Random Photos

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Rubber ducks of many colors lined up along the inside of a vehicle's rear window, with a yellow 'LEARN TO PARK' sticker on the glass at the right.
 
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Today I was at the North Carolina State Fairgrounds for a coin/stamp/postcard show. Nearby was one station of the "State Fair Flyer" chairlift ride. I noticed the station's name is "Wilbur".

Chairlift boarding station with a green sign reading State Fair Flyer, a yellow and blue station sign reading Wilbur Station, and exit gates beside a chain-link fence.


Hmmm. I thought, I bet the other station's name is "Orville". I hiked to the other end, and sure enough...

Chairlift ride station with a colorful sign reading "BEST RIDE BEST VIEWS" and "STATE FAIR FLYER," with cables, towers and a parking lot behind it.
 
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Well clearly I'll need to do more reading about this encoding...

Two close-up photos of a vinyl record groove. Top: a stylus tip resting in the grooves. Bottom: labelled 'Needle', 'Waves of right channel' and 'Waves of left channel', showing the groove wall undulations.
 
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berkeman said:
Well clearly I'll need to do more reading about this encoding...
One channel pushes the needle left/right and the other up/down, IIRC. I think the arrows may be trying to point out vinyl structures that are "mostly a ridge" and "mostly a joggle".

Edit: or possibly the orthogonal directions are the two diagonals - that might make more sense.

Edit 2: apparently it is the diagonals: https://www.stereophile.com/content/how-does-stereo-vinyl-record-work.
 
And in the 1970s there were quadraphonic (4-channel) LPs, with the four channels encoded into the two physical LP channels in such a way that they could be decoded on playback. There were several incompatible schemes for this, and so the whole concept was never very successful commercially.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadraphonic_sound

IIRC some audio receivers or preamplifiers had multiple quad decoding circuits, with a selector knob that you set according to the type of quad LP you were playing. This was high-end stuff that I couldn't afford in my poor student days.
 
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berkeman said:
Well clearly I'll need to do more reading about this encoding...
One of my previous workplace tried to dabble into touchless digitalization of wax recordings. (Some 20+ years ago, when it was still relevant/revolutionary). Not something simple...
 
jtbell said:
There were several incompatible schemes for this, and so the whole concept was never very successful commercially.
The neat thing about the stereo system in @berkeman's photo is that both diagonal channels have a component in the horizontal direction that a mono player expects. So if you only have a mono player you get an average of the two channels, but a stereo player plays the two independently. So I think it still works for the less affluent customer. I'm guessing the quadraphonic system did not...
 
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On my way home from Raleigh today, I stopped in High Point NC. This is billed as the "World's Largest Chest of Drawers".

Giant brown wooden chest of drawers sculpture with carved shell motifs and brass-colored pulls, a striped blue and pink banner draped over one side, sign reading Furniture Capital of the World, High Point, NC.


Just outside town, the Furnitureland South complex has what looks like an even larger chest of drawers, but it's only a façade.

Oversized carved wooden chest of drawers with a scrolled pediment and claw feet standing in front of a brick and glass commercial building, with a parking lot and parked cars in the foreground.


Nearby Thomasville has "The Chair".

Giant wooden-style chair sculpture on a stone pedestal in a park, with a plaque on the base, flowerbeds of tulips and pansies in front, and a brick office building to the right.


If one could climb on it, it would be a great place for railfans to sit and watch trains. :cool:

Street intersection in a small city on a sunny day, with a railroad crossing in the foreground, crossing gate arms and signal lights, and a large red sculpture on the left.
 
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I obviously can't take credit for this gif but the large chest of drawers posted by @jtbell sure made me think of Seinfeld. Room for more than just a tourist per drawer. 😆

Animated GIF from the TV show Seinfeld showing a wooden dresser with a drawer pulled open, a blue lava lamp, red fruit and a potted plant on top, and a man in a patterned shirt pushing the drawer closed.
 
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jtbell said:
This is billed as the "World's Largest Chest of Drawers".
With already half pairs of socks looks authentic enough :wink:
 
A little bit of Texas style smoked corned beef for my great-great grandpappy, on my mothers side. :biggrin:


Grey granite headstone reading McCLARRON, with a metal pan or dish of food placed on the concrete base in front of it, set in a grassy cemetery.

Two seasoned brisket cuts with dark bark sitting on a smoker grill grate.


To make a proper corned beef and cabbage later and a few drinks waiting for that to be done.
Green cocktail in a Jack Daniel's Rye glass with ice cubes, beside bottles of De Kuyper Curaçao, George Dickel whisky and Langers orange juice cocktail concentrate on a workbench.
 
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Sunny weekend in the woods, good opportunity to break out the macro lens and see what's out-n-about:

Macro photo of a tiny translucent arthropod with long thin legs on a rough, dark brown bark surface, with a white 20 µm scale bar in the lower right corner.

[Edit: scale bar error...]


This one came out pretty good, too...

Close-up macro photo of dark, decaying wood with green moss growing along its crumbly top edge, surrounded by brown soil, bits of bark and small pale debris.
 
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  • Microscope photo of a tiny translucent arthropod with long thin legs on a dark, textured surface, with a white scale bar labelled 20 µm in the lower right.
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Always a photo after a cappuccino.
Promotional poster of a woman in green boxing gloves and green Thai boxing shorts, beside a flame-shaped sign reading HOT DEALS and Thai text, with a plate of food at the lower right.
 
Part of grab food ad poster on bus. Looks like the same girl.
Promotional poster in Thai for GrabFood with a woman in a dark jacket beside text reading ท้าคุณสั่ง เราพร้อมส่งใน 30 นาที, a 20% discount offer, and GrabFood No. 1 Food Delivery badge.
 
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Ground covered in dense low-growing moss phlox with bands of bright magenta and pale lavender flowers, a dark rock at the top, and a metal pole at the left edge.
 
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Two different photos taken recently...

Leaves in spring sunlight:

Close-up of thin bare branches with newly opened orange and reddish young leaf buds, backlit by low sunlight against a blurred dark background.


...and a car in hard rain:

Night photo of a wet city street in heavy rain, with a dark car's headlights glowing toward the camera and parked cars along the left side under streetlights.


(luckily I had my weatherproof camera with me at that time :smile:)
 
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So much for our hoped-for "upset of the century" in the first round of the NCAA women's basketball tournament...

Large projection screen in a lounge showing a live college basketball game on ESPN, with a scoreboard overlay listing Presbyterian 39 and South Carolina 91 and a Colonial Life arena court visible.
 
DennisN said:
luckily I had my weatherproof camera with me at that time
Did it startle the driver when your flash went off? I'll bet they thought they had been caught by a speed camera... :smile:
 
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berkeman said:
Did it startle the driver when your flash went off?
No, I didn't use flash (a fast lens (f/1.4 in this case) and high ISO is often sufficient for me). Actually I almost never use flash.

Edit: By the way, I also like to draw as little attention as possible to myself when I'm shooting (and flash is pretty much the opposite :smile:). One thing I have clearly noticed after I started shooting with system cameras is that nearby people very often take notice of me.

I guess nowadays people are so used to smartphones so when the see a system camera they may think, well, he's doing something unusual. And in fact I've been asked quite a few times what I am doing :biggrin:.

And if I'm going around in the city with a big zoom lens, it's even worse, then people REALLY take notice :biggrin:.

And it does not fit my personality at all, I usually don't want to be noticed. But no pain, no gain, I guess. :smile:
 
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DennisN said:
By the way, I also like to draw as little attention as possible to myself when I'm shooting (and flash is pretty much the opposite :smile:).
I take the opposite approach... :wink:

Two side-by-side photos of an older man in a yellow high-visibility vest and black cap pointing a hair dryer at passing traffic on a road, with the caption: A 74-year-old man uses his hair dryer to slow traffic near his home
 
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