Layouts and polarisation!

Recently, two things have taken a step towards complete awesomeness. Firstly, the blog layout has been improved! Secondly, my face!

I remade some of the blog layout! I changed the header, which was already over a year old (TIME FLIES I KNOW RIGHT!?), and had lots of really old art. It's more up to date now, and also syncs in with that stylish dark backdrop at the top, which is just neat. 

And it wasn't even a hassle to make! I made the old header using gimp, which was... Cumbersome. The tools for making uniform and organized pictures and templates aren't the best. Instead, I used some free web collage maker! Fotor! It's actually pretty darn useful! It even allowed the collage to have transparent borderlines, I love it. Just what I needed to improve my otherwise inefficient workflow.

What I also changed was the text font. The old one was a sans-serif font, and the new one, Cambria, is both stylish, and serifed. Why are serifs important? Well, they enclose the text. The serifs at the tops and bottoms of the letters together form a line, horizontally. This provides for easier reading. It goads the eye into moving left or right, rather than up or down, which it makes it easier to focus, especially for people with dyslexia or similar problems!

As for my face, I BOUGHT SUNGLASSES

More importantly, these are polarising sunglasses. Which is weird. Just look at this gif.

They turn completely black when turned sideways. lolwhat?.

Let me explain. Polarisation occurs in a kind of filter, which blocks out all lightwaves which dont point north or south. What?.. Well, Lightwaves, contrary to popular belief, arent just invisible lines or single particles. They are lines with a height, I guess you could say. Polarising filters are materials with grooves in them, and only wavelenghts of a specific orientation may pass through. Point is, all light has an orientation. An up, a down, a left and a right.

For example, the light that enters a filter is either horizontally or vertically aligned. A vertically polarising filter would block out the horizontal lightwaves, meaning only vertical wavelengths will remain. It's simple. The waves could also be pointing north-west, or whatever, that doesnt really matter. Half the light gets through, anyway.

Half? Then why does it turn completely black in the gif? Thats because LCDs emit polarised light. LCDs are pretty simple.

Theres a backlight, then comes a polarising filter (vertically). After that comes a liquid electronically activated or disabled lightwave rotator, and another polarising filter (horizontally). After this, the light meets your eye.

So the first polarising makes all the light vertical, by removing the horizontal light. After that, 2 things can happen. An electronically uncharged LCD pixel (Light rotating thing.) will leave the lightwave in its vertical state of existence, which means it will hit the horizontally polarising (blocks vertical light) filter and be absorbed. If the LCD pixel is charged, then the lightwave will magically be rotated (Its some fancy liquid material thing, I dont even know.), thus its horizontal when it hits the horizontally polarising filter, and it passes through, to our eyes. And thats how LCDs work.

You guys should all be experts on LCDs by now. How can I write about something so boring so many times? I dont know... Christ. So sorry.

Anyway, by adding another polarising filter into the LCD equation, I can make all the light go away. The verticality or horizontality of the filter of course change when I rotate the glasses, which is just... Fascinating. All the light that comes off the LCD is oriented the same way, and I can block out all of it with a single polarising filter.

Reflections are often polarised, which is particularly noticeable when looking at water. The reflections kinda... Go away when youve got polarising glasses on. Useful! Especially for fishers! I dont know why my glasses are polarising! I can't use them with my PC, or most phones, or my microwave oven! (The Lumia phone I use doesnt use the same technology as my LCD, and the light doesn't seem to be polarised :OO)

Yay physics!


Lots of text about lots of nothing. I was supposed to watch the season premiere of Game of Thrones tonight... God damn it.