Tag Archives: Photography

Macro photos of silicon wafers

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Silicon wafer with three PC88 radio valves


Thanks to the wonders of eBay I now own three silicon wafers of some description, and because they contain microscopic detail I decided it’d be good to photograph them.

Focusing the camera was really hard, it’s bad enough getting a manual lens to focus but when the thing being photographed is so small it can’t be seen with the naked eye it requires a lot of trial and error. I also bought some old radio valves for a few quid off eBay too and decided to compare the two. It’s fun holding an entire wafer of ICs in one hand and having a single valve in the other.

Here is one of the wafers with some circuitry laid down in a regular pattern. The eBay bid says it was Intel memory of some description, but the wafer contains no visible writing to identify it. If I had a microscope I’d probably find something to read that’d identify it. The chips are arranged into small squares varying between half a centimetre and less than two millimetres across. I really like the edges of the wafers where there are half complete circuits due to the shape of the wafer. If these were processors, each one would be worth a hundred pounds or so, and the edge contains about 100 defective half made ones. A lot of the middle ones probably didn’t work properly either.

It’s hard to appreciate just how small the traces are on the surface, fortunately one of my hairs fell out while trying to get my camera to behave and I took a photo of it on the surface of the silicon wafer.

What’s wrong with this picture?

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How not to make a banner ad

How not to make a banner ad

I saw this ad on a popular social networking website, and it just struck me as so wrong. Just because you’ve bought a horizontal banner doesn’t mean you can take a skyscraper ad (it’s not a “vertical” banner, it’s a “skyscraper” one, that’s the correct terminology) and just rotate it.

Unless this is a magical gravity-defying woman.

There’s crap ads, and then there’s stuff like this. Even the photo’s a bit poorly cropped too, the poor woman’s lost part of her right shoulder and a bit of knee and hip. My A-Level photography students could do a better job.

Blogs and websites I like to read

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I use Google Reader to follow quite a lot of websites, blogs and anything else interesting that squirts out an RSS feed. For the curious, here is a list of my favourites. I’m leaving out the well known things like XKCD, Dilbert, Hack-a-day and so on.

I often find these kinds of sites while browsing around the comment fields of popular websites. It’s fun to click the random links in people’s signatures…

What are your favourite websites to visit? I’m always interested in new things to read.

Exploring my local area by bike

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I’ve been out on my bike once again exploring the local area. Whereas most people tend to cycle down the river’s edge, looking at the rubbish-strewn dark trails that lead off into the reclaimed wilderness but continuing, I think “that looks an interesting way” and set off down it. Sometimes it turns into a nice little loop full of local interest, other times it turns into a bit of a crap ride.

Today was the second type of trail. It looked quite promising from Google Maps’ satellite view. My aim was to cycle into town but by going down the river. I now know this is not possible, there’s a railway in the way. I did find where the locals dump their rubbish and old fridges though.

For the morbidly curious, here’s the Google Maps link and you can download the KMZ file Deadend trail.

My Google Earth is now collecting a healthy pattern of red tracks running over the reclaimed land either side of the river. Looking at the area now, you’d never think there used to be a gravel quarry and coal mine. I think I’ll now try and cycle North up the river itself, rather than the canal part. Ultimately I’d like to cycle along the Pennine Trail to Leeds and then the other way to wherever it goes.

I took my previously mentioned Asahi Pentax film camera with me. Hopefully the pictures will come out and look good. I’ve almost stopped looking at the back for a preview image ;)

Here’s the stats for today’s ride

Created by My Tracks on Android.

Total Distance: 7.52 km (4.7 mi)
Total Time: 48:27
Moving Time: 33:32
Average Speed: 9.35 km/h (5.8 mi/h)
Average Moving Speed: 13.46 km/h (8.4 mi/h)
Max Speed: 27.90 km/h (17.3 mi/h)
Min Elevation: 68 m (222 ft)
Max Elevation: 84 m (274 ft)
Elevation Gain: 135 m (444 ft)
Max Grade: 3 %
Min Grade: -7 %
Recorded: Wed Sep 23 16:56:52 GMT+01:00 2009

Using a T-Mobile G1 with My Tracks is really really good.

Macro Electronics Photography

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A cluster of SMD resistors that look like a small town

A cluster of SMD resistors that look like a small town

While building my MAME cabinet and sorting out the various motherboards in my posession, I got a bit bored and started taking random photos. Electronics are interesting close up, this image shows some surface mount resistors on the back of a motherboard, their positioning looking like a small town.

I took other pictures and they are on my photos website, so have a look at an iBook Logic Board and iBook 3GB Hard Disk fromwhen I upgraded a tangerine first generation iBook’s hard disk (which takes a mere 30 steps).

There are also images of an Intel Celeron CPU before adding heat paste and after adding heat paste (yes, I put on more than that, don’t worry… I know how to apply heat paste to CPUs). And some very dusty power regulation electronics on a PC motherboard plus a nice abstract shot of the underside of three PCI expansion slots.