"Can I say Queen/flesh in the same sentence". "Haul me to the notorious Tower of London"
If you have even been to the UK, you must have been on a tourist jolly.
All of the stereotype's you are using are as ridiculous as saying all American's are gun toting redneck cowboy's.
You need to get out more.
--
As a Britsh Taxpayer, London Olympics, although a good spectacle, are a GBP24bn waste of money in hard austerity times where the money has been flushed down the toilet.
LEDs can emit a cold light. But here, they create molten steel. Look out below!
Fans of Olympic technology can think of the ongoing London 2012 games as the LED championships.
So many of the great visual effects of last Friday’s opening ceremony relied on the versatility and controllability of light emitting diodes - those tiny semiconductors known for their energy efficiency and, as the Olympics are showing, for their transformation of public lighting design and display.
Assuming you’re one of the billions of people who watched or who have seen replays: You know those five giant Olympic rings that descended as molten steel into the show’s fiery industrial scene? Well, they were lit to liquid metal perfection by LEDs, according to an article in London’s Sunday Times (I’d provide a link, but Rupert Murdoch makes it available only to paying subsribers; I read the dead tree version).
Likewise, the crowd-turned-giant-digital-display took its magic from LEDs mounted on screens in between the 80,000 seats. LEDs also graced the undulating wings of the bicycle doves.
There's no escaping London's LEDs. Here they are on Tower Bridge.
And how extraordinary that a collection of LEDs created such a life-like image of the Queen greeting James Bond, aka actor Daniel Craig in Buckingham Palace…Just kidding! In a television production coup, that regal image was, of course, the actual Queen making her acting debut in the flesh.
Oh? Am I allowed to say “Queen” and “flesh” in the same sentence? Hmmm. Probably not. I think I just sentenced myself to time in the notorious Tower of London.
But that’s okay, because they’re likely to haul me into a cell with a view of Tower Bridge which is all lit up with, guess what? LEDs!!
It’s not all good. As I’ve said before, my eyes haven’t yet acclimatized to the LED hues, which sometimes can look about as warm as a refrigerator. I’ve noticed that with some of the TV shots of Olympic Stadium. Depending on which of its ever-changing color schemes is on camera, its palette can evoke “digital display blue” or “control panel red.”
That’s one for the industry to work on. Maybe by 2016 it can win some medals in that department.
Finally, this thought: Each of those LEDs sure do use a lot less electricity than a conventional incandescent bulb would. On the other hand, we’re using a lot more of them. What, I wonder, is the actual energy savings of that?
Photo: Molten rings from Nick J. Webb via Flickr. Tower Bridge from Richard Chivers via GE and Reformer Films.
More public displays of LED affection on SmartPlanet:
- GE caught paying for Olympic gold
- LEDs to dance at European Championship soccer
- LEDs atop Empire State Building
- LEDs turning sow’s ear into silk purse in Paris
- LEDs to bathe London’s Tower Bridge in Olympic gold and silver
The ABC’s of LEDs on SmartPlanet:
