Sep 14, 2009
Microbe videos
I added several pages of videos taken through the microscope to the Protist gallery, based on hay infusions from samples taken locally (95841):

Amoeba videos
Bacteria videos
Colpoda videos
Paramecium videos
Vorticella videos

Aug 2, 2009
Colpoda Spiralis?
Today I drafted a page about a species of colpoda I first observed on June 3 that is unlike any colpoda I've ever seen before. I am tentatively identifying it as Colpoda spiralis based primarily on that species' most distinct feature. This is a very unusual species, which superficially resmbles a snail.

On the coploda spiralis page I have several pictures and a bunch of videos

July 13, 2009
Microscopic Gallery
I added serveral new entries to the Microscopic Gallery:

Paddy Pollen
Ascaris cross section
Blood Fluke Eggs
Dog Columnar Ciliated Epithelium
Freshwater Fish Gill
Hydra Budding
hydra longitudinal section
Mantis Leg
Mitosis Ascaris Egg Cross Section
Female Mosquito
Mouse Cuboidal Epithelium
Pig Adipose
Planaria cs
Taenia Pisiformis

Jun 27, 2009
Microscopic Gallery
I added serveral new entries to the Microscopic Gallery:

Rhizopus
Poa Leaf cs
Pome Scleroid
Pumpkin Stem cs
Rhoeo discolor
Rice Stem cs
Root Meristem
Seminal Bud Stem Tip ls
Stem Collenchyma
Stem Parenchyma
Stem Sclerenchyma
Stem Tracheid

Jun 23, 2009
Microscopic Gallery
I added serveral new entries to the Microscopic Gallery:

Mitosis Onion root tip
Onion Epidermis
Pine Leaf
Pine Root

Jun 21, 2009
Microscopic Gallery
I added serveral new entries to the Microscopic Gallery:

Spirogyra Conjugation
Coprinus mushroom set
Cucurbita Stem
Fern Leaf Sorus
Fern Prothallium
Hydrilla Verticillata leaf
Ipomea leaf cs
Ipomoea root
Lillium Anther cs
Lilium Ovary

May 18, 2009
More Microscpic views
Today I added:

House bee mouth
Housefly mouth
Human blood
Human Sweatglands
Hydra Cross Section
Mosquito larva
Mosquito mouth
Mosquito wing

May 17, 2009
New microscopic views
I recently obtained 3 sets of prepared slides, each one has 100 slides. These are mostly bilogical subjects but there are some that are manmade (most notably the letter "e", can you believe some people pay up to $4 for a slide with the letter "e" on it?). I finished imaging the first 50 of what turned out to be "set b" (there is a sheet with the contents but it doesn't identifiy the sets as "a" "b" and "c").

I also upgraded my microscope, not that the old one was that bad but it was my first lab quality microscope and I didn't know much about how to properly care for such an instrument, most notably how to clean it, or , more importantly, how *not* to clean it! So, for about $140 less than what I paid for my original microscope I got one that seems every bit its equal. I also upgraded my microscope camera.

I am now making webpages featuring the results of the first 50 slides. So far I have finsished:

Blood comparison
Butterfly Wing
Daphnia
Dog cardiac muscle
Dog duodenum
Dog esophagus
Dog Ileum
Dog Jejunum
Dog pancreas
Dog rectum
Dog skeletal msuscle
Dog small intestine
Dog smooth muscle
Dog spleen
Dog squamos epithelium
Dog stomach
Dog taste buds
Dog trachea
Dog ureter

[seeing a trend here?]

Earthworm cs
Fish blood
Fish scales
Frog blood
Frog skin
honeybeeleg#2
and...
Rabbitt testis

May 14, 2009
I'm still alive!
That seems like a strange thing to say, since I obviously couldn't have written this if I wasn't, but if I was superstitious I might be surprised by that fact. Why? Let's look at a little background...

On May 13, 1999 my father passed away a few months after being diagnosed with inoperable cancer.
On May 13, 2004 my sister passed away after being in a coma for two days due to brain damage caused by an adverse reaction to anti rejection medication for a kidney transplant. This was 5 years to the day after the death of my father.

So, on May 13, 2009 it was wondered if the "family curse" would continue. This reminds me of a curse supposedly put on by an indian that the president elected every 20 years would die in office. Sure enough, that's what happened, all the way through John F Kennedy elected in 1960.

In 1980 Ronald Reagan was elected, when he was shot a few weeks into his term it seemed like yet another round of the curse. Then, much to some people's surprise, he recovered and served out two terms. The "curse" was broken!

And so, 10 years after my father's death, 5 years after my sister's death, our family curse is broken. It appears that this conincidence was just that, a coincidence. And, just as the president elected in 2000 didn't die in office either, I am sure that no great tragedy will befall my family on May 13, 2014.

Mar 8, 2009
Phone Phishing?
We've all heard of phishing, where scam artists send out bogus emails designed to look like they come from you bank, credit card company, etc., directing you to a phony site in hopes you'll enter your passwords, credit care numbers, social security number and so on. Recently a new tactic has emerged: Phone Phishing

This takes the form of a recording with a vague statement about your car's warrantee or your credit card interest rate and they usually lie that they have called several times before. The ambiguity makes it clear (how's that for a phrase?) that they are not actually calling about what they say they are calling about, otherwise they would give some details.

There are two possible reasons that they are making bogus statements:

#1 It is a ploy to get you to pick up the phone.
They know fully well that if they told you right off the bat that they are trying to sell you some unrleated product or that they are a debt collector trying to con you into paying somebody else's debt you wouldn't pick up the phone!

#2 They are trying to collect details about the item mentioned
When they are "extending your car's warrantee" or "lowering the rate on your cedit card" they will be collecting a lot of sensitive personal information which could be used in a scam!

Dec 30, 2008
Megapixel Fraud
Even the most mathematically challenged individual should see the problem with the equation shown above, yet such psuedo math is frequently used in false advertising of low end display devices. Think I'm joking? check out this spec page! So how is it that a device with only 307,200 pixels came to be advertised as having 3 times as many?
It's a con older than computers!

Microscope salesman used to describe their instruments in terms of "diameters" (power squared) rather than "power", thus an instrument that was 30 power would be described as magnifying by 900 diameters, a description obviously intended to mislead their customers. While this was dishonest, it wasn't fraud since the statement was technically true.

Similarly when digital optical devices first came out with resolutions greater than a million pixels a new term, "megapixels" was coined. Thus a device with a resolution of 1280x1024 was described as having 1.3 megapixels. This was all well and good, but makers of sub megapixel devices wanted to use the term too. Thus 800x600 could be desribed as having 480K pixels or, rounded off to the nearest decmal place, it could be described as 0.5 megapixels. Of course, having a spec that's fractional, starting with zero, tended to give customers an all too realistic impression of their product.

So, like the microscope salesman of earlier times, the makers of sub megapixel devices came up with a scheme to make their products sound better than they actually were. Instead of rating the actual pixels, they rated them in terms of subpixels , the red, green and blue dots that blend together to make a visible pixel. Thus, a device with a resolution of 800x600, which is actually 480K pixels would be described as having 1.44 Megasubpixels or, when rounded off, 1.5 megasubpixels. This is dishonest and misleading but since it is technically true it isn't outright fraud.

The term "megasubpixels" sounds kind of awkward and requires an explanation, so some marketers began dropping the "sub" and described a device with a resolution of 800x600 as having 1.5 Megapixels. This is outright fraud! Fortunately, this fradulent exxageration of pixel count by a factor of 3 seems to usually be limited to devices in the sub megapixel range, but there have been reports of 2 megapixel cameras being falsely advertised as sporting 6 megapixels, so buyer beware, don't trust a megapixel rating unless the maximum resolution is given.

Thus we see how a device with a mere 307,200 pixels is fradulently described in false advertising as having 920,000. I suppose that it could be argued that only the most naive individual would actually think that 640 times 480 equals 920,000 so perhaps they get away with it just as lightbulb makers get away with falsely claiming that their lightbulbs put out 100 watts of light while using only 87 watts. Nevertheless, should a maker of an 800x600 device be allowed to describe it as having 1.5 megapixels while a device with a resolution of 1280x1024 is correctly described as having only 1.3 megapixels?

Another aspect of this megapixel fraud involves colors. If we view the red, green and blue dots that blend to make a pixel as being separate pixels, then with 24 bit color each can be only 256 different colors so instead of 16 million colors, there are actually only 768!

Dec 22, 2008
Star Fish
I added a stereoscopic gallery of starfish. Several different types of starfish are featured including bat starfish , brown starfish , Crown of thorns , jungle starfish , knobby starfish , sugar starfish , sun starfish and tan starfish. I hope to be adding others in the near future.