Last week at the store we picked up some Cap’n Crunch cereal because Christina had a nostalgic craving. The other day I was looking at the back of the box, which has some kids doing sporty things, including some incredibly stereotyped foreigners holding signs with rebus puzzles of their countries on them. When I saw the kid from Canada, I had to do a double take.

You be the judge:

So Christina and I recently joined our local rec center so we can get back in shape(don’t laugh). They take your photo and make up a flimsy ID card so that they can make sure everyone’s kosher, mine looks like some gawd-awful lineup pic:

yikes.

For some reason it was in the mid 50s today (is it really February?) and we decided to get outside a bit as we had a touch of the cabin fever. We went to a lesser known trail area called Falls Ridge Nature Preserve. I don’t know why we had never been there before(let alone heard of it), it’s practically right outside our back door.

It’s not big, but what it lacks in size it makes up for in awesomeness. Off one loop is a pretty decent waterfall with lime deposits all over the place, which makes for some really cool rock formations. There’s also an abandoned lime kiln from the early 20th century, giving the feel of some sort of ancient ruins.

We didn’t have a chance to do the longer of the two trails, but we definitely plan on going back.

Photo credit: Christina [Handheld]

I’ll post some of my photos when I get them processed and scanned.

So I was playing racquetball today and started thinking about why it wasn’t a more popular spectator sport. Obviously, the fact that they only have one transparent wall (if even that) limits the viewability and appeal to television audiences.

So I thought, “what if all the non-floor surfaces were transparent?” But then realized that the players would probably have serious trouble seeing the ball without that nice ball-on-white contrast.

They make this stuff called smart glass that uses liquid crystal technology to change from transparent to opaque. What if a circuit was to designed to alternate the glass between clear and transparent at a designated frequency, probably something 60hz or higher, and you had cameras set to capture at half that rate, syncing them with the clear cycle of the smart glass? In theory, that would allow them to see into the court as if the glass were absolutely transparent, right?

That would leave the players looking at walls that are somewhere between opaque and translucent, so we would need something for them as well. Now, it’s already pretty ubiquitous that racquetball players wear safety glasses to protect their eyes, what if they were LCD shutter glasses? They would be almost like this but instead of alternating left and right eyes, both sides would be synced to be “open” on the opaque cycle of the smart glass, giving the illusion of normal racquetball court walls.

If a live audience was desired, spectators could wear LCD shutter glasses as well that were synced with the transparent cycle of the smart glass.

I realize this would be outrageously cost-prohibitive, and the effort to effect ratio may not be worth it, but it wouldn’t it be freaking cool?

(If it even worked)

This week’s song obsessions are up over at I Pick My Nose.

There’s always some good stuff so make sure you check it out.

So on Wednesday Jeff and I decided to play around with some different light setups, this was one of the best of the bunch.

Whaddya think, should I move to NYC and start my modeling career?