Weird thing in a night photo

The other week I was testing what it would look like if I took a night photo towards North and had a tree or two that's lit up in the foreground. This 30 second exposure didn't turn out too bad (besides the fact that I missed North and Polaris isn't in the shot), but what's that up in the sky?

Here's a 100% crop of it. Part of it looks like clouds, but the pink/purple/yellow part does not. I took more than one shot that night and this photo is the only one that has this anomaly in it.

If anyone knows what caused it (I'm sure it's some kind of optical phenomenon), let me know.

What to do when internet is slow

Yesterday we had some internet problems which made everything very slow. I couldn't play online games and just loading Youtube videos took forever. So what did I do? This:

Learner's permit... possibly

This is an update to something I wrote about last week. I know I said in this post that I would not get a driver's license, but as I wrote last week I don't seem to be able to get a job without one...
Anyhow, I have finally been able to apply for a learner's permit. It appears that I was not in the database that everyone in Sweden should be put into automatically when we are old enough to get a learner's permit. Stupid government.

On a happier note, my weight loss is really turning out well. Today I was under 80 kg (176.4 lbs) for the first time. The scale showed 79,8 kg (175.9 lbs) this morning.

Catch 22

This isn't about the book by Joseph Heller, but if you get the chance you should read it. It's really good.
Anyhow, I have a bit of a catch 22 situation going on. I'm unemployed and I don't have a driver's license. For some reason companies nowadays wants you to have a driver's license even if the job in question is "sitting at a desk moving numbers from one excel spreadsheet to another" or even just working as a cashier. I don't know if they think you need to drive from one side of the store to the other.
However, since I don't have a driver's license I can't seem to get a job and without a job I can't afford getting a driver's license. It currently costs between 15000 and 20000 SEK (that's around 2225 to 2970 US Dollar, or 1680 to 2240 Euro, or 1400 to 1870 Pound sterling) to get a driver's license here in Sweden. So it's not exactly cheap.
Yesterday I thought I could at least start taking some driving lessons with the help of the money I have saved. So I went on the web to apply for a learner's permit. It turns out that I can't get one and I have no idea why. The customer service was not open in the evening, and I don't like calling unknown people anyways, so I sent them an e-mail to see if they could look at it. Still no reply. So I can't get a job and I can't get a driver's license apparently.

Irrational fears

As most people I have some irrational fears (also knowns as phobias or anxiety disorders). Two of them come to mind when I think about it. Aquaphobia and anxiety about talking on the phone.

Aquaphobia is a fear of water. The reason why it's not called hydrophobia (which would be the correct way to say it since most fears are named in Greek) is that the last stage of rabies is already called that and to avoid confusion it's better to called it aquaphobia. In me it's not a fear of all kinds of water. It's more specifically large bodies of water, such as rivers, swimming pools, lakes, oceans and so on. I can walk up to and even out into an ocean but when the water is starting to get high enough so that my head could, but not necessarily would, get under water if I sat down I start getting anxious. I have learned to swim, about 30 years ago, but my head was so far up that I think my neck would be completely dry afterwards. If someone would joke about pushing me into a pool I would get a panic attack and possibly end up hurting that person. When I say "joke about pushing me into a pool" I mean that I would walk near a pool and someone would pretend that they were about to push me but really not.

Onto the telephones. I can talk on the phone in a few different situations.
1. If I'm at home alone when the phone rings.
2. If I'm at home and I know the person calling.
3. If I'm at home (preferably alone) and I call someone I know well.
What gives me anxiety attacks is when someone else is around and I have to answer the phone. It gets even worse if there are people I don't know around. Also, whenever I have to call someone I don't know or not know well. The absolute worst thing is calling someone I don't know and have never talked to. I can walk around the apartment for up to an hour before I even pick up the phone to dial the number. To be honest I'm starting to get a bit anxious now just thinking about it. And yes I do often ask others if they could call for me, or ask the person I need to contact if I can e-mail or send text messages instead of calling.

Hot Pixels

I've noticed more and more that I have some so called hot pixels on my camera's sensor. I decided to test it out a bit so I took a series of photos (1 second, 2 seconds, 5 seconds, 10 seconds, 25 seconds and 45 seconds exposures) in complete darkness with the lens cap on. Then I looked at the photos in 100% on my computer and in the 1 second exposure I couldn't find a single pixel that wasn't black. That's good. In the 2 seconds exposure I was able to find one dark gray pixel. That exact pixel just got brighter and brighter the longer the exposure got. It even got some friends to join in around it.

Here's that pixel in 400% zoom in the different exposures.
From left to right it's 2 seconds, 5 seconds, 10 seconds, 25 seconds and 45 seconds.

Then I decided to check for all the hot pixels I could see in 100% zoom of the 45 seconds exposure. I've resized them (400% zoom), cut them out and pasted them in the area they appear in the photos. So they aren't that big in reality, it was more to show where they are and what they look like.

The last photo is to show how well they show up in real photos and not just complete darkness ones. This is the top left hot pixels and the lower right ones in 100% zoom from a not so good 60 seconds exposure of stars. An attempt at making a star trail photo around Polaris.

I'm not sure if it's possible to fix the hot pixel problem, but as long as I don't get longer exposures than 1 second I will be fine. Too bad half my photos are made at night.

Ölmevallasjön (it's the name of a lake close to where I live)

Looked through old photos again and found two that were taken at the same location a few years ago. They are both taken with the same camera. A Canon PowerShot A70.
The first one was taken on October 12 2003 and the second on July 29 2004. I think both photos are nice in their own way. The first one because you can see the sand at the bottom of the lake and the second because the water is so calm that it perfectly reflects the trees and sky.

October 12 2003

July 29 2004