waffles
breakfast food
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User ID: 3250
waffles
breakfast food
11mo ago
Our family has been watching wildlife documentaries ("Our Planet" and "Predators" on Netflix and "Raptors" on Kanopy) the past few weeks and the improvement in quality of the footage has been exceptional, relative to only a decade ago. The improvement in rugged audio/visual equipment that can be used in the remote wilderness, such as drones, action cameras, and trail cameras has allowed for some seriously good footage to make its way onto the screen in the last few years. This is not even mentioning all the improved post-processing techniques like slow motion or filming at nighttime. Compare this to a studio TV production from 2014, it's probably hard to tell the difference between that an something that came out a year ago.
If anyone has any other recommendations, do share below. Bonus points if they're on either of those streaming platforms listed above.
waffles
breakfast food
11mo ago
I picked up a used microscope a few weeks back. Got it off a former veterinary student on Craigslist who no longer needed it. It has 4x-10x-40x-100x objectives with a 10x eyepiece and it came with a bunch of accessories (slides, slide covers, dyes, tools), enough to keep an amateur microscope user occupied for a while. I just bought some slide mounting media (for making permanent slides) and immersion oil (for the 100x eyepiece, I learned that some high-magnification objectives are designed for a drop of oil between itself and the specimen being observed).
I have scraped off various samples from around the house to look at. They include:
- Slime from the bottom of the kitchen sink (surprisingly not very interesting)
- Wool fibers (pretty neat)
- Moist soil from the garden (found several energetic critters in the sample)
I found a dead bee on my patio outside and brought it in with the intention of making a permanent slide, but while waiting for the mounting media to be delivered, my cat found it and ate it, so there goes that.
Next time I am out and about, I will try to gather some interesting samples (pond scum? tide pools? decaying plant matter?)
At some point I intend to get an eyepiece camera so I can connect it to my computer and take photos and video, which would be cool.
Anyone have any suggestions on other things I can do with this thing?
Thanks for the suggestion, I'll have to check it out. You're completely right in that they're all over different streaming platforms. Somewhat unrelated, but I ended up installing the PBS streaming app to my TV, a lot of the stuff requires a subscription but there's still a vast library to watch from. We just saw a nice nature documentary on Portugal and its island territories ("Portugal: Wild Land on the Edge"). Seems like it depends on your local PBS station, YMMV.
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