Dancing counter-clockwise

I could easily fill this blog with illusions, they fascinate me. But strangely, since I had an operation to fix a detached retina, I find it harder to see them.

The spinning lady illusion is one I had problems with. Sometimes I can look at it for ages, and just see a lady spinning clockwise. But when my brain suddenly decides she is spinning the other way, the effect is amazing.

It's one of those illusions where you really start to think it's a trick... or rather a trick played by something other than your own mind.

Use the force

A light saber that lights up when you concentrate on it?

All I can say about this is, "I want one!"

Credit: Splarka

Cornflour tentacle monster

I've played with cornflour (corn starch) a few times, mostly when I was supposed to be mixing it up for cooking. It's strange stuff.

Here it's taken a few steps further (or tentacles further?) with cornflour vibrated at 80Hz.

There are a lot of these games with cornflour on YouTube, culminating in a swimming pool of the stuff, allowing people to actually run over the top of it. I think I'd like to try that.

War of the worlds

Somehow it feels... wrong... to be writing about Microsoft here. Maybe I hang around with geeks too much, I've picked up their ritual disgust at anything M$.

But Microsoft's answer to Google Earth is just amazing. Virtual Earth has a "bird's eye view" that uses spectacular aerial photography rather than satellite images.

Unlike Google Earth, which has quite poor images for England, Virtual Earth is doing well at mapping it. One of the places that's been fully mapped is my home town. There are great views of the pier, the town center, my old school... you can even see the reservoir for the new fountain in progress.

They seem to have tried to keep people out of view by photographing early, but the east view seems later, with more people around than the other views.

Fun!

Credit: TDO