The Unhappy Me thread

[Dubslow]

Originally Posted by Spherical Cow

On the one hand, I like the very large windows in our house, looking out on the desert with the cactus and wildlife. On the other hand, I hate that the windows are so hard on the birds. Below is the latest smack-smudge from a poor mourning dove. With the sunlight behind and up, the details of the smudge are amazing. I've altered the contrast a little on the image, but no sharpening or anything. He must have hit at pretty high speed, and exactly perpendicular to the glass.

Norm

Horrifying as its origin may be, that is a remarkable image. It might be worth seeing if there's a way to get a better quality photograph (or at least I assume such is possible, more pixels over that area, better lighting?? I'm no photographer). It almost looks to me like how an Impressionist would paint just such an event occurring.

[Spherical Cow]

Originally Posted by Dubslow

Horrifying as its origin may be, that is a remarkable image. It might be worth seeing if there's a way to get a better quality photograph (or at least I assume such is possible, more pixels over that area, better lighting?? I'm no photographer). It almost looks to me like how an Impressionist would paint just such an event occurring.

Yes, I'm going to take some pictures with a better camera (this one is a cell phone), with different lighting, and I'm going to measure some of the features. If that's the wings on top, they look too short; maybe due to their curvature, only about the first inch or two actually hit the glass? And the stuff that looks like smoke surrounding the image is odd; birds don't explode in a puff of smoke when they crash. Maybe its fine dust on the wings, from all the time they spend on the ground eating seeds and bugs and such. Regardless, an eerie image to me. Yes, an Impressionist image is the right way to describe it.

Norm

[xilman]

Originally Posted by Spherical Cow

Y And the stuff that looks like smoke surrounding the image is odd; birds don't explode in a puff of smoke when they crash. Maybe its fine dust on the wings, from all the time they spend on the ground eating seeds and bugs and such.

It is dust, extremely fine dust, but it doesn't come from the ground. It is called "powder down" and is part of the feathers. Quite a few species seem to have it; I've seen images from pigeons and blackbirds here in the UK.

[Spherical Cow]

Ah- thanks for that info. I've never heard of "powder down".

Norm

[LaurV]

Originally Posted by Spherical Cow

birds don't explode in a puff of smoke when they crash

wrong, they do, I can prove it !

[Spherical Cow]

(Cue the Monty Python & the Holy Grail Music:)

"Oh, yeah, an Angry Bird, may be, but not a desert mourning dove. That's what I meant...
Are you suggesting that Angry Birds are migratory?"

[wombatman]

This is mostly just grousing as it's part of the job, but I had a major proposal to NSF rejected. My scores were improved compared to my first one, but still nowhere near what they need to be.

Scientific research is all about taking hits to the ego and trying to improve from your failures. Still sucks ass when you're going through it.

[VictordeHolland]

I've been busy upgrading a 2S Supermicro board (with 8 memory slots):
1x Xeon E5-2620 (v1)
4x 4GB ECC ram

to

2x Xeon E5-2650 (v1)
8x 4GB ECC ram

for the better part of a day now. The 2620 with the 4 memory modules was in working order when I started.

I installed both CPUs and heatsinks and the 8 memory modules (they're all the same brand/part#) and it failed to boot (not even to the BIOS) with error code 2F which is memory related) according to https://www.supermicro.com/support/faqs/faq.cfm?faq=18917

So I removed all the memory but 1 stick (which was also previously installed) and hurray it booted.

I've been trying different combinations of slots/modules to identify the defective slot(s) and/or memory module(s) for the last couple of hours......

[kladner]

Our local National Propaganda Radio station has stopped broadcasting BBC World Service in daylight hours. It is now on at 11 PM and 1 AM.

[Uncwilly]

Might I suggest that you find a podcast of BBC WS?

[kladner]

Originally Posted by Uncwilly

Might I suggest that you find a podcast of BBC WS?

I suppose that is an appropriate response. However, I have very diverse news sources anyway. Part of my concern is that less-informed listeners just had their news feed narrowed even more. BBC was at least some relief from the slanted, weasel-worded stories on NPR.