h a l f b a k e r yWarm and Fussy
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B&W mirror
A mirror that "reflects" only in shades of gray. | |
The best way I can think of to accomplish this is not a mirror at all. It is a mirror-sized and -framed display panel, fed by a small b&w video camera mounted in the frame. Parallax distortion would be electronically corrected.
The gain could be boosted for those who like to see the world as all
black or all white.
But the most compelling use I've come up with so far is in place of the standard mirrors in the Film Noir Home.
Slimming mirror
http://www.halfbake...a/Slimming_20mirror
Rod's Tiger's annotation to Slimming mirror inspired the above idea. [beauxeault, Jun 07 2001, last modified Oct 05 2004]
Film Noir Home
http://www.halfbake.../Film_20Noir_20Home
[beauxeault, Jun 07 2001, last modified Oct 05 2004]
Inversions by Scott Kim
http://www.scottkim.com/inversions/
Ambigram artistry...graphical studies in symmetry. [The Military, Jun 07 2001, last modified Oct 05 2004]
[link]
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Monochrome video cameras are cheap and small enough now (about £60, I believe), and LCD panels are getting cheaper. Would you reverse the scan direction to achieve mirrorness, or just leave it so as to be confusing?
Incidentally, why is it that a mirror reverses your image from left to right but not from top to bottom? |
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angel, have a word with yourself. A mirror doesn't reverse anything from left to right, it sends it back absolutely straight. I can't believe we were discussing hard astro-physics earlier today and then you come out with this! Dear oh dear.
incidentally, I heard in the Factoids on Radio 2 yesterday that some bright spark in some Management Research department in a US university has made the I -can't-believe-no-one-thought-of-this-before discovery that people are good at different things on different days of the week. e.g. Mondays and Tuesdays for planning things and meeting clients, and later in the week for creativity and brainstorming and project-writing. I may be wrong, but I think today's new ideas have been more creative than, say, Monday's. Am I right? is there any way we can analyse this? Doesn't work for people (like me) whose working week is not Monday to Friday, though. |
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[lewisgirl]: I know the mirror doesn't actually *do* anything, but if you look at, say, a clock, then at the clock's reflection, the 12 & 6 are in the same places but the 3 & 9 are reversed. |
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angel: try turning the mirror on it's side. that might help. ;o) |
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To save money, just have a room with the mirror in it and virtually no lighting. In near darkness, we only really see in b&w anyway - and dark rooms are near essential for the film noir buff anyhow. |
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angel: it's to do with the shape of a mirror. Try it with the two faces of a spoon. |
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again, angel, think about what you're saying. Visualise it, draw it, whatever. Draw ray paths. Think about when you're in a shop and there's a name printed on the window, and a mirror on the back wall. When you look from the inside out the window, everything's reversed but it's the right way up. When you look at the mirror on the back wall, my god!, it's as if you're looking at the shop window from outside! Jeez, are you on the losing-your-neurones side of forty? <joking!!!> |
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[lewisgirl] 1) You'd expect me to say this anyway but: it's a long time since I passed 'O'-level physics but I do actually know why mirrors 'do' what they 'do'. You'd be surprised how many people go on about the position of your eyes, or the concept of left and right, or [mihali]'s suggestion (only being serious), etc. I was just wondering how far it would go here.
2) Yes, I am. |
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I'm a little older myself, and starting to tire of mirrors that are just slightly out of focus. |
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My darling wife suggested a B&W Mirror would make an excellent door into a Film Noir house--you pass through into a seedy black-and-white world like Alice through the lookingglass. |
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Pat your wife on a head for a good idea... |
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<Disclaimer: Neither I, nor the management is responsible if she tears your arm off and beats you over the head with it for this. <grin>> |
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You'd probably need two cameras, on both sides of the door frame. Then a computer could determine what the "center" looks like. Also, it wouldn't look quite like a real mirror in the sense that it wouldn't reflect light at the same intensity (sunlight will appear much dimmer than it should, for example.) You could do much more than make a b&w mirror with this technology. You could make psychedelic Photoshop filter mirrors! =) |
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This idea was mentioned in the UK's Guardian on Saturday - they had a little section on the HB. Stay tuned and I shall reveal the other ideas that they listed as their favourites.... |
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Yes I saw that as well. God help us. I pointed it out to she who is adored and she said oh its that stupid thing you sit up all night spouting rubbish on. What could I say?. |
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Oh well, it seems no-one's interested but here they are anyway for posterity:
Custard filled speed bumps. Horra-larm. Self-destruct handbag. Hmm, seem to have forgotten the other few. Anyway, I hope all the authors involved enjoyed their brief sniff of fame. Of course, they may never even know. The humanity! |
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sild, thanks for letting me know I was briefly famous. Did it last 15 minutes, or do I still have a few minutes to look forward to? I wonder why I haven't heard from Oprah yet... |
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As long as we're going with the camera/ mirror invention, perhaps it could also have a soft focus setting.
A mirror that makes you look thinner may also have some marketing potential although funhouses have had them for years and they have never really caught on yet. Must need better marketing. |
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