and discussion about topics rarely, or never, seen in other publications or books from a very knowledgeable base. Martin would bring up some very interesting posts on the chemistry of holography; don't know if he looks in nowadays. I used to talk about the physics of holography. Petr, you and I talked about the eye as an electronic/computing machine. My interest in this was brought about by thinking of the hologram and the viewer as sub-components of a machine with their response functions. You may remember I asked if the eye was bandwidth limited and we carried on this discussion for a while. We talked about colour in holography, about the characteristics of exposure and how to get an idea of "enough exposure".

The problem I had with Facebook (no longer have a Facebook account) is that all the older display holographers simply talked about other display holographers. They all seem to wallow in the knowing of some "famous" holographer, and whatever information these display holographers had was always justified by an "expert" and "famous" holographer. To me, this was not talking about holography, it was simply name-dropping.Just because someone is "famous" does not mean that this person is all-knowing! Also, in Facebook, I found people would simply fan their ego.

For example: Is there any artistic merit in a display hologram, simply because it's a display hologram, vis-a-vis classical art appreciation? To what do we compare it: Paintings? Sculpture? Can we transcend 3D and create "extra-3d" illusions? Is there an Escher equivalent of a hologram?

Does anyone have any interesting or creative lighting methods. Danny Bruza gave a talk on lighting at PCGG2, where he used a broken lightbulb as a diffuser.

Can you record a fractal? I don't mean the image of a fractal, but an actual fractal. Given a semi-random light field, is it possible to create a hologram that will reconstruct such a semi-random pattern.

I don't suppose any of these questions will be answered (although I hope that if a discussion does prevail, it will be ordered and amicable). But, I offer these suggestions to actually debate holography, rather than simply bring up old holographers and genuflect to them in print.
pluto
Posts: 99
Joined: Fri Feb 05, 2016 2:06 am

Re: holographyforum IRC channel?

Post by pluto »

Original poster here, I created a new account.

I think you have a good point about the forum having history, but things like Facebook have already come along and people seem to prefer to congregate there. The history is still here if it's needed. I don't particularly like Facebook, nor do I think it's well suited as an alternative to this forum.

I like the low latency aspect of chatrooms/IRC. It's also more casual, so you can ask questions that might not warrant a whole thread, or perhaps a stupid question that you don't want a permanent record of, heh. And to re-iterate, it's instant communication, so it encourages a higher level of engagement. You don't have to refresh and check different parts of the forum.

On Reddit, every post is on one page. That means people have a higher chance of seeing it, and interacting with it. It also takes a more modern format where you can post pictures and video that show up inline, but they are hosted elsewhere such that they don't end up as dead links a year later. Before I found this forum, the first place I looked for a holography community was Reddit, as this is typical of almost any group of people who share an interest. It was only days later that I stumbled upon this forum.

That said, this forum has a certain quality to it that I enjoy. It's kind of like a small town away from the city where everybody knows one another :)

I'm brand new here, so I'm not going to try to boil the ocean. Just some food for thought.
pluto
Posts: 99
Joined: Fri Feb 05, 2016 2:06 am

Re: holographyforum IRC channel?

Post by pluto »

OK, I've created a channel on irc.freenode.net called ##holography as an experiment.

There's also a channel called #optics (not mine) that includes holography in its topic. It already has a few people in it.

I really hope we can grow the holography community. I can't figure out for the life of me why so few people are interested in it.

Greater numbers will mean more experimentation, innovation and discovery!
Last edited by pluto on Fri Feb 26, 2016 10:34 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Din
Posts: 402
Joined: Thu Mar 12, 2015 4:47 pm

Re: holographyforum IRC channel?

Post by Din »

Just out of curiousity, as a 5-star, dyed-in-tthe-wool Luddite, what's 'irc'' ?
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admin_jsfisher
Site Admin
Posts: 116
Joined: Sun Jan 04, 2015 12:35 am

Re: holographyforum IRC channel?

Post by admin_jsfisher »

IRC = "Internet Relay Chat".

It started out as a simple chat-room sort of thing back in the infancy of the Internet. It has fallen well out of favor with all the new-fangled things we have these days.

mIRC is something of the standard implementation for an IRC client. There are lots of customizations for it, too. My favorite was something called Acid Max, but that's me. Other clients exist, including some that are web based.

YMMV
Din
Posts: 402
Joined: Thu Mar 12, 2015 4:47 pm

Re: holographyforum IRC channel?

Post by Din »

Oh, right. Got it. Thanks. I remember that when Colin ran the forum, there was a text box where you could directly communicate with whoever was on the forum. Dave Battin had some sort of internet phone thing whereby you called this number and chatted with whoever was also on the line. It was on Saturday morning, San Diego time. I got on that on few occasions, but the phone lines were always at times when I was reading the paper.

Anyways, thanks again.
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