Liquid lenses? I see!

This is so good it's a simulcast

 

The Economist reports this week on a French company that is updating an 18th century technology so that we really can leave the camera at home and rely on our camera phones to do all we need as far as taking snaps is concerned.

 

Rather than making solid (eg glass or Perspex) lenses, the French company called Varioptic is working on liquid lenses. The Economist article says:

 

... To make a solid zoom lens zoom, you have to move the individual elements relative to one another. In a liquid zoom lens, by contrast, you only have to change their shape. That means a liquid zoom can be much slimmer than a glass one.

 

Varioptic's zoom is not quite there yet. The prototype is 27mm (just over an inch) from front to back, which is a bit deep for a phone and it can manage a zoom magnification of only two and a half times, which is not even as good as the threefold magnification of current phone zooms. But this performance is likely to improve soon and once liquid lenses work as well as their solid counterparts their other advantages will become apparent.

 

The first of these is speed. A liquid lens can shift its magnification in milliseconds. Mechanical lenses are much slower. Liquid lenses are also cheaper. A liquid zoom should cost around $25, whereas the existing mechanical zooms cost $'00.

 

Liquid zooms are sturdier than their solid counterparts, a particularly important advantage for mobile phones ... Since a liquid lens has no mechanical moving parts there are, quite simply, fewer things to break in it. And despite their being liquid, the minute size of the droplets that compose the lenses means the surface tension between the two fluids is so strong that they stay unstirred, no matter how violently they are shaken ...

 

Marvellous!

 

DW

 

Scurvy

I was talking to Young Master W about his life at University and his financial management skills. He offered to do a deal that would have led to him, I said, ending up with scurvy. Well, many a true word! He told me about a friend of his from school who went to University and lived on margharita pizzas: nothing else and he had them delivered so there was very little effort involved. He ended up going to see a doctor who had to consult a book of symptoms and said, 'According to this book, you've got scurvy. In all my years of practice I've never seen a case of scurvy before.'!

 

An old friend of mine used to tell us a story of a friend of his, also at University, who spent all of hisgrant one term on a marvellous music system. This lad then lived on porridge ... until he got scurvy. At that time, it was thought to be the last known case of scurvy in England ... well, not now!!!

 

DW

 

 

Beetroot

Now hear this: if you make a salad from four beetroot (boiled then chopped
and mixed with two finely chopped cloves of garlic, a finely chopped apple
and mayonnaise together with a bit of seasoning) and then eat all of it
within a day, or even at one sitting, the toilet based retribution will be
significant.

Thought you'd like to know

DW

I have forgotten my password for my online O2 (mobile phone) account so they sent me to a page that asked me to enter my user name and mobile phone number. Then that sent me to a page that said:

Know your user name but forgotten your password?

It asked me a question to help them to help me, it asked: What is your password!!!!!

I'm stuck!

DW

Jeremy Clarkson

I just thought you'd like to know that far from being a Jeremy Clarkson fan,
I do the following whenever I get the opportunity. The same applies to
Jeffrey Archer.

When I see a Clarkson, or Archer, book for sale in a bookshop I find a way
of covering it up either by moving it to another shelf or display and
ensuring no one can see it or simply by turning the thing round so that name
and title are hidden.

Another reason for taking this action is that, in spite of their selling in
droves, I find Clarkson's drivel not in the least bit funny and definitely
not entertaining. Therefore, I believe I am saving weak minded people from
themselves.

As for Archer's tripe: he is not a pleasant person and I have never and will
never read any of his tripe and don't see why anyone else should either.

DW