A Leslie Wong Blog

Chuck Cage at Wired has a good article on explaining all the numbers in HDTV.

He says: “A 20/20 human eye can’t recognize details smaller than 1/60 of a degree of arc. Don’t worry, you don’t have to understand that. With a little math, though, we can use this number to find the distance beyond which the eye has trouble distinguishing one pixel from another. It turns out to be 137 percent of the diagonal measurement of any 16:9 widescreen: around 38 inches from a 32-inch TV. So if you’re sitting 5 feet away, you’ll never notice the difference between 720 and 1,080 lines of resolution. But if you trade up to a 60-inch screen, that distance jumps to almost six feet. Better push the couch back,”

I wonder how many people sit 38 inches from their 32 inch TV? I have a 480i TV (read, CRT Sony KV-36FV1) and if I sit 42 inches away while playing Halo 3, I get car sick.

I ordered OS X 10.5 (Leopard) from Amazon.com and it was delivered today. I didn’t buy the boxed retail version of OS X 10.4 (Tiger) because it came installed on my Macintrash, but I did buy the retail version of Panther for my my other Macintrash, a Powerbook. When I opened the box from Amazon, the first thing I noticed was how much smaller Leopard is than Panther.

I’ve always liked flashlights – I think every kid did. I didn’t know there were serious “flashaholics” until I came upon candlepowerforums.com. These people are very serious about flashlights. Who knew one could spend upwards of $800 for a flashlight?

Look at this thread on the Ultrafire C2. After I read it, I had to have one. The Ultrafire C2 makes my upgraded (Terralux MiniStar2 Extreme LED) Mini-Mag light look like a candle.

Hong Kong, with their cheap manufacturing, seems to be a source for these inexpensive but powerful flashlights. I ordered some parts from dealextreme.com – a Cree P4 LED Emitter and a 3.6V~9V 800mA Regulated IC Circuit Board.

I thought I would use these new parts instead of the original LED and voltage dropping resistor in modding this $12 “SUPER” 7 watt Luxeon LED flashlight I bought from a Hong Kong vendor on eBay.

My first mod sort of failed in that I didn’t consider the position of the new LED in the reflector for that all important beam. I guess that’s how you learn.

A Western Scrub-Jay, crestless blue head with white throat; blue wings and tail, olive-gray back, light gray underparts, landed on my Macbook.

I saw this YouTube video on John C Dvorak’s blog:

Discover Magazine writes, “Columbia University physicist Brian Greene recently chose the winner of the String Theory in Two Minutes or Less user-generated video contest.”

Muhammad Saleem over at Digg.com writes: “It’s a map of the entire Internet. At the moment we’re displaying the owner of each IP address (grey boxes), and which IP addresses are listed on the Spamhaus XBL blacklist (red dots), but we should be able to show other things in the future. Yes, we map all 4,294,967,296 IP addresses onto a huge image and let you zoom into it and pan around.”

I always thought the internets were bigger.

read more | digg story

September 21, 2009: the link no longer loads.

debng over at digg.com writes, “Horology has seen many significant technological advancements in modern times as it progressed from the early days of the spring powered clock up to IBM’s Linux Wrist Watch project.”

I always considered myself a (w)hor(e). I got my first watch when I was 7 or 8. Instead of a sweep second hand, it had a jet plane mounted on a clear disk so it looked like it flew around the dial. I loved that watch.

My friend Kenny gave me one of his Rolexes. He bought his first one because I told him that GQ said that a boat salesman knew a customer was serious if he was wearing a Rolex and Gucci loafers.

Through my horological reading, I found that most watch collectors recognize Rolexes more for their value as status symbol than it’s craftsmanship – it is a mass produced watch. A. Lange & Sohne, Audemars Piguet, Blancpain, Officine Panerai, Patek Phillippe, Ulysse Nardin, Vacheron Constantin and Zenith are just a few of the (w)hor(e) watch names, that, except for the watch cognoscenti, wouldn’t mean much to the average person.

At a recent family gathering, I sat next to someone who was wearing a Ulysse Nardin and I asked him if I could look at it and he obliged. The only other time I’ve seen (w)hor(e) watches were at Tourneau on 57th Street.

With my first bonus, I bought an Omega Speedmaster Professional (ref. 3570.50.00), better known as the first watch worn on the moon. Being independently poor, that will probably be the extent of my (w)hor(ing) for a while.

read more | digg story

Trumpeter and composer Wynton Marsalis turned 46 today. I have a faint recollection of complimenting him on his set outside Sweet Basil, (or was it Joanna’s) in the early 80′s. That’s a lot of water under the bridge.

Currently, my favorite work of his is Doin’ (Y)Our Thing, on his album, From The Plantation To The Penitentiary.