Daily Archives: 6/24/2004

I need more Serenity

When it comes to television, I’m about as jaded as they come. Let’s face it, it’s mostly crap. That’s what makes it so difficult when genuinely great shows are cancelled. Such a show was Fox’s Firefly.

I must admit: I was skeptical of the premise. A mixture of space and Wild West? What’s up with that? But creator Joss Whedon really outdid himself, piecing together 14 excellent episodes (now available on DVD) that were well done, thought provoking, funny, warm, exciting and chilling, all at intervals frequent enough to suck in the viewer. It is quite simply one of the best shows I’ve seen in decades, and it was a great tragedy that Fox chose to cancel it while preserving so much utter crap.

Luckily, there is some life beyond the grave. Universal is producing a Firefly movie, and principle photography has just begun. There is even an official fan site with a weblog for the production. I can’t wait.

Low Frequency Modulation of Lasers

K3PGP has a nice website which I’ve seen before since he and I share some common interests: astronomy and lasers, notably. He’s got an interesting page on his K3PGP Experimenters Corner that detail his experiments with laser communications. Basically, he created a beacon transmitter which transmits 30 second long pulses of particular frequencies spaced 0.5hz apart. This modulates an IR diode, which flashes up to the night sky. Five miles away, he targets the region with a PIN diode laser reciever, which is fronted by a 12 inch Fresnel lens. Incredibly enough, he can easily receive characters sent this way. It’s very slow speed (two chars per second), but it’s a neat trick.