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Last year my lunch buddies, Brad and Paul, went up to the far northeast corner of Georgia to find Ellicott’s Rock. This rock was determined to be the three-way border of North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia by Andrew Ellicott in 1811. Ellicott was a well-respected surveyor who had already laid out the city of Washington, DC according to L’Enfant’s plans. He was hired by the state of Georgia to correct the location of the Georgia and North Carolina state line 3 miles to the north. Ellicott asked for Georgia to pay for better equipment but they refused. And when Ellicott confirmed the location of the line and kept it in place (he actually missed the correct 35th parallel by about 300 feet to the north), Georgia refused to pay him at all. A couple of years later the three states put together another expedition to settle the issue and another rock, called Commissioners Rock, was chiseled. The area is deep in national forest shared by the three states, in an area now called the Ellicott’s Rock Wilderness. Last year, Paul and Brad were able to find Commissioners Rock, but were unable to find Ellicott’s Rock, which they understood was 500 feet downstream. With more research, they decided that Ellicott’s Rock might be much closer. We decided to go on State Holiday No. 1, formerly known as Confederate Memorial Day. That was yesterday.

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I’ve been buying silver and gold bullion coins for a couple of years now. Reading news about the latest coin designs, I saw that the United States Mint was coming up with a gold version of the Mercury dime to celebrate its 100th anniversary. It was first issued in 1916 with a design by Adolph Weinman featuring lady liberty in a winged cap (not actually Mercury). Lincoln had already replaced an indian on the penny in 1909, but all of the other coins featured liberty. Though it is very small, the mercury dime is a favorite design. I remember Jeb had a bunch of them when he was collecting coins, but it seemed like they were pretty beat up. However, a lot of people collected Mercury dimes and I was able to get a pretty nice one for $7.50 on eBay. I thought I would get a Mercury dime and then maybe get the gold one when it comes out next week. However, the mint is going to charge $205 for the new coin which has only 1/10th oz. of gold worth about $124. I don’t think I want to pay that big a premium, which is why I end up never buying the mint’s commemorative offerings and instead stick with bullion coins with much lower premiums, including a privately produced 1 oz. silver coin with the mercury design.

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From Easter. I thought the lines on the pictures were from the iPod’s photo app, but they are actually part of the pictures, maybe due to the flashlight I used. Maybe I should have used the flash, but it might have been too bright. Lots of green eyes.

Continue reading “The Eyes Have It”

Lately I have gotten back into flashlights a little. Not only did I get a really interesting light designed by flashlight connoisseurs that I wrote about recently, but I also received a P60 drop-in that I can put in any one of a bunch of different P60 hosts that I have. The drop-in uses a recently introduced Cree XP-L “High Intensity” LED, which instead of having a round dome of clear plastic over the light emitting die, has a clear flat surface. The dome works well in gathering light and shooting it out generally in one direction, but if you’re going to use a reflector anyway, the dome acts like a magnifying lens, making the die appear bigger to the reflector and therefore harder to focus. The flat window results in a smaller appearing die that the reflector can focus better, resulting in more throw. The light I got recently has the domed XP-L “High Density” LED while the drop-in has the tighter focusing XP-L “High Intensity” LED, and in a somewhat larger reflector that is used in P60 drop-ins. It has less light output overall and isn’t drawing as much current as in the smaller high performance light, but still shines more light on distant objects.

Continue reading “Flashlight Tinkering”

I have been trying to upgrade the flashlight wiki lately by getting some of the latest LED’s and taking pictures of them for the site. The problem is that LED’s are very small. My old camera took great macro pictures, but I lost it. It’s replacement wasn’t quite as good. And even my latest camera still has pretty lousy macro. My iPod has a camera on it, but it isn’t really made for macro. But they make some really cheap lenses you can clip onto a phone or tablet that can help out. Some of them will turn your phone into a microscope or telescope, but they have some very inexpensive sets of lenses ($4 direct from China, $10 or so at Amazon) which include a macro lens, wide angle lens, and a fish-eye lens. I really just wanted the macro lens, but for $4 I will take the other two.

I won’t bore you with LED photos and my newest LED’s haven’t arrived yet anyway, but the higher security currency of the last few years has incorporated microprinting in various parts of the bill that make it harder to counterfeit money. You would have a hard time finding the printing by just looking, but it is there. On a $20 bill there is some writing just to the left of Andrew Jackson, close to the bottom border. Here is a small version of a picture I took with the iPod without using any kind of special lens. I can get within a couple of inches of the bill before the camera can’t focus.

Continue reading “Clip-on Lenses”