Hue Light Bulbs...

Former colleague, friend, and reader Doug S. says “Just got these and they are freakin (geekin) awesome!”  Yes, he really does talk that way :)  These Hue LED light bulbs (by Philips) can be set to any color in the spectrum and changed any time you'd like, through a smartphone app.  Awesome!  But a bit pricey – it helps to have a job in high tech and be a real estate mogul like Doug (he owns a significant fraction of Idaho)...

Flickers on the Wall...

I got up this morning at my usual 3 am, and wandered, bleary-eyed, into the bathroom for my morning shower (I'm only truly awake after this).  Just as I was reaching for the light switch, I noticed a distinct flicker in the shadows on the wall near the switch.  My slightly paranoid chaparral-trained mind immediately translated “flicker” into “fire” – but the color (a lovely blueish-white) was all wrong for that.  There are no artificial lights of any kind in our bathroom other than the main incandescent lights, so I had no ready explanation for the flickering.  As I watched, the flickering repeated.  Where was it coming from?

With a little investigation, I figured it out.  Looking out our small, high bathroom window, I could see a clear, moonless sky with a high horizon defined by the surrounding hills and our pine trees.  Then I noticed that one particularly bright star (I couldn't see enough of the sky to tell which star it was) was placed right at the edge of the pine silhouette – and the pines were moving about because of a light wind.  The star provided a nice point source of light, which made the pine tree shadows on my bathroom wall reasonably well-defined even though the pines were over 100 feet from my window.  And my eyes were sufficiently dark-adapted to let me see those shadows produced by the light of a single star.  Amazing imaging instruments we have in our head!