It was a Nobel cause

A CCD sensor

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award one half of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics to Willard S. Boyle and George E. Smith “for the invention of an imaging semiconductor circuit – the CCD sensor“. Willard and Boyle developed the first CCD sensor 40 years ago while working at Bell Labs. Luckily both of them are still alive to claim their prize, which just shows the advantage of being brilliant when you’re young!

Despite being superseded by the CMOS sensor in modern DSLR cameras, the CCD (Charged Coupled Device) remains the sensor of choice in almost all other digital cameras, ranging all the way from the cheapest cell phone to the space-grade sensor in the Hubble Space Telescope.

Alfred Nobel, inventor of dynamite and the founder of the Nobel prize, wrote in is final will that the prizes should go to  “those who … shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind. ” And a worthy and noble cause it is!

A Nobel prize medal

“Photoshop” as verb

And I could replace you with older pictures of you, from back when you looked happy.

I re-posted the xkcd cartoon of today. What do you think?

Please comment to this post! (even a single letter would be great)!~

I haven’t posted something in ages. What was intended as a loosely-defined photography blog didn’t (yet) get beyond a single post about resolution and the empyness of megapixels as a measure of quality. Or maybe that was then*

So, I was left with the question: Is this blog still alive? Therefore – please just make a comment below if you caught this update on your online radar screen.

*Since I wrote my previous post it seems that the camera market actually reached some kind of a plateau, where most compact digital cameras settled for something between 10 and 14 megapixels. Digital SLR cameras are currently offering something between 12 and 20 megapixels, but this also seems to be stabilising. The focus is much more on ISO performance, image stabilisation, and (importantly) HD video. I see this as a encouraging development. Yay!

And remember the comment!

:-)

OK, so I’m just re-posting some news, but my blog has been dead for some time now. I thought I’ll let it reflect the fact that I’m still alive…

“Citizens of the Russian town Chelyabinsk calculated when the satellite, QuickBird, which takes images for Google Earth and Google Maps, would cross above their city and used people to make a giant smiley face. A rock concert on the main square attracted many people and everyone got a yellow cape. It looks like someone at Google was quicker than usual to put up the new data. Maybe Google likes the idea of an entire town working hard to get its 15 minutes of fame. The article has a screenshot of Google Maps and images taken directly at the event.”

Pretty cool, eh?