How Many Mega Pixels Are Your Eyes?

Your Eye's "megapixel" Resolution

(Picked up from Reddit and deviantart.com)

The average human retina has five million cone receptors on it. Since the cones are responsible for colour vision, you might suppose that this equates to a five megapixel equivilant for the human eye.

But there are also a hundred million rods that detect monochrome contrast, which plays an important role in the sharpness of the image you see. And even this 105MP is an underestimate because the eye is not a still camera.

You have two eyes (no kidding!) and they continually flick around to cover a much larger area than your field of view and the composite image is assembled in the brain - not unlike stitching together a panoramic photo. In good light, you can distinguish two fine lines if they are seperate by at least 0.6 arc-minutes (0.01.Degrees).

This gives an equivilant pixel size of 0.3 arc-minutes. If you take a conservative 120 degrees as your horizontal field of view and 60 degrees in the vertical plane, this translates to ...

576 megapixels of available image data.

Curiously - as a counterpoint to this - most people cannot distinguish the difference in quality between a 300dpi and a 150dpi photo when printed at 6x4", when viewed at normal viewing distances.

So: although the human eye and brain when combined can resolve massive amounts of data, for imaging purposes, 150dpi output is more than enough to provide adequate data for us to accept the result as photographic quality.

But don't forget that women have more cones and men have more rods - I kid you not.Therefore the ladies see colours brighter than gents but can't see as well when it gets dark.

Days End

Winter yields to Spring as Day yields to night. You can clearly see here on my drive home.

Spring Cleaning

Spring abounds, and all is new again.

This is a good time to do some yard work. Here at Barbs house we did a little tree trimming.

Before and after shots.

Not bad for Just barb Jarrod and I.

If You Paid Attention, Life Would Be Eaiser.

Attention people of earth. You share this planet with other people. Please pay attention to what is going on around you.

If you stop three car links back from the intersection, the last guy in line is likely in the middle of the intersection behind you, pull up and pay attention you dim-witted driver. Also thanks for waiving me to go first at the intersection. Clearly you don’t know how to drive and I am glad to go ahead of you. Sure you were at the intersection a full minute before I even came to a stop, your clear confusion about simple traffic rules means you should be in back of me somewhere, so I will not get caught up in your accident when it happens.

Yes you missed your turn, kindly proceed to the next available turn and make your turn then. Don’t back up on the shoulder, make some kind of crazy u turn, or turn in font of others from the wrong lane. Yes you will be slightly delayed, that is your penalty for not paying attention.

Just pretend, for a moment, that other people work say somewhere around 9- and get out some where say… around five. Closing down the road for 2 hours should be done BETWEEN these times. Not 8:30- 10:30 when everyone is rushing around. No waiting until 4-6 is not a good idea either. Use that brain please.

Inside it gets worse.

If you chose to check out at the Pharmacy counter, because when you wattled past the regular checkout line it was to busy, have your shit together and don’t chit chat with the counter person, someone behind you is waiting for their GD pain medication. Who does half their grocery purchase at the freaking pharmacy anyway, get a life.

If you are a check out person, pay attention. I have been pacing in front of the desk for 30 min. You just paged my name. No I did not call my prescription in a week ago. Yes its on the counter right be-fircken hind you. Yes I am talking funny, there is cotton in my mouth, the local is wearing off and I am being delayed as I am doing the thinking for both of us. The fact that you talking right now and not ringing me up is driving me crazy so if you can not tell that I am in need of service standing her in front of you, check you pulse, you may be dead. If not check it again in a few seconds as I am going to kill you if you don’t ring me up.

People, just pay attention. Is it really that much to ask?

Dental Days

It struck me yesterday, as I was sitting in the Dentist chair, getting an errant wisdom tooth pulled….

Dentistry is really a pretty crude profession. Sure its better than caveman days but I mean to pull a tooth they yank it out. Sure we now have x-rays and anesthetics (thank god for that) but that still does not really assuage the fear and trepidation that you feel when that crunching popping sound races from your jaw bone to your brain registering …. Hey this guy is yanking out a bone. A bone out of my face. It took me years to grow and now Dr. “Don’t worry, I do this all the time” is just going to crank it out like yesterdays trash… twist, cruch, crack… there you go all done.

Seems to me, they should be able to zap it out or something. This is why you should never do the local. But the risks of getting “knocked out” is even greater…

I guess it could be worse; I could have to do it myself with crude tools ala Tom Hanks/Castaway style.

Sunday- Lost In The Shuffle

After a slow start and a long day of working on stuff indoors, the fading sun shot fingers of light and shadows across the room reminding me that I had lost a perfectly sunny day.

Oh well, inside stuff has to be done sometimes. Actually, Barb’s taxes were completed, and although we both ended up with a little cabin fever, it was nice to get one more thing off the “to do” list.

Cool Gear - Best Doormat Ever

Nothing seems to capture my dual personality better than the Come in, Go away door made by… oh who cares, how cool is this thing.

Um... Snack Time

Perhaps I’m sentimental, but I long for the days when snacks were normal.

Now everyone is fire hot this, smoking hole that… well your reading a blog so you must be alive so you must have seen the bomb blast barrage of adds and the orange sticky finger kids in trail with their flaming hot Cheeto breath, but this has to be the craziest thing I have seen.

Blairs Death Rain billed as Americas favorite chip , I mean it says so right on the bag right? I mean when I think chip capital of the US , I think of New Jersey, where these puppies are made, hatched or whatever.

The best part is the package really:

DEATH RAIN! FEEL ALIVE!

Death rain, feel alive? What the hell is that supposed to mean. Eat this chips, cheat death, feel more alive. What’s crazy is I love hot stuff, good spicy open the pores, bring you to your knees hot but these chips are in its usual contradictory fashion the ones with the hot peppers, and the flames on the package are clearly marked MEDIUM.

Genius. Seriously who thinks this shit up?

Dinner Last Friday

Yatsuba makes sushi taste like heaven.

Lately, indulgences have been rare but this one was worth it.

Fat Bastard

Enough said.

Cool Gear- Sony H9

Why My Next Camera May Never Come…

In true Vaporware tradition my next camera always seems to be around the corner. I can not believe how far digital cameras have come. Every week (just like watches, computers, cars, and various other things) I have a new object of desire.

This week, The Mega Zoom Sony H9 (pictured)

But features/options are driving me nuts. I am not talking about standard mega pixels, zoom, shutter speed, huge displays, ISO, shutter lag… you know the standard things you worry about. Oh no, there are a whole new list of things that will confuse the consumer. In a one-upmanship style war between the manufactures, I cant keep up with what is out there much less what I really want.

Here are some new “Uber” features, some more lust-worthy than others:

Weather Proof “?”
Anti-Shake, Image stabilization etc.
Mechanical, Image stabilization, etc. (like above only better?)
Gyro system to reduce shakiness- Pentax (like above only weirder)
Mega Zoom
Shadow Development Technology-Don’t ask me ask Olympus.
Face recognition – seriously , supposed to find and focus on faces.
Full frame sensors
Blink Shot technology- this one from Canon
High-definition outputs
More invented daily and unleashed on the public.

What is a person to do? How about comparing actual photos taken with A particular camera. Check out the Flikcr Camera Finder.

Eating for Dummies

Ok, I know that Joe thought he was cool with his titanium spork, but to be truly cool the new “must have” eating utensil: The Pasta Fork.

The PASTA FORK takes useless utensil design to a new level. Be the first on your block to say, “ what was I thinking” when you open your drawer and see this unused thing stare back at you.

The idea: grab the top, run your fingers down the thing, fork twists, pasta wraps, you eat. Much easier than manually turning the thing, right?

Seen here in sale over the pond. Operators are standing by.

Thanks Engadget, for finding this lo-tech gadget for us.