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High tech webcams with autofocus for use in videoconferencing etc. are very good and will focus accurately on what is in front of them.
This tech falls flat on its arse when a tiny fly zooms in front of the lens, since the camera tries to focus on the fly, and then when the fly zooms off the camera
then has to struggle to re-focus on the user's radiant visage.
Naturally the solution to this is an image-recognition algorithm that recognises and ignores all types of fly when choosing what to use as its autofocus target.
However, that is not the idea presented here.
The idea here is that a high tech autofocussing fly-ignoring webcam would pose a particular use problem for entomologists. Whether they were trying to show a fly, or using the webcam to monitor flies, or whatever flyey thing they were doing, the image would remain stubbornly fuzzy.
Proposed then is a specialist "fly mode" which, when enabled, over-rides the fly-ignoring algorithms and allows the lens to accurately focus on flies.
[link]
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But surely the obvious, massive flaw in this idea is that
when a pioneering entomologist finds an extraordinary new
species of fly which is so novel and bizarre in appearance
that the camera doesn't recognise it as a fly then, no
matter how desperate they are to show it off to their
colleagues, the "fly mode" will randomly hunt around and
fail to find it. |
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[hippo] there can be a "learning mode" where you press a complex set of buttons and then hold up an example of the new fly you have bred, and the Fly Mode algorithm adds the new example to its image recognition database. Don't forget to disable "learning mode" before trying to use the device for a normal video call with your family! |
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Could a fly be recognized more on flight behavior
than on static imagery? |
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Maybe if the etymologists wore fly costumes and
ran around the room then a Fuzzy-Logic neural net
learning program could work to distinguish "geniune
fly" from "guy in a fly costume." Especially if the
costumes were fuzzy... |
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Hmm, [Rayford] - I think that will require an entirely separate
mode for [pocmloc]'s enhanced webcam - a "fly-guy" mode to
allow etymologists, entomologists and anyone else to share
crazy videos of themselves dressed in fuzzy fly costumes
running around the room. |
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I just had to look up the origin of the word etymology. For
completeness. |
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I think it's derived from "Etty!" which was the traditional cry of the person in the ancient Greek Olympic games, who ran around dressed as a fly shouting "Etty!" at the competitors. |
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See? They're both from the same root. |
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Also:
Entom-etymology: studying insects that have influenced other
words.
Etym-entomology: studying the origin of insect names.
(Or around the other way...) |
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