Christmas Lights 01

It’s getting harder to correct errors in Christmas light pics.

While this came out reasonably well, there was an irritating blue haze covering much of the image, although the colours didn’t look as if they had been changed, at least not significantly,

I now have a variety of tools which can be used to reduce this effect, but the problem I seem to have is that, having stared at the image with blue haze to begin with, when I adjust it to remove that, the corrected image looks ‘wrong’.

I give up.

😩

This is the result with the overall blue haze removed.

I think it’s turned greenish – but I’m not spending even more time playing with it – there are more to come.

Originally, I just posted the final version, but had to convert it to a comparison, just so I could see the variation for myself.

Original on the left, and the ‘deblued’ version on the right.

I think one’s as bad as the other, and one of the other dehazing options might have done better.

Honestly, I REALLY like blues, but the way some LED light sources can have it wash all over a night or low light pic is beginning to get just a little bit annoying.

MORE neeb’s Christmas lights

This follow up to The neeb’s Christmas lights – disappointingly NOT helped by some daylight was supposed to be yesterday’s post, but was ruined by the current run of mistakes I’ve been posting about. In this case I altered the exposure the wrong way, and burnt out all the detail with the intense white lights they used.

The second attempt was more in line with expectations/plans, with the white being subdued, helping the rest of the scene to be seen.

It’s still getting harder to avoid burnt out white areas and losing detail in less bright areas, but at least it’s not impossible to get something useable.

What do I consider to be a fail

Just to be clear, THIS is what I would call a fail, unless I was looking to produce an image like this, perhaps to show some of the detail hidden or lost in the shadows.

It all depends on what final result you want.

In my case, most of the time I want to show the lights, and some of their detail.

If I wanted to show the overall scene, rather than the lights, then this would be classed as a success.

As you may have noted some of my past posts pose the question…

Which pic is the right pic?

Interestingly, neither of these pics shows the globe, on the wall, just about the car.

To the eye, it’s an intense blue, but comes out looking white in pics.

I’ve come across this effect in a number of pics over the years, and have found the only way to overcome it is to zoom into the subject if I want the blue to be rendered similarly to the colour seen by the eye.

I haven’t found an explanation yet, but suspect the effect is down to the way the colour is created by LEDs, and the response curve of digital image sensors as used in cameras. It’s not consistent, as there are various methods used to create colours, some are direct, while others use UV (ultraviolet) light to excite a phosphor, translating the invisible light into a visible light of the desired colour. The latter tend to be brighter, since the higher frequency UV light can carry more energy per unit time.

Yet another ‘fix’ fail

As noted in the previous post on this sorry subject. When fixes go wrong – AGAIN!, the failures are piling up.

Unhelpful comb or finger joint – failed!

There is a common wood joint known as a comb or finger joint, often used to long pieces of wood, to make even longer pieces of wood.

In this case, I’d used a number of pieces of lath to throw up a temporary cover to protect items from a leaking flat roof, until the weather gets better, and I can do something better. As usual, like most flat roofs in Scotland, it had been grumbling for a while, then decided to leak ‘properly’.

I’d dealt with it before, and had the bits used previously, including sections of lath, so thought I only had to get them lifted into place, but had also learned from that last time, and made a much simpler/quicker/better job this time.

I was feeling fairly smug about that, but had noticed one piece of lath which looked as if it had a knot, irritatingly just where a double thickness glued section ended. I’d doubled some pieces for a little more strength.

Sure enough, my usual luck applied, and I walked in the next morning to find most of the temporary cover trying to get to the floor as the lath had failed at the knot – only it WASN’T a knot.

It was actually a comb joint in the lath, and (insert name of DIY ‘shed’ here) had been really stingy with the glue, and the joint had simply opened up cleanly, as seen below.

It was almost invisible, or I would have avoided it landing in a stressed section.

Just my usual luck, and it would have been fine, had that join been a couple of inches further back.

The only good thing about this, and the reason I didn’t ‘lose it’ when I saw it was down to the much simpler way I’d been able to put the pieces together to make the cover this time. The first time had used loads of pieces, been heavy, and really complicated to organise. This second effort was much easier to deal with, even after the collapse.

Next?

Revisiting the John Logie Baird mural in George Street

It’s some years since I featured this pic of a mural which is part of a larger collection making up the Wonderwall, was put together to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Royal Charter, which conferred the University of Strathclyde’s status.

When I posted it originally, I seemed to be unable to find anything online about the wall, but as the previous para shows, I found something right away this time – it only took 9 years!

Perhaps I was misled back then, and my searches failed because it was being referred to as the Strathwonderwall wherever I looked, but now seems to have become simply the Wonderwall.

This is the previous post, which gave a little more detail, so doesn’t need to be repeated here – please read that one.

John Logie Baird on the Strathwonderwall

Going back to this was slightly motivated by seeing something about Baird recently, which mentioned the competition between his existing mechanical television system, the first to provide a public television service, and a competing fully electronic system. Of course, the electronic system won, as the old mechanical system was woefully out of date by then, but it should be remembered that Baird had developed an electronic system too, and colour, together with a number of other innovative television developments. But, couldn’t compete.

I mention this only because it seems to have been a long time since I’ve seen any mention of this period in recent years, or even Baird, possibly because everything from that era is now virtually gone, and we don’t even have CRTs (cathode ray tubes) in these days of digital television and flat screen TVs. The only serious users are gamers, as certain games will only work with CRTs. I’m surprised someone hasn’t come up with a super smart flat screen interface for those – it will be needed when the last CRT burns out!

The neeb’s Christmas lights – disappointingly NOT helped by some daylight

In the previous post where I caught my neighbour’s Christmas lights just after they were switched on, I had a little moan about the overrun brightness of the white LEDs used in some of them.

At the time, it was dusk, and darker than I thought I would have liked it to be, so the exposure was – I thought – not so good.

I was WRONG!

This was the pic.

My thought then was that a bit more daylight would have helped counteract the brightness of those white lights, and perhaps helped balance things.

In fact, all it did was swamp the weaker lights, as can be seen in this second pic.

The white lights managed to come out even BRIGHTER, in spite of manually REDUCING the exposure.

It seems these shots really do need to wait for darkness, or near darkness, to give the less bright lighting a chance, as they even lost their colour in the lighter conditions.

Now I know.

😩

The apparently unpopular Glasgow Graveyard Memorial Safety Notice

I can’t remember where I was when I spotted this notice in a Glasgow graveyard, but it was a few years ago.

I do remember I could never understand all the outrage and hysteria generated by a vocal group (minority?) that seemed to be forever in the local news complaining about the council’s action in dealing with the many unsafe memorials which were left decaying in many of the city’s graveyards.

They didn’t seem to care about any living people that might be injured by these, but were vociferous in their complaints about anyone daring to touch a memorial or gravestone.

One case would be one too many, and in 2015 an 8-year-old boy was playing in Craigton Cemetery when a gravestone fell on him, causing fatal injuries. The inquiry revealed he sustained multiple skull fractures and other serious injuries, resulting in instantaneous death.

There was another injury (in the same cemetery) back in 2010, but it was the fatality that lead to the council’s actions, and some 900 memorial were subsequently reported to have been laid flat.

When fixes go wrong – AGAIN!

Sorry, having a waffle here works better than screaming into the void, and it’s quieter.

I should have started taking notes recently, but didn’t realise I had entered a dimension where attempts to fix, or even just maintain things, were being manipulated by some mischievous higher being to FAIL!

For example, when I dug out the pair of small, but convenient fibre optic Christmas trees I picked up some years ago, one of them suffered not one, but TWO failures, with the last one being permanent.

Originally lit by a miniature 10 W halogen reflector lamp, when those inevitably failed, I picked up a pair of (then new) LED lamps which were almost identical, with the same base, and only a few millimetres larger in diameter. But for the motor (which drives an effect filter) they’d have been direct replacements, and not needed some mods to make them fit. The best thing was the drop from 10 W to 1 W, I can leave them on throughout the season.

It’s nice to drag out the ‘Christmas Lights’ without the once traditional hassle of getting them working after lying unused for a year.

However, all good things come to an end, and one was flickering on and off.

The cause was simple enough to find, as the wires were shorting, as the insulation had fatigued and cracked where they left the (far too stiff) cable relief from the mains adapter, which was only a transformer, as the tree is AC, so there’s no DC supply needed.

I thought this would be an easy fix, and did it ‘properly’, cutting out the damage piece and soldering the wires together, completed with heat shrink and a support.

At first, I didn’t believe it wasn’t working when I plugged it in – but had to accept the fact.

Long story short – the primary winding of the mains transformer in the adapter decided to go open circuit while I was fixing the cable. Talk about perfect timing/coincidence 😒

I didn’t believe it, but as seen below, I pulled the transformer apart, and tested the primary to prove it was indeed open circuit, and not just a break where the cable was connected to the fine transformer wire (it is often the fail point), but somewhere deep in the winding.

The reason it looks like a pile of bits is because it is.

The casing broke up and fell to bits years ago, and had to be taped up to hold it together.

It’s also the reason I NEVER use so called ‘Superglue’ for anything other than tacking things together temporarily.

Although I pieced together the adapter casing using the stuff, and it appeared to be solid, after about a year, like every other superglue repair I’ve ever made, the parts just started to fall apart.

Same as a glass tile I pieced together after it broke into three pieces, and appeared to have been a remarkably good repair after I used superglue, and the fix was almost invisible.

Fortunately it was mounted on a wall, because when I just touched about a year and a half later, the pieces just fell apart immediately, and the cured superglue just lifted off the previously joined surfaces, like a piece of dried up tape.

Absolutely useless, and I’ve never trusted the stuff ever since.

I wouldn’t say I’m worried about flying, but I clearly remember ALL the sellers used to advertise the stuff as having been “Used by the aviation industry for years” when it first appeared, in order to give their claims credibility.

There’s more

As noted at the start, I seem to be collecting fails at the moment.

I found a hidden style door closer I’d forgotten about a few days ago, and thought it would be ideal for my back door, so it would always be pulled closed when I wandered in and out. Given the return of ‘The Mouse’, something I put down to being lax with keeping the door shut recently, since we haven’t had the little visitors for some time.

Thinking it would be a quick fit as it only needs a single (large) hole to slid it inside the door, then a few screws, I found that idea quickly thwarted.

A radiator (not present when the door was originally fitted) means the door doesn’t open to 90°, which means I can’t drill that hole, and the door has to come off.

And I can’t do that!

While the hinges are fitted with nice brass screws in the door (and they look like new), the screws used in the jamb are steel, and the edges of the screw slots have rusted slightly, with the result that I can’t get a screwdriver to fit tightly or securely, and can’t apply enough torque to loosen the screws before the driver cams out of the slot.

I think the only way to get the door off to fit that closer will be to find a small enough 90° right angle drive to fit those ‘perfect’ brass screws in the door.

And people wonder why I say I only have Bad Luck.

😫

OH! The tree

Almost forget the end of the tree tale.

Although I’ve got a big box of old wall wart type AC adapters, it seems they’re all DC, having come from various computer accessories.

But, fortunately that’s all but ONE.

The only AC wall wart was, unbelievably, a 12 V AC unit, and more importantly, it was WORKING!

For one moment, I thought I was going to have to break open a 9 V DC item from the pile, and just rewire the output to use the transformer output directly, and ditch the DC section.

But, this lone AC item got lucky, and has survived to end up somewhere else it was never supposed to be,

Google doesn’t go there any more?

I think this is possibly the longest non-revisited place I’ve come across on Google Maps – so far.

I was looking at an old pic I took near Bridgeton Cross about 9 years ago, and noticed the subject facility had been closed (I don’t know when), but the image in Street View still showed it open. My image dated from 2016 (the place never changed, so I never took another), while the Street View image (at the time of writing) shows a most recent view from 2019).

While I haven’t made a point of noting these dates, I do sometimes have to use the images for reference, so I do notice them, and am reasonably sure I have come across such an old one as this, at 6 years since they last sent a camera car past the scene.

I noted an organisation that was there is still in existence (I know nothing about it, this is for information only):

Heart for the city

It was an old Citroën convertible, but it’s gone

I didn’t realise this was an old, unused pic until I looked at the data.

I’d caught this derelict Citroën convertible a few years earlier, and there’s at least one more detailed post living somewhere in this blog with whatever I could find out back then.

I didn’t realise quite how long it had been since I was in this part of Dalmarnock Road, this being one of the hazards of changing from shoes to wheels, as the cycle path doesn’t really get close to this spot.

The bad news is that the car disappeared a couple of years after this (I think) when the yard the lorry it’s sitting on was cleared.

Admittedly it’s not possible to tell what it’s like underneath, but it did look decent from above.

That said, my neighbour bought a cute little Japanese novelty car for a family member a few years ago, and I thought he was storing it for them.

Nope.

Turns out that the Scottish climate effectively killed it, and while it looks quite smart and still runs, the floor pan rotted out (I’m guessing it was not undersealed or rustproofed to the level we need given our sogginess), and is more or less unfixable, unless you don’t care about the cost.

If that soft top was leaking, then this one could be completely rotten, and in the same boat.

I still like thos rear indicators 🙂

Almost missed this Red Arrows inverted catch

Slightly surprised to find this Red Arrows pic from this year’s Ayr Show, as I tidied the collection

Lost in the rejects, the pics can be difficult to see properly with the shaded aircraft seen against the (sometimes) bright sky, when I checked this one I found the silhouettes actually showed an inverted flyover.

That should really have been included.

Probably need to zoom into the image to see the aircraft in a little more detail.

From the aircraft positions, I guess I caught them fairly early in the manoeuvre, while they were still coming together, and were not fully aligned.

Looks like Christmas is on its way – the neeb’s lights are lit

After recent years brought some fairly potent storms just at the wrong time, I think my neighbour played safe this year, and put the Christmas light up early, while things were calm, just in case.

I was beginning to wonder when they’d go on, but December 1st marked the switch on.

I took quite a few, as I’ve found exposure problems, or issues, in recent years, which I attribute to LEDs replacing incandescent lights, but there wasn’t a lot of difference, and what I consider to be my ‘standard’ night, or low light setting was as good as any.

I was a little surprised, as I noticed them while it was still light outside, but the lights (really just the white reindeer) are so bright, you can hardly see the failing daylight.

However, that does confirm my thought that the issues are down to the brightness of LEDs, particularly when whites are overrun to make them VERY bright (while shortening their useful life, of course).

They’ve forced the exposure back, which has had the side effect of making the exposure of the coloured items where I like it to be, as they have all been rended such that their detail shows, while the white items are all but burnt out and overexposed, while also failing to show any lighting detail. Same goes for the background, which is virtually lost in the shadows, even though there was still daylight. Even the sky failed to show up.

Santa, the bells, and the eave lights look good, but the rest – I just don’t like it, and it’s a shame the makers don’t tone down their whites, but seem to be in a war to see who will dare to drive their white LEDs the hardest, risking early failure and unhappy customers.

From a potential/claimed 25,000 or even 50,000 hour life at launch, white (mains) LED lamps are probably being driven so hard nowadays that their real world life is probably coming down to match incandescent light bulbs of old.

I’m still running all the early white LEDs I ran out and bought when they first appeared, yet now read about people complaining about a year or so for recent purchases.

And it’s not the technology, but poor manufacture as well.

At the end of CFLs (compact fluorescents), I bought a few larger versions, made by a trusted big name company, as I wanted a single lamp to light a room. Despite the source, and high price, these were the worst I ever bought, as both the tubes and electronics failed within the first few months – while all the earlier (cheap) CFLs I bought and used had lasted at least as long as the claimed life on the box.