End of the world

Dinesh · Post by **Dinesh** » Mon May 23, 2011 3:56 pm

I hope everyone had a wonderful End of the World weekend (remember it was supposed to be on May 21st at 6pm)! I myself was ruminating on the possibilities of using quantum tunnelling and carbon nanotubes as a possible method of holographic cryptography, when Joy (wifey) reminded me that the end of the world is due in about 20 minutes, so was there a point to all this?

Kiffdino · Post by **Kiffdino** » Tue May 24, 2011 4:18 am

luckily the world didnt end last saturday, otherwise the work on my doomsday device would have been for nothing

Jeffrey Weil · Post by **Jeffrey Weil** » Thu May 26, 2011 11:21 am

I was just worried about all the earthquakes messing with my exposures.

Jeff W

Dinesh · Post by **Dinesh** » Thu May 26, 2011 12:32 pm

Believe it or not, I actually had an exposure come out through an earthquake. Sometime around 88 I was in my studio in Van Nuys (CA), in the middle of a shot, shutter open, when an earthquake hit. I ran out leaving the shutter open for what was supposed to be a 1 min exposure. Some 15 or 20 mins later, I went back in and was about to throw out the film. Then, just for what-the-hell-let's see-what-happens I developed the film. It came out!! My only explanation is that the gods of holography arranged that the fringes move in phase with the earthquake resulting in no nett motion. When the gods are helping you out, don't argue the point!

Jeffrey Weil · Post by **Jeffrey Weil** » Thu May 26, 2011 1:18 pm

At Polaroid they had an earthquake every hour. The subway was 15 feet under the tables. They had a seismograph hooked up to the copy equipment to pause when things started to shake.

Jeff W

Kiffdino · Post by **Kiffdino** » Mon Jun 06, 2011 10:37 am

Jeffrey Weil wrote:At Polaroid they had an earthquake every hour. The subway was 15 feet under the tables. They had a seismograph hooked up to the copy equipment to pause when things started to shake.

Jeff W

haha, that approach to this problem is so very scientific.
i just would have gotten the train schedule, so much cheaper.

Dinesh · Post by **Dinesh** » Mon Jun 06, 2011 11:48 am

Kiffdino wrote:i just would have gotten the train schedule, so much cheaper.

Assuming the trains ran on time. I suspect for the Boston area, that's quite an assumption!

My solution would have been to have a mercury switch connected to a flip flop and a counter. Every time the mercury switch activated (ie the mercury shifted), it'd send a trigger to the flip flop and cause a change of state. The first "flip" of the flip flop turns off the shutter. So long as the mercury switch continues to shift, a trigger pulse is applied to the flip flop and the flip flop changes state. A counter counts the rate of incidence of the pulses to the flip flop and if no change occurs in some time period, the shutter comes back on. This would consist of maybe two or three chips and would cost maybe a dollar or two.

holorefugee · Post by **holorefugee** » Sat Jun 18, 2011 9:54 pm

I think you would find this more sensitive and quite cheap and easy to build:

http://www.infiltec.com/seismo/inf-qmsd.gif