Cosmos Computed

The visible world around us is constantly changing. One second we may have the sun in our eyes, and another we're in a dark closet trying to find the light switch. Such fluctuations in brightness could have ended up being a serious problem for our vision if it weren't for a handy built-in feature: our eyes automatically adapt to the lighting conditions of the surrounding environment. Most people are well aware that their pupils change size to handle lighting conditions. A larger pupil admits more light and makes the scene brighter, while a smaller pupil admits less light and makes the scene dimmer. This mechanism is fast and effective, and is controlled by the brain stem, which acts autonomously - you don't even have to think about it. As useful as this type of adaptation may be, it has some limitations. For example, most artificial lighting is 20 times dimmer than the sun, while pupil dilation only brightens light by a factor of 4 (when compared with a fully constricted pu...

First off, apologies for this long-overdue post. I've had a busy month, and although I would have liked to post this within a few days of the beginning of 2016, I wasn't able to get it done until now. 2015 was a great year, and I think the images in this post will reflect that. In the previous year's image collection ( click here to view ), the images were only photographs. The image editing was restricted to cropping; I didn't need anything more. In this collection, though, I have drawings, CGI, and microphotography. These new types of images required more processing to prepare them for viewing. Of course, I used GIMP. I can't afford to pay for software. Instead of listing tons of images, I picked out the most important ones. I also tried not to add the images from previous blog posts; the majority of what follows is new stuff. I also attempt to analyze the images from both a scientific and artistic standpoint. Most likely, by the time most of you read this, you...

I have some crazy news! I was radiated by some radiation, and became radioactive. Over time, my radioactiveness decreased, and as it decreased, my mass decreased as well. I am now a foot shorter than I used to be, and weigh 50 pounds less! At the top of this post, you can see a picture which proves it. In the photo, I'm sitting on a weird box that materialized in the middle of the road... Okay, so you probably know what's going on here. I didn't really shrink; I'm obviously sitting on a chalk drawing. I designed the chalk drawing to look 3-dimensional when viewed from a certain angle. From other angles, it looks totally different; some of the lines that appear parallel in the photo aren't actually parallel at all. It only looks that way because it's an illusion. Here's another example: This was a little more complicated to draw. Not only were there parallel lines, but there were also circular shapes and hidden areas. And here's my best chalk drawing so f...

I recently created a couple of nature-themed animated GIFs. (Click the images to view larger.) The first image is a blossoming tree. I thought the tree looked pretty, but I realized that part of the beauty came from the gentle swaying in the wind. So I decided to animate the image. To do this, I snapped a quick series of photos. Then, I used GIMP to reduce unwanted noise and scale them down. Finally, I saved the images as a looping animated GIF. The result takes a while to load, and seems kind of jerky, so I'm not sure whether I like it. My next image is a late snowstorm. In many snowstorm photos it is difficult to tell the difference between the falling snow and the already-fallen snow. Again, an animated image seemed necessary. In this case, however, a series of photos wasn't quick enough, so I took a video instead. I then grabbed a sequence of 10 still frames from the video. Again using GIMP, I scaled them down and saved as a GIF. The problem with animated images like this ...

In this post, I'm including some of the photos of snowflakes I've taken over the past few days. As usual, these close-ups were taken using my macro setup . I did not edit the photos in any way. New posts every month - subscribe for free !

The year of 2014 is over; the year of 2015 has begun. Over the past year, I took a lot of pictures - more than 1200 photos of clouds, bugs, plants, rocks, and more. I deleted most of the low-quality and repetitive photos. Then, I selected 20 of the remaining photos which I thought were the most interesting or significant. In this post, I'll include those photos, in chronological order. Spring 1. Cold Hummingbird I took this photo after a late snowstorm in Spring. In the days leading up to the storm, it was warm and sunny and the fields were green, so the snow came rather unexpectedly. During the storm, one of the hummingbirds at our feeder was covered in ice and could barely fly. This hummingbird was more fortunate, but unlucky nevertheless. 2. Green Landscape I took this photo on the side of a biking trail. I didn't edit or crop the photo - this is how it looked. 3. Indian Paintbrush The Indian Paintbrush is an unusual flower. What appear to be flower petals are actually brigh...