A Day at the Races

This is a view out the back bedroom's window. It shows a little more than 12 hours of the ash tree in the back yard with the clouds whizzing by. The day before I shot this there were scattered, fluffy clouds out there. Here we get to see pretty much constant cloud cover.

I shot four frames each minute and play them back at 24 frames per second. That works out to having six minutes compressed to each second of the video. Near the beginning, three birds appear in the tree and just sit there for two or three seconds (12 to 18 minutes in real time). Later, a bug lands on the window and walks out of the scene. That takes a few seconds of the video.

It probably would have been better to have less of the tree and more of the sky in the scene. But we get some good cloud action.

Days of our Lives

Here is a video of a SandScapes toy I got this summer at Otowi Station. Multicolored sand, glitter and water flow through gaps in wavy lines of plastic between two panes of glass. This results in pretty mounds of sand. You put this on your desk at work, flip the toy on its pivots and watch the sand drip. Over and over again. You don't get your work done.

Since the sand's motion is quite noticeable, I had the camera take pictures at a relatively high rate of two frames per second. My movie plays them back at 24 frames per second. We see 20 minutes of dripping sand in just a minute and 40 seconds! Exciting!

I taped a piece of white paper behind it to give it higher contrast than the wall would have. The paper is waving in a breeze and is kind of distracting.

One of the holes has some glue in the gap. Sand snags on it and it frequently clogs. Oh, well.

Flower Drum Song

I tried my hand at making a movie of a flower opening. I recorded a Naked Lady opening. Well, it had gotten well under way by the time I got the camera rolling but we get to see some of the action.

I set up the camera to take a picture every 15 seconds. That was much more frequently than was needed. I ended up leaving four out of five shots on the cutting room floor.

Here are almost seven and a half hours of a flower opening in just 15 seconds.

I like the beginning where there were clouds. The light was more uniform. But when the sun comes out the shadows moving are fun. Then near the end the wind picks up and the flower wobbles. That's nature for you.

I wish I had gotten this started while the flower hadn't already been open so much.

Bob the Builder, the final chapter

Here we come to the end of this phase of our Ikea projects.

We decided that my little computer area needed just a little more storage. So we got a little file cabinet with one file drawer and three shallow drawers.

This project came close to going into the trash barrel.

This was shot at one frame per second and played back at 30 frames per second. That means that each minute flies by in just two seconds. The assembly runs smoothly until about 3:00. At that point I just can't get through step 27.

Step 27

It didn't help that there is nothing holding the bottom of the drawer to the side rails. The rails are held to the back with little hooks punched in the sheet metal so they are free to flop about. So the sides of the drawer have to be held against the bottom while you lower the drawer to its front panel and push all those pieces toward the top of the drawer face.

My thick skull kept interpreting the arrows to mean the drawer face is what moves up. So I kept trying to slide all the pieces in the wrong direction. Over and over again. You'll notice just before the pieces all go together that they suddenly are on the floor a couple of feet away from me. I wonder how they got all that way away from me. The drawer is finally put together around 3:30. Remember, one minute goes by in two seconds. The 30 seconds of the video that it takes me to assemble the drawer means I fought it for 15 minutes. This video nearly ended sometime in this segment.

Here is my last Ikea project for a while. I tried to make the last frame play for five seconds so you can linger over the finished product but that didn't seem to work. Sorry.

Bob the Builder, Part 2: The Musical!

Coming soon to a browser in front of you: Yet another Ikea project.

This time I assemble a bookshelf with a set of drawers and doors in some of the cubbies.

I should have shot this at a frame every other second and played it back at my usual 24 frames per second. Instead, I set the camera to take a picture every second. That took just too long to play back at my usual rate. So here it is at 50 frames per second. I could have saved 3,600 uses of the shutter. Live and learn (maybe). You get to see the two hours and four minutes it took to build the shelf in only two minutes and 26 seconds.

Colleen suggested that music could enhance these construction events. Of course it will.

Only you have to provide the music. Here are the words:

The most beautiful store I ever shopped:
Ikea, Ikea, Ikea, Ikea …
All the beautiful rooms of the world in a single stop …
Ikea, Ikea, Ikea, Ikea …
Ikea!
I've just found a store named Ikea,
And suddenly the gloom
Has exited the room
For good!
Ikea!
Say it loud and there's music playing,
Say it soft and it's almost like praying.


Ikea,
I'll never stop shopping Ikea!


The most beautiful store I ever shopped.
Ikea.

Now, sing!


(So, I'm not Stephen Sondheim!)

Sleeper

As you might have heard, we had another Ikea project. Our spare bedroom has had gym equipment in it for a while so there hasn't been room for a real bed. Our guests have been relegated to an inflatable bed. Since we are skilled Ikea furniture assemblers, we got a sofa that converts to a bed.

This project had fewer parts than the computer desk. The instructions were for only one product and it had no optional parts. No disassembly required!


This was about 50 minutes shot at one frame every second played back at 24 frames per second. It could have gone together much faster if we had use real tools. They gave us a cheesy wrench to hold the nuts. It didn't hold them very well.

Antz 2

Feed ants, see action!

Well, a little bit more than just watching an ant hole.

This time I gave my red ants three delicious treats: a chunk of bread that was dipped in my scrambled egg (while still raw) then soaked in water, a crushed Stacy's pita chip and Trader Joe's grated parmesan cheese.

I thought the cheese would be very popular because it is fatty and easy to carry. I thought the pita chip would be good because it's fatty. The eggy, soggy bread would be attractive since it gave them protein, starch and water.

I guess the ants were thirsty. They really worked on the bread. The pita chip crumbs were enjoyed. Many times the little ants were so thrilled with their pita chip chunk that they'd race off with it. Not to their hole but off in some random direction. Those little ants really can carry many times their weight. And they can go very fast while carrying it.

A little of the parmesan cheese was taken.

I'll give you two versions of this one. One that lasts 46 seconds and one that is three times faster.

I had the camera take pictures every second for an hour and a quarter. I need to stop wasting uses of the shutter. I used only every fourth frame for the first movie and even fewer for the faster one. I'll learn.

Here are ants eating their treats at a rate of one frame taken every four seconds played back at 24 frames per second. In the first few seconds a couple of largish pieces of the pita chips are seen going down the hole.


And here they are speeded up three times. You can see the edge of the bread shrink. I don't know if it's from being eaten, drunk or from evaporation.


Well, at least there is a bit more action than in my first ant hill attempt.