World Trade Center Failure Analysis

(Re-edited several times, for syntax errors, clarity, broken links.)

This post contains images with emotional impact.

A new video about WTC popped on youtube which prompted me to write this blog post because i suspect the number of casualties by dust, unreported to this day, where many times more than those who died in the towers.

04/09/2019 Video is gone, can't find quickly a similar one without the offensive music. Here are some pictures showing the scale of the disaster brought by dust. I don't believe people could really survive in that dust for more than a few seconds.


Until WTC designed by architect Minoru Yamasaki and after, all high rise steel constructions were done in the "classic" fashion with structural vertical and horizontal rolled steel beams with cross reinforcement joints and numerous interior walls. As the looks suggests, this type of design is solid and can't be easily damaged.

WTC structure was made only of two so called tubular frames or cages, using about half the steel the old design uses. Outer frame was made of prefab panels that were actually made of three vertical, square section, rolled steel beams (2nd image below) welded together with other three huge pieces of sheet metal. This image, like many others, is tricky cause it suggests the building in the distance was built in a similar way. It only appears so because of its shape, no other building has ever been designed in this way.

The prefab panels themselves seem to be inspired from a Buddhist architecture ornament called Torana. (Torre means tower in  Spanish and Italian, and toro means bull with two horns of course).



Panels were put together in a new, revolutionary, also unique design: An outer tubular frame made of prefab inter-positioned panels (outer cage) and an inner core of "classical design" (inner cage), though only for elevator and shafts, with vast floors in between that were connecting and preventing the inner and outer cage to sway or buckle (bend) in or out.



Outer frame panels are connected together with four bolts at the end of each rolled steel square tube.

This type of joint would take a lot of vertical compression, as much as allowed by the rolled steel maximum compression load, some horizontal or side compression, limited by the bolts, (which have a cross section far less than of the cross section of the rolled steel) and could take almost no bucling (bending in and out of the cage wall) because of the prying effect on the bolts at the joint level.

Buckling and shear of the outer cage was was dealt with by inter-positioning of the of the panels and by floor trusses between inner and outer frame (cage) which allowed  the construction to stay vertically.

I tried to search to see how many bolts held together the structure and could not find. It's 12 per each prefab panel. Can't find how many panels either. What i found is many other analysis were blaming the bolts for the failure. But not those, the bolts holding together the floor trusses to the walls.

Even with this design (outer-inner cage) building would have behaved differently if the vertical square rolled beams making the outer cage where of one piece from bottom to top or anyways, fewer than one per 3 floors or assembled with a smaller square beam in between called "inner sleeve". This type of joint can take almost as much bending (side compression), shear and buckling as a continuous beam.

When assembled, however, the building had the appearance of outer cage beams being continuous also because of the aesthetic aluminum cladding installed on the outside on top of the each beam. From one of the images below it results some 258 vertical (interrupted every 3 floors) beams all around the building, which makes for 86 panels per each 3 floors, 110 floors, resulting approximately 4,730 prefab panels and 56,760 structural bolts (and nuts). Most of these bolts popped during cascading failure of the building, which apparently was designed in such a way that each the concrete floor turned into dust when falling onto next.

These are called bridge trusses making up the vast floor and connecting inner and outer cages. Thin, nothing like the sound, solid "classical" design seen in the second picture in this post (above), used in all high rise buildings before and after.

This design provided indeed ample floors with no walls in between.

Diagram (above): Constructional features of a prefabricated floor unit

(http://911research.wtc7.net/mirrors/guardian2/wtc/godfrey.htm)

21 Floor covering
22 In-situ concrete (4 inches)
23 Trough decking (1 1/2 ", ribbed)
24 Bar joist
25 Electrical services duct
26 Air-conditioning duct 

In this image after first impact on South Tower or WTC2 one can see prefab panels taken as a whole at least at one end, caused by failure of bolts. Pieces of the concrete floor missing.

This is a picture of the the exit area of the first hit tower. It was not until i have seen this picture that i realized the failure started at the concrete and steel components of the floors.

After impact, fuel spread across the vast floors caught fire and the expanding concrete and metal trusses making the floor heated by fire started to push, mainly alongside the trusses, and steel decking ribs on top, inner and outer cage against each other in the same time with floor buckling of the floors in other places creating a prying effect on the bolts connecting connecting trusses with the cages and those connecting panels with each other. Floor's structural role in stabilizing the sway of the outer cage in this case reverted to causing buckling of the cage caused by floor elongation (by heat expansion) and gradually breaking the bolts between panels and between cages and floors by prying effect. When enough of those bolts broke the floors started to fall onto each other.

Towers' "revolutionary" tubular design made of only two cages (tubes) (inner and outer) had several major design flaws.

Vast, relatively thin floors, where floors were/are also made of rolled steel beams played only a "minor structural role" compared to outer and inner frame, except sustaining selves, the concrete, and holding the outer cage to prevent sway or buckling. Without floor trusses and steel decking connecting inner and outer cage, the outer cage could not keep its shape, but sway, buckle, or bend inward or outwards and break.

About half of the weight of the floors was supported by a single shell or the outer cage with lack of redundancy. When that frame failed, there was nothing else to prevent the whole building from collapsing.

Ultimately, lack of inner walls and vastness of the floors due to unique design contributed to spreading of fuel and fire almost instantly to an entire half of the building (on several floors), when the floor expanded, heated by fire, and because of the length, the expansion was in the range of several feet.

Thermal expansion during hot summer days and the contraction in the winter times is the reason all bridges made of steel reinforced concrete have expansion gaps, while the roads themselves loose enough heat to the ground underneath not to expand and buckle. But if the temperature raised not with 20 or 50 degrees or whatever but with several hundred degrees, those gaps would not be enough. There is also a thermal inertia which prevents the bridge from heating all the way during the summer days while cooling during night time

Unusual hot summer may have been the cause for collapsing of that bridge in Genoa, Italy.

Another examples of metal structure that expand with heat was supersonic Concorde' fuselage. At 2 times the speed of sound, because of intense friction with the air, Concorde's (and other's supersonic planes) fuselage was expanding as much as one foot while of course the cabin's floor inside stayed at room temperature).

"heating had a significant impact on the construction of Concorde. Perhaps the most important issue designers had to contend with was the fact that heat causes materials to expand. I've seen different values on exactly how much the aircraft expanded, but most sources indicate that the air-frame stretched by 5 to 12 inches (12 to 30 centimeters) at Mach 2. Given the aircraft's normal length of 204 ft (62.2 m), that change amounts to little less than a 5% increase in the size of the Concorde fuselage."

http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question/planes/q0199a.shtml

Thermal expansion by heat was the direct cause of failure of only one or two floors. But when those floors fell on to the next one the accumulated weight of all the above floors accelerated by gravity lead to a cascade failure of all the other floors and corresponding walls of the cages. Concrete component of each floor, that was made by a certain recipe, was turning explosively into dust upon hitting the next floor.

There is little doubt in my mind that the towers were designed on purpose like a card castle, to create some day, when the right moments arrives, this type of spectacular frightening failure.

When re-editing this post and was searching for different shapes (sections) of rolled steel (for the purpose of further documenting this blog post) and on a site i found out some shapes are no longer available as a result of America's steel industry decline. There are probably also not many civil engineers left to deal with these kind of things or write on blogs or on forums and actually no more high rise buildings to be built. Or too few to matter.

Grommet vs Connector In Power Brake Booster Design

(Though i have a degree in mechanical engineering since 1986 from Romania, it is in Machine Tools and not Automotive Engineering. After i graduated, most of the work i've done was in computer programming though at the beginning related to engineering CAD after which i swicthed to accounting, payroll and medical insurance. Also my level of English when i came in the United States, especially in the technical area was much lower than today, after i started writing on social media. Thus it is only recently when i understood the below described phenomena and also became capable of describe it.)

A rubber grommet is a ring with a groove on the outside that fits in a hole and helps with the passage of a pipe, cable or connector through that hole, preventing the last one touching the edges of the hole. Most common use of grommets, as described in this Wikipedia picture, is for passing cables through holes.

In automotive industry they are also used for passing and sealing of ribbed connectors and holes, mostly in PCV valve or power booster applications. Here is the image of a power booster check valve with two connectors on each side (in and out). It is a one way valve with a spring and seal inside that allows the flow of air in one direction only and it ends with two ribbed connectors, of which one goes into the power booster grommet and the other to the power booster vacuum hose that at the other end is connected to engine manifold or throttle body on the manifold side. The function of this valve is to make sure that vacuum does not escape from the booster or air it's not getting in immediately after the engine stops, ensuring one or two brake cycle in case of engine failure or sudden stop while the vehicle is driven. For the purpose of this discussion it does nothing more than an L shape connector.

A brake power booster is a big cylinder with one or two diaphragms inside that helps with braking by adding extra force to the master cylinder when a smaller brake force is applied on the pedal. The extra force is generated by the suction power of the engine on the admission cycle, which in automotive terms is named manifold vacuum, or the difference of pressure between the inside of the manifold and atmospheric pressure applied on the opposite sides of the diaphragm.

Many don't understand. In combustion engines the air volume necessary for running the engine is small, at least at idle and under no load conditions. Thus, the flow of the air in the engine is restricted by a round shape valve called throttle that turns inside a cylindrical air passage with the same diameter with the throttle called throttle body with the pressing of the "gas" pedal. At idle the throttle is in perpendicular position with the air flow and closing the passage. A small amount of air (by)passes usually through a parallel passage that is also controlled by the computer through a solenoid or actuator, that is open only at idle. On the rotation axis of the throttle there is a potentiometer like sensor (similar with those in older audio devices) that turns with the throttle, thus transmitting to the computer a variable voltage that tells the computer how much the throttle is opened. Because of this severe restriction of the air flow inside the engine, vacuum is created on the intake side of the throttle. This vacuum is available and engineers long time ago figured they could use it for powering different devices and actuators in the vehicle as if would come from a vacuum pump), as the brake power booster.

In a normally running engine, at idle, this vacuum generates a difference of pressure with the atmospheric pressure of or above 22 inches mercury, that is about 11 psi and can go a little higher but obviously not higher than the atmospheric pressure itself that is about 14.7 psi since the difference it's generated by vacuum, or suction, or lack or pressure that can obviously cannot go lower than zero. 11 psi is equivalent with about one third to almost half of the pressure inside a tire that is above 32 psi.|

Here is a picture with a power booster that uses a grommet for passing the connector of a check valve.

Another type of design for solving applying manifold vacuum to the power booster described in the picture below uses instead of a grommet a connector that is part or welded or pressed on the power booster in the same place where the grommet hole is in the grommet solution, connector that is similar to the connector used on the other end of the hose as in both solutions, in which case the check valve is placed somewhere else like inside the booster.

Due to the way it is created, by the reciprocating motion of the pistons inside the cylinders that follows a time dependent sine pattern, engine vacuum has a pulsating nature that is partially smoothened by the volume of (low pressure) air inside the manifold and hoses (there are other pneumatic devices that are also fed with the pressure difference of pressure between inside the manifold and surrounding air that are connected to the manifold side of the throttle body though smaller and less important that also hold a certain volume of the same low pressure air in all the hoses and devices).

In a normally running engine, at idle, vacuum is  about 22 inches, relative or lower than atmospheric pressure. When the gas pedal is slightly pressed and throttle opens a little, around 2000 rpm, the vacuum gets even higher, closer to zero pressure or absolute vacuum or 14.7 psi relative to atmospheric pressure due to increasing need of engine for air because of faster movement of the pistons and the throttle's opening resistance. When the throttle is opened even more, thus allowing more air freely into the manifold the vacuum starts to decrease again.

The more vacuum in the manifold, the more pulsating is the pressure difference due to increasing amplitude of the sine wave due to reciprocating motion of the pistons.

Also. Due to various dynamic forces the engine has a tendency of moving or vibrating on its rubber mounts, mostly following the cycle of pistons' reciprocating movement, but also the rpm. There are certain rpms that make the engine move more or at higher amplitudes than others due to resonance phenomena.

Also, all the hoses, including power booster vacuum hose are not rigid and move around together with the engine having their own moving pattern and resonance with certain rpms.

The grommet in the grommet solution in all different design variations (i've seen so far) have the length and diameter of the groove comparable with the sheet metal and the hole they seal, design that cannot generate a sealing force on the wall of the booster. Thus the sealing is being insured by the difference of pressure between inside and outside of the booster applied on the outer side of the grommet that presses against the booster's wall.

The check valve's connector on the grommet side has a slightly bigger diameter than the hole of the grommet and it is ribbed, and when is inserted into the grommet it causes very hard to predict deformations of both parts which in this case are static but asymmetrical due to the weight of the hose but at least at the beginning of its life and at idle it seals the vacuum or at least partially, up to a certain pressure difference or pulsating amplitude at certain rpms.

Thus there are two sealing surfaces regarding the grommet. One is between outer rim of the groove and the sheet metal around the hole and one is between the hole and the connector.

As i said the vacuum hose has its own weight. This weight is applied on the grommet side as well but with dynamic variations following the different relative motions between the grommet and the hose, generating variable forces that are impossible or very hard to predict that are in the end applied onto and sustained by the grommet, causing it to slightly change shape many times a second, or causing dynamic deformations, following the relative motion of the engine and the hose. Those changes of shape are asymmetrical due to direction of the variable force being applied on the grommet and very hard or impossible to predict, in the end changing the sealing surface, in a dynamic way and increasing it on one side and decreasing on the other.

In conclusion, both the pulsating nature of the engine manifold vacuum and the forces generated by the hose moved by the engine moving on the mounts deform the grommet dynamically, combined can change the sealing areas and pressures on the sealing surfaces of the grommet, possibly leading to small, pulsating leaks that might appear only on certain rpms and engine loads.

The power boosters are oftenly painted on the outside to check corrosion. The sealing surface between the grommet and the power booster is also painted. Paint thickness can be irregular causing unpredictable variations on the final shape and smoothness of the sealing surface and can also degrade in time or even be peeled or chipped due to age causing irregularities to grow in time and sealing to decrease, thus increasing  the pulsating vacuum leak.

Peeled, eroded paint an a small indentation at the power booster grommet hole

The grommet solution compared to welded connector solution brings several more areas than need to be sealed in the vacuum transmission assembly between throttle body and booster, that is throttle body connector-hose, hose-check valve, check valve-grommet and grommet-power booster.

Grommets are made of rubber. Rubber is a material that often has irregularities but also changes properties in time due to aging. Constant pressure like from the ribs of the connector can cause grooves inside the hole of the grommet thus in time decreasing sealing capacity on that side. Also rubber looses elasticity with age thus the initial installation pressure and sealing capacity between grommet and check valve connector and capacity of following the irregularities on the painted area.

The welded connector design is much simpler, and cost comparable solution, it follows the solution on the other side of the hose, has less sealing surfaces and much less like to cause vacuum leaks.

Uncontrollable vacuum leaks in the end translates by air flowing in the engine in uncontrollable ways, bypassing the throttle body and throttle.

Small intermittent vacuum leaks on carburrated engine can cause trouble by changing in unpredictable ways the fuel/air ratio.  The computer responds promptly by the reading of the oxygen sensors, thus adding more fuel.

But on injected engines even small vacuum leaks are critical because in injected engines fuel/air mixture is adjusted by a computer based on reading from one or more oxygen sensor inside the exhaust system, among others. The more oxygen the sensors read due to a vacuum leak or air escaping uncontrollably into the manifold, the more fuel it adds. Also air/fuel ratio is adjusted by the computer using readings from other sensors, including throttle positioning sensor and pressure sensors inside the manifold and intake hose. Air flowing into the manifold due to unpredictable, intermittent leaks translates into reading in the sensors than cause the engine running erratically and mainly increasing fuel consumption with all its consequences, like more fuel burning with the extra air inside the exhaust and catalytic converter, shortening the life of the catalytic converter and overheating other components of the vehicle, like floor, transmission and clutch. Extra fuel consumption also translates in more fuel being used, extra cost, pollution, etc.

The following pictures are done with my old check valve and hose and a new original grommet.

All the deformations that remain permanent due to aging of the grommet, abrasion of the paint, inevitably lead in time to more important vacuum leaks that can lead to decreasing braking capacity, but that is not obvious since it occurs very gradually and the driver gets used to. Though vacuum is present in the booster, it is diminished due to vacuum leaks that appear only in this design up to a point when the computer finally sets an error that usually indicates a lean condition (too much air in the air/fuel mixture), because through its oxygen sensors it actually measure the amount of oxygen left after the burning cycle inside the cylinder that is increased in case of vacuum leaks or more air bypassing the throttle thus unaccounted for by the TPS sensor inside the intake manifold. But when usually that happens that engine has been functioning abnormally for too long and other components have been damaged by overheating. Also the vacuum leaks even at the beginning of the life of this vehicle that are due to the grommet solution are intermittent, and the computer is programmed to put a check engine light only after a contentious malfunctioning or a high reading on one of the oxygen sensors of a certain period of time, cycles and events, that only happens when the vacuum leak grows bigger and/or gets permanent.

All these consequences can be averted if the pressed or welded connector solution is used instead of the grommet one.

It is hard for me to estimate the amount of fuel being used by multiplying this type of failure due to a faulty design to the the number of vehicles that still use it, but i estimate it in the enormous area.

October 27

10:17 Skim this. It has been refreshing through motivation, thank you, but when stressed out the society fell back on easy to handle stereotypes as their culture has been built of those. As for me, i don't know anything anymore except i will never try to seduce you fit in. Don't assume i'm even trying just because i've learned to some extent English or i exhibit some human reactions.

As for coffee, i use (decaf) coffee in the morning together with a charcoal cap so i cleanse my guts from bacteria and protozoa that fell from ceiling and came from constantly calculated dog piles outside so i feel less nauseated and can eat something. In fact i just smelled one right now so my daily cycle can begin like in Ground Dog Day.

And BTW i don't believe stereotypes are true generalizations uh huh but a way of manipulating the whole society by making believing so.

BTW do you think concept is a type of generalization? (My head is spinning just trying to read a little about those because of the endless mess of always failing western philosophy and of course of the psychology that derives from it).

BTW i couple of days ago i fell again victim of yet another attempt to fit in. That is trying not to think of every detail of what i'm doing but rather trying to do everything in a hurry based on experiences and learning by mistakes.

Years ago when i was under the heavy influence of smokes from around the building i did an oil change and spilled some oil on a couple of connectors on top of the transmission.

These newer automatic transmissions are head spinners because the control of shifting gears is done by a computer that is hooked to it by some fragile connectors instead of having everything inside like during old times where all the governing was inside. So a simple failure of those connectors would mean your car will severely malfunction.

So i was troubleshooting a rare intermittent malfunction and first thing that came to mind was i should try to clean those inside and out with some WD40 contact solvent i bought a while ago for this purpose which is tricky because you can contaminate them more by bringing dirt from outside the connectors inside.

So i gathered courage and momentum all day two days ago and when time came it started to rain. So i postponed it until rain stopped and went outside and did it with a flashlight in the dark trying not to blind the pilots of the low flying planes that started pouring (they always do that when i go with a flashlight at night outside).

It took me one hour only to unstuck one of those, then one more to clean them while exposed to smoke in smoke and also been breathing lots of that solvent and then when about to finish i got drunk out of frustration. So the next day and even today i was numbed and dumbed by the three influencers combined, much more than usual.

So i spent all day yesterday like oh so many times before trying to remember exactly what i've done at the car and that influenced my whole "moode of thinking" on top of everything (i was quite mad). And BTW i feel smoke coming from outside again 12:15.

So i came to the conclusion i didn't break anything but the problem went away after i added a bit of fluid cause i believe it was under the lower limit which is almost impossible to figure at a transmission without a dipstick.

BTW a few days ago i was driving through Beaver-ton (the city where i lived before, at Sus Sex Village Apts.) and entered the dealership to buy 2 more quarts to attempt the third partial drain and fill, you cannot drain the whole fluid and you do 2 or 3 partial drains (in my case of three quarts every time) to change up to 75% percent, as opposed to going to the dealer and paying 500 dollars and have changed about the same percentage or less (when they flush it by pumping some will still mix with the old one) and then wonder if they didn't break anything else.

So i went in at the same dealer where i bought 2+5=7 quarts a year ago, talked to the parts guy and he was not satisfied with year make and model and went outside and wrote the VIN from the car and then he gave me the two quarts but when i got home i saw it was a different type than the quart i had left from those 7 i bought a year ago (and used 6 for two partial drains).

And had to wait like 15-30 minutes until they brought the fluid "from the other shop cause they were out of it".

So before i did anything i checked and found on a site and the type of fluid which BTW was 32 dollars a quart was not compatible with the other i already poured in. Notice, bottom of the first page here.

12:44 I believe in cognitive therapy which i think is the logical replacement of more "esoteric" Freudian psychoanalysis. Simply remembering and reinterpreting traumatic events in the light of newer acquired friendlier (now stereotyping) experiences (i think it can only work for the lucky ones though).

2:00 Again deleted a whole entry by mistake. These two invoices do not show the last qualifiers (letters) of the type of fluid. Last one has an odd account number, 9999. Though the different part numbers are there. BTW i love Americans because of the freedom you can see in their eyes kind and candid nature even when they are "legitimately" or openly trying to conspire against me, however putting that recognizable fearful "evil" or mad look on their faces.

11:00 When we started to yell at each other i knew there was too much smoke in here. Found three sets of holes releasing unprecedented amounts of smoke, one was just around the corner under their AC, one under a bush and one next to our patio. Smoke subsided suddenly when i covered those. Angela does not believe me when i say smoke is coming from the ground. Now it's coming back but not so much anymore.

11:01. Tonight there was another drawing at Spirit Mountain. I was surprised and in a way, mad by the fact that the car was running much better. Smoother shifting at the transmission, more response to the pedal. But i think it has potential for more. Slightly better mileage going there (430 but when i came back the temperature was 20 degrees less, pressure at the tires 4 psi less and the mileage was like 42 but i had to stop a few times and it dropped to 40.

In my way there i was thinking to add some more fluid but when coming back i decided to do more research.

The method of measuring recommended in the service manual says. With the check plug open, engine on, a steady flow of fluid must come out and if you measure it should be no more than 900 cc every too minutes.

I believe it's ridiculous, if you remove 900 cc just to measure you will be one quart short, right? What if it only drips? That does not count for a steady flow, right? So i figure it you let it flow until you have just a drip and then add like 200 ml or something, right? Which i did but now i'm not sure if i should add some more.

I think it is obvious for everyone, they built it in such a way you cannot do it by yourself, you must go to the dealer and they themselves don't know what to do except hooking a machine to it and let it do the job. So nobody knows how to measure fluid level in a dipstickless transmission period. I mean, you can go to the dealer and pay 180 for a diagnostic and they will tell you to change fluid which can go up to 500 more.

This can't be right. I've done so and then after i added 200 ml the car runs much better. I think this guy has overfilled but since no bubbles are coming out... So maybe i should go under the car one more time to check.

In our way there. At the Safeway at Tualatin Sherwood and 99 (yes i think there is a Starbucks there) there was a vehicle (car or van) upside down on the other side of 99. Kept asking myself how could it have ended like that in an area with 35 speed limit but then Angela told me it probably fell off of a towing truck that was parked further down the road.

One annoyingly noisy motorcycle with a guy with very thin ankles (though around 5' 10") in front of us in the slow moving traffic, for minutes, and then he was gone and i was staring at the "accident" when traffic in front of me stopped suddenly and almost got into the next vehicle and they were like at least 8 Police and Sheriff's cars on the road on an "accident" with no driver involved.

I think they were there to witness to my arrest if i hit that black SUV or van in front of me.

11: 24 No hit, seriously!

October 25

1:12 Nehammer. Schengen. Xi Jinping. Bottom.

1:30 Tom Emmer abruptly.

10:50 I wish it was weekend cause this entry would fit into that horizon. Was that or two days ago when i put a link to a song from 7 years ago where some were still trying to make a mark in music with AI.

I bet its stridency raised lots of eyebrows (or better said pricked ears) at the time but we were already used or at least openly introduced to the phenomenon by Alex da Kidd.

Soon it became obvious to anyone that AI cannot be used extensively or excessively or even distinctively in music, but only as adjuvant in "sculpting" artists' own voices and combining it with instruments that sometimes seem all too perfect, but never too far from recognizable and indistinguishable to the most.

However i think people deserve to know that everything they hear today on their radio comes from "the box" which means nothing is "direct" or natural no more, especially the re-synthesized voices. It became very possible the "artists" don't even sing their songs anymore, but just offer samples of their voices or simply sing the disclaimer  and then lip sync to the machine when performing live.

1:15 There is bullying and there is smart bullying. The need for some to bully someone weaker physically it's obscure and i don't have the time to analyze it.

But there is organized bullying (and yes since bullying is a crime, organized bullying through its vast consequences should be treated as organized crime). It is usually smart bullying not the kind met in classrooms and school corridors or workplaces.

There is an effect on the target, but in cases like me, who i am so accustomed to it and worn out emotionally it doesn't matter. The target is usually a larger audience that may "learn" the lesson through sympathizing.

Let me give you an example. This morning i couldn't wait to get outside because of the vague smells in here. Which turned real, when i got back though there was smoke throughout all my walk in the range of 50 or slightly above normal. Perceivable.

First think i saw outside was a dead squished fat rat. Right in front of the building. With its guts and tiny liver spilled on the pavement. I had to pick it and throw it before it got flattened completely and rot in front of the building for weeks to come.

Note the link with the squished lifter i just wrote about. Immediately a badly smoking FedEx passed followed by an even worse smoking noisy BMW with black windows, non Oregon LPN something like 5B8 that filled the alley with exhaust that lasted for the next 5 minutes or until i got at the street.

After i crossed the street there was the classic Sriracha prepared bottle. A water bottle filled with water mixed with Sriracha left to trickle on the ground in the wind direction. I am familiar with this treat because they did it many times when i was very tired or even sick. It wakes from the dead everybody on a few hundred feet, inside and outside in the wind's direction.

Trying to compensate for the lack of sharp insulation dust that was doing the job before i closed those holes in the walls a couple of days ago.

So it was the nose congestion followed by a stimulant so i will hopefully crash or have heart failure after breathing through congested nose while being stimulated with pain. I can confirm chest discomfort right now and forcing myself to breath on the nose.

After spending all night trying to figure the next speaker, after i had a few drinks and was already tired, drinking caffeinated soda and staying up until i found it and then until i got sleepy, which translates 6 AM, i was half past dead when i got out of the building and now i feel like jumping to summon the Halloween ghosts.

Can't possibly recollect right now everything that happened during my walk, though i saw again the Rev'it pickup passing in the neighborhood, which i perceive as a threat in the same time with an almost bold, threatening guy by the breaking pillar.

I was like walking on a cloud though it was raining from above, not able to think much except of what i already got obsessively in mind. Not much aware of the surroundings that is. Ok i remember one.

Back in August when they did the pavement someone came with a truck (possibly the one with snorkel and WA LPN associated with the people upstairs) and drew some eights on the fresh asphalt though they were not perfect eights, looking more like leaves and could not remember where i saw that sign except on some logo from Hungary that i can't remember who it belonged to but today i saw it again on a transportation van.

1:54 Got back home, smoke inside, filled a couple of mole holes by the concrete patio, found in the grass a flattened tiny poop just by the smell, etc.. Finally at the laptop. Only to see the adapter died again (the third this year). So i will take another break until i can get one.

And on Z100 right now thet are playing Fire to the Rain. Which is not on their Recently played as at 2:10 or right now.

10:00 In case you didn't know

10:30 I really hope we all will meet with the day when all work, physical and spiritual will be treated seen as fitness workout and meditation.

Dust Lady of 911

Today i started to feel again the effects of fine redwood dust. It is my belief "they" alternate methods and after a while they bring back the old tricks now forgotten (though i try to write everything, almost everything fades out or is shadowed by newer events and especially the fake events meant to cover on keywords what i write).

(Someone, my roommate back in HS once prophesied for me that i would have a life full of events, and that qualifies for a long life since life is measured in number of events, not necessarily years, would die in a mental hospital and in the end i would be rehabilitated).

So after i talked a lot about litter dust, now comes the redwood dust again. Redwood is toxic and irritating per large amounts of tannins. It is also very tough, mechanically which means tiny chips can be very sharp and penetrates skin. I know because i stuck my hands in the mulch under the deck of main door several times and my hands hurt for hours if not days.

Sometimes in the spring of 2016 they came and spread around the building chipped redwood. I think it was around Cinco de Mayo. By now obvious, they used way too much, intentionally. In some places around the building it was up to 1 ft tall. I threw away dozens and dozens of 13 gallons bags or hundred of pounds in the garbage, at least 10 times several years ago. At some point it became like a mat. There are places where it never rains, like under the stairs. People are walking on it and some turns into the finest dust. I saw the water coming form the AC in the summer was red because of it.

But i don't believe it gets in here by itself. The fact that there is so much around the building allows them to bring it inside without proof, when "needed". There was also wind two days ago and that wind might have blown some inside or on the stairs and deck. When they come with the blowers, on Wednesday, they blow everything from the parking lot onto the buildings, but they also come near the building where the dust is and blow it, i don't know why. A fine, invisible layer settles on the stairs, on the mat in front and gets inside.

Yesterday i wanted to get drunk to celebrate something. But the subtle pain from dust was keeping me irritated and almost sober no matter how much i drank. In the end i looked at the bottle and got scared and stopped drinking. It was too late. I probably drank around 400 ml of brandy, about the same amount of wine. Biggest trouble, i ran out of soluble decaf and i drank some regular. Don't know why, to me it's worse if i drink caffeine then alcohol and terrible if i mix them.

So i stopped, went to bed almost unconscious and woke in a few hours with a reflux episode. That is the content of the stomach goes up on esophagus and enters the airways. If drunk enough, you may choke to death (Jimmy Hendrix's death, they say). Upstairs a dog and a person was running, walking, intermittently starting after 3 AM but in the morning it was like a few steps, out of nowhere, every minute or so. I got so dehydrated, i started having palpitation (in the morning), felt my hands and legs swallowing (heart failure). I drank lots of herbal tee to re-hydrate. I was feeling almost ok and wanted to go back to sleep but just before Angela left i started to have chest pain. Usually to me it solves with a few 100 mg potassium gluconate supplements and a long walk. But i was out of potassium pills. I ate a mixture of potatoes, peas and cabbage, some meat that should have had at least that amount but also the carbs started a movie (Yes, Start Trek Deep Space 9) and went to sleep.

I woke at 2 PM with again chest pain. Ate more vegetables. Made it somehow till Angela came. When she came i went outside and i realized there was some sort of chocking smoke and there was visible smoke at the chimneys at the houses (apartments) visible uphill from here. I knew i had a few potassium pills in the car and after taking those finally went for a walk. I was dizzy at first probably because of heart not working well but i kept telling myself, this is going to work. The alternative was ER which was very unappealing for a number of reasons. I even ran a bit. After two miles i started to feel better and came back home. If i had a clogged coronary artery, it probably unclogged by itself, but i needed a few more hours to complete recovery from fibrillation. When they came back home upstairs. A few more walks with squeaks, breathing through congested nose got me severe palpitations, with heart probably stopping a couple of times (felt a few painful poundings in chest and was back to normal).

I noticed so far. During mild heart attacks some hormones get released in your body. After reaching a peak, with heart pounding like that, it always gets better. Your body might have its own mechanism to recover from those, if the cause (dehydration, de-mineralisation) is removed. Sometimes re-mineralistion may occur by itself if you wait long enough allowing your body to pull those minerals (electrolytes) from your bones.

It was around that time when i realized there was lots of dust inside. I rinsed a rag i used to clean the floor and water came red. As i kept sobering up (high levels of alcohol in my system even after 24 hours) i started to think. I mopped the floor and took a bath. But dust was too much and a lot of it already accumulated on fridge's coil. Every time the fridge starts i feel the pain of the redwood dust all over my body. I feel it on my esophagus as it clears the lungs. I feel it on my lower colon. So in the morning when Angela wakes up i will attempt to was the fridge's' coils and everything under.

I remember an episode, about 7 years ago. I had palpitations for a couple of weeks. I went to an urgent care place and a "doctor" layed me on the table. Then he started to palpate my belly and went to the chest and unexpectedly pressed once so hard for several seconds, i think he literally stopped my heart. Maybe made blood flow backwards in the arteries, to unclog them? Whatever it was, it helped me, though it was really scary. He said something about the "old mechanical defibrillator". LOL.

So sometimes it's redwood, sometimes it's litter dust. I know that by the effects.

Kept thinking. Who in the world are best at manipulating dust?

Ninja had a type of weapon that was literally made of eggs filled with different types of dust like by example very fine ground glass dust. What they did with those, you guessed already. The used them in combat to blind the opponent.

The idea was passed along to their Police forces, probably first in the world. They used those to incapacitate suspects during arrests. They have a name. The are called metsubushi.

And this is where the weird part starts. During Bush the IInd there was a couple of city scale metsubushi who went off in the city of New York. I had no idea of the scale of the dust disaster in that day and following days until i saw a video a couple of years ago. People coming out of the cloud of dust and chocking while the paramedics could not help them. You can't help people who have the lungs full of dust. Video is gone now from youtube.

Tonight i wanted to write a bit of a conclusion of what i was doing lately. That is about the similarities between faces of politicians, public figures and actors, mostly Hungarian and some Japanese. But could not find a place to start. Then i thought i found it. Metsubushi. They've been using this stuff on me for a long time. Non-lethal, it will bring you to your knees and reset you to the point you can't even think for yourself. Shortness of breath for a few hours and you will forget of everything and give up everything and become as docile as a child. If it's litter dust, the next day when you are recuperating, suddenly find yourself in the opposite direction. You feel too good. They did this to me for decades. They are doing it now. So "they" must be. The ones who control everything.

Before i wrote this post i searched for images about the dust that settled those days in New York and found this. And i found Dust Lady. Marcy Borders. They said she died of cancer at 42 om 2015 or 4 years after.

I don't believe it. I don't believe she could have survived that. If tiny amounts of building materials dust like mineral insulation make me so sick, how in the world could someone breath those amounts of concrete, gypsum and other material dust and survive the initial exposure. More than that, she looks like she poses. A tragic pose but still a pose. For reassurance or at least to cast doubt.

This dust she was supposed to be in it's not flour. It's concrete or silica or glass. Who knows how many real others died that day and are not reported anywhere.

As for the similarities blog. It should be obvious by now to anybody that the whole world, all countries, are being controlled by only one power. To me everything leads to an alliance between Hungary and Japan.

After all, they've been allies in WWII. Culturally, Hungarians are more Asians than Europeans.

What is happening. As i've seen so far they let us do whatever we want but they encourage us to do the most stupid things, mainly to do their job. Accelerate the selection. Eliminated the sinners and the stupid. But stupid most times means uniformed. Ignorant. They let us choose but they provide, for free all means for us to choose the wrong direction.

They must have some super-weapons we don't know about. Like the one which caused the Tunguska explosion which brought all nations to their knees at the begging of 20th century. Most likely done by short-cutting the ionosphere to the ground using huge antennas to oscillate the ionosphere of which we might suspect Eiffel Tower, Wardenclyffe (Tesla) Tower (which was demolished next year). They must have assassinated (through undetectable old ninja methods) or have killed in revolutions all the old elite and replaced it with actors.

Tesla have been working in France before coming to the US in 1884, several years before Eiffel Tower construction began. But Tesla was only an actor or a symbol. They were others behind him who ran the whole show.

Very few understand or maybe never occurred to them of what means for some people to have a living god as emperor, and that living god is the Emperor of Japan. But the Emperor might be fake and controlled by the old ninja.

Some of the consequences of the Tunguska phenomenon was Dissolution and Partition of the Ottoman Empire, WWI, Bolshevik Revolution, WWII and basically everything that happened in the tumultuous and bloody 20th century.

It was then when territories like Palestine, Arabia (later Saudi Arabia), Syria, Kuwait, Iraq where taken over from the Ottoman Empire where they have been for centuries by western powers like France and Britain. "Britain gained control of Palestine, Transjordan, Iraq, parts of Cameroon and Togoland, and Tanganyika". Once flourishing, Arab civilization was reduced to nothing by the Turks, then western powers and subsequent occult domination.

"In 1916, with the encouragement and support of Britain (which was fighting the Ottomans in World War I), the Sharif of Mecca, Hussein bin Ali, led a pan-Arab revolt against the Ottoman Empire to create a united Arab state."

However, after WWII British Empire collapsed as well and all territories taken from Ottoman Empire became independent or better said taken over by an occult power as well as Great Britain itself, all European countries. By now, i think i know who they are.

Ever since, this occult power is at war with the populations of every state on Earth. Since it cannot reveal itself, it mimics the behavior of those populations, leading by force, influence and finance.

I don't want to go in the vast area of WWII, Korea, Vietnam but i can tell something about Gulf War and subsequent Iraq war and massacres, Afghanistan war, Syria massacres. People from one side of the world are convinced to fight against those from the other side, with one media controlling all the information coming from the conflicts, each seeing something else, for the only purpose of appeasing, oppressing, decimating all populations on all sides with all power in all states controlled by one entity.

United States have been in conflict with other countries around the world most time after WWII and especially after the deep psychosis created by the Orson Welles show. But those conflicts at times have been slowed down or accelerated, depending on how much people started to figure out.

Otherwise, they use other means of controlling them, like most expensive health care and housing on Earth, which is toxic and deplorable, Hollywood which is populated exclusively by fake ID foreigners, liberal amount of drugs, Church of Scientology etc..

In Soviet Union people were controlled by means of forced feed propaganda, daily meetings, liberal amounts of alcohol etc..

Romania has been a center of entertainment for both East and West. A number of artists were transferred from Hollywood and Hungary over there, including both Ceaușescu, but also singers like Jim Croce who became tennis player now billionaire Ion Țiriac, Patsy Cline who became Irina Loghin, Sonny Bono who became Mihai Constantinescu, etc.. Dracula myth, first enacted by Bela Lugosi, a Hungarian, was exploited. Because people do still believe in those sort of things and generally are disgustingly gullible and ignorant and have learnt to trust only their charismatic figures.

Iran had a somehow different path. Not part of the Ottoman Empire, they became Muslims in the 7th century and an independent power in region. However, they were taken over too. After a failed westernization, in 79 they started to become what we know of them today.

Ruby Wednesday

They simply know how to pick their timing. Last Sunday i started to fill out (on line, it is possible now) a small claim in the Washington County Court regarding the real reason for failure and recalls of the Hyundai. My car did not fall under recall of course because for some reason they didn't have engine seizures for this type. That third party web site where i was filing, right after i was done that is describing the issues, they asked me to electronically sign and testify under penalty of perjury that did my best efforts to recover my loss (from the plaintiff). So i sent without much hope an email to Hyundai Motor America with a copy of that description and they of course asked me first to talk on the phone, they picked a moment when i was driving, got the message when i got home and also an email basically saying the vehicle is out of warranty which is obvious.

Ever since i started the claim, they scheduled (AI, endless parade) Kia Souls to drive in front of me besides SUBARUs of which i complained about the name. Sub are you, that is subhuman. And the logo. One big star at the NW (New White Shinto) and 5 little ones scattered in the rest of it.

BTW today i was passing under the light signals on Marti-nazzi St in Tualatin and all of a sudden i had a revelation. (The shape of the poles and horizontal bars with the signs intrigued me from the beggining where i came to US cause though very efficient they require much engineering to stay in place over the years, being a very "unnatural" type of design). But to me the shape with the name Martinazzi on it now figures both a half gate and also a hanging pole.
So i got home and instead writing this blog post which (will, when i'm done) contain very important informations abut my activities and others' regarding my last matches.

So i took an advice today and tried to go to Tryon instead of Refuge. I recon the hills provide more opportunities for exercising, i already had some sun to grow a bit levels of Vitamin D for this summer (your body accumulate that and stores it for months to come). However, got into trouble right after i arrived and Boones Ferry entrance. Forgot to say, when i left, i went in the back, took the picture with the sign, i knew i had my truck in the back, no reason to turn at the door and then i remembered i didn't look for new canine gifts around door, turned around only to see the woman with the red hair, of the same height and physical constitution with the Latina from F3 with the chair yesterday getting in her car to leave. Another avatar of Szabolcs i said to myself and went back to get my truck and go to the park. Forgot many details like LPNs and logos on the freeway, i forgot to take Boones Ferry, that would have given me some delay since all that area in Lake Oswego is under construction (lots of areas under construction around here lately). At the entrance in the refuge i pulled the bottle of water i  had with me, wasn't fitting in any pocket and i just drank some and put the rest back in the car. That delay was enough for the guy with curly red hair and bear and a dog (a gray terrier i think) to come by on foot up the street. He looked at me, sort of embarrassed like, a couple of times, while i was plainly staring at him. Cause he was again Szabolcs. He passed my car and stopped at the entrance of the trail showing his back and had a chance to take a good look at his constitution. That is thinking what chances i had if i gotten into a fight with him. Though athletic, back and hands were more like women's with strong torso and legs. And when i looked at the legs, i saw under shorts hairs that were grayish but not red. I thought to myself, if he can fight then his strength must be in his kicks and some unknown ninja tricks. I was thinking later. The man allowed his body to grow like this over the years for the sole purpose of looking like a woman, for easier disguise, his specialty. Cause here in the complex he's already got at least 4 women's avatars. (S..., they came with the blowers and i forgot to water the dust around building).

Ok so i just got back at the wheel, turned around, and drove to where he came from only to see a road closure and a detour sign. I looked at the bridge they were re-building and said to myself. Can't be more than half mile detour (BTW why don't they write how many miles the detour is, it would be very easy to calculate now with google maps and everything). So i followed the signs, drove about 3 miles and got at the intersection of Terwilliger and Boones, coming from west this time of course.

Should have been distracted by something and instead of following Terwilliger where i was driving on i took a right again on Boones and went down the road until i met of course with the other road block. Then i wanted to take a picture of the road block, pulled my phone, took a picture through the dirty windshield (BTW got to wash t his truck sometime) and when i wanted to open the window to take a clearer picture i realized there was this brick red SUV behind me. I thought he was waiting for me to make an U-turn so he can do his, gave up on taking that picture and started to turn only to see him in my peripheral vision that he started to make a left turn on the street perpendicular to Boones and was on collision course. He didn't make more than 3 ft when i saw him and of course i stopped and he stopped in that very instant and we were kinda face to face through windows and window was down like mine and had a change to take a good look at him and i'm 90% sure it was our Joe Biden. Red tanned, looking better than in the pictures (like i heard about Obama) he never lost his nerve, he said hi and smiled, but next to him i saw an old lady that went so frustrated by the fact it didn't work and she looked exactly like Barbra Bush. But couldn't have been cause she's dead, right? How about the actress who did her?

Of course my phone was on the seat next to me, these cameras work quite good in good light when you want to take a picture like for your memories, but are slow to start in situations like these, it didn't even cross my mind in that second. All i got is time and location from the picture with the road block.

So he was just staying there when i turned around and turned right on Terwilliger. I went at the Terwilliger entrance of the park, but most except a few spots next to curb were taken. I saw at least 4-5 cars with many kids getting out, all kinda slow motion with adults giving me strange looks. So i just left and drove back on Terwilliger. On the overpass waiting at the light signal for Barbour (99). I was maybe the 7th car in the row, the guys coming from opposite direction where giving me all kinda theatrical looks, like scared, worried, it turned green but first guy wouldn't move until somebody from behind me honked. It finally did but i'm pretty sure the guy in front of me and i passed on red. But the guy in front of me was again a brick red SUV and slowed unexpectedly while i was staring at the red light but stopped in time not to hit him.

Other that that. Got to pass again through 2 red/speed camera intersections on 99, i was careful to memorize how i did it and got at the refuge.

As i was parking a guy in a black t-shirt and his wife, both looking angry came and got in the SUV in front of me and left. As he climbed at the wheel i had a chance to see the back of this black T-shirt that was covered on his length by a thin white rectangle with something written in the middle, a bible quote starting with God is my Lord, whith huge letters. It reminded me of the bible studies in Ron Boger's house back in 97, of Ron Boger his wife Mary and i started to get mad and... i forgot my phone on the seat of the truck.

Entered the refuge and i saw the bush with blue flowers had the flowers more open then ever ans sun was behind a cloud and bush was bright and everything and wanted to take a picture but realized my phone is in the truck, and went back and picked it (3 minutes walk).


Then on the trail i met with a woman that first i though was Meryl Streep but when she said an aggressive hi and smiled at me i realized she was younger.

I continued walking and after a mile or so i heard a military jet. Haven't heard one of those since i posted a match with a colonel here at the base. Then i've been thinking. They could have messed with my phone while i walked 3 minutes on the trail without it etc..

How to Make a Good Car Better Again

… Check, check, yo, I know something you don't know
And I've got something to tell ya
You won't believe how many people straight doubted the flow
Most said that I was a failure…

(Nelly)

Not necessarily everybody doesn't know what i'm about to say but i'm convinced it'a a majority.

Have you ever noticed an oil smell when turning the heat on? That is from oily dust from engine compartment that made its way past the hood's seal and into the ventilation system and on the heater core.

Even on a new car. One single drop of oil left from an oil change on a rough surface composite material of a valve cover will spread due to fast and unpredictable flow of air under the hood everywhere.

Which means. Attracting dust. Oily dust will settle and glue on any surface, incoulding connectors. Tiny amount of oil will get inside the connectors. Engine oil has very harsh detergents that will corrode the surface of the contacts. If contacts are gold coated like most are they may be covered with a non-conductive layer that in time will cook and harden.

Battery connectors which take hundreds of amps when charging or starting, are secured with bolts and nuts on the terminals. But if oil gets on those, that will allow loosening of the nuts. Though it will charge and start, the battery won't be able to fulfill other functions, like smoothening of the rectified voltage from alternator. Voltage going to the sensors and actuators will fluctuate unpredictably. Together with problems at the connectors of the sensors and actuators themselves, the car computers will get erroneous readings and the actuators will actuate unpredictably.

All these problems won't be signalled by the car's computers because the software is not smart enough yet and probably will never be until the full advent of electric to detect small, abnormal fluctuations coming from sensors.

The good news are tomorrow we all will start driving electric all these problems can be fixed by any person that is not a mechanic.

First make sure you have towing on your insurance so you can tow your car to your mechanic if you screw anything. Just kidding.

First you should inspect all the painted surfaces under the hood. If you see dust, then it's time to perform the following procedures:

Wipe clean any oil residue left from last oil change around the oil cap or dipstick.

Use a large soft brush and dislodge dust from any visible surface. The dust will fly away at the first drive. Finish with a wet cloth. Do not forget the hood itself, under.

Disconnect both battery connectors starting with negative. If the connector's screws are parallel with battery's terminals, use a tool to hold the connector in place to prevent rotating and twisting the terminal which may damage the battery inside.

Disconnect all connectors that you may see. Start with easiest. Most have a small pad that when pressed with a finger will "unclick" or unlock the connector. Use caution and be gentle.

Use some contact cleaner spray that is plastic and rubber safe, ideally with a straw which will allow "focusing" the flow of the cleaner on the desired area. In a ventilated area (ideally outside far from other people) use a rag under as you spray cleaner outside and inside the connector a few seconds or until no more dirty cleaner comes out, including on any piece of wire that come out of a harness. Shake if possible and let dry. Some have soft rubber seals that may expand because of the solvents in the cleaner. Be patient and let those dry to get back to their original shape or you won't be able to plug the connectors back. If cleaner is too harsh and melts the plastic or rubber, it means you have the wrong cleaner. Test first. Don't forget most important, battery's connectors and terminals. If terminals have been damaged by acid, or have been on a shelf for a long time clean first with a wire brush or sand paper. Wipe clean with a paper towel wet with contact cleaner all contact surfaces.

Plug the connectors back one by one. Finish with battery connectors. If you can't use a torque wrench use the following rule: Tight the nut first by hand and then by wrench to the point of resistance, and then while holding the connector with another tool, like an adjustable, to prevent from rotating and twisting the terminal, in one move gently tight until it stops firm, usually less  than one more quart of a turn.

If you didn't damage anything (which could only happened by gross negligence or possible by bad mechanic's work done previously), the car will then start and run as new again, without vibrations, full power and mpg.

Use a 15 dollars LED voltage indicator that doubles as a phone charger plugged in the cigarettes lighter plug. It will tell you in real time many interesting things about battery and car's electrical system.

Invest in a torque wrench from NAPA, Autozone, etc.. Every once in while torque the nuts on the wheels to specs or right under 90. Loosen and torque them one by one (not more than one at the time with the car on wheels) to make sure they weren't overtorqued previously, using a by two sequence or "star pattern" Do not torque the nuts one after another cause this may warp the wheel or rotor.

This may increase driveability at high speed. Also check periodically tire inflation, again with important effects on driveability at high speed and mpg. Tire pressure varies with temperature so it should be done on a cloudy day with a temperature that is average for the season, after the car and tires have cooled from the most recent drive. Sun on one side of the car will heat the tires and will give you false (higher) reading on that side.

Did you know they have serious jump starters at Amazon, under 40 dollars which is way less than a jump start by towing and buying one is way less embarrassing than searching for a jump start at 2 AM at the casino parking lot? Got one that when fully charged (on a phone charger) could start the car several times, even with battery completely drained or old or even damaged (like it was in my case).

Unprocessing Photographs

While using automatic exposure, from my own experience with film i saw better quality (exposure, color realism) than with digital.

That's why i say film photography is much more forgiving to bad exposure than digital, maybe with several steps on the indicator. To get the same quality like when using automatic exposure on film, with digital you often have to offset the exposure a bit in the... lucky direction. Some will say automatically, like i did for years after i bought my first digital cameras: There's always Photoshop. Based on rather impressive achievements based on it saw here and there and everywhere.

But then, by pure luck i saw on occasions that photographs heavily processed can be easily outperformed by the... non-processed ones.

Silver grains on a film saturate harder. They will always carry more meaningful information after a sightly offset exposure (and anyone who had worked on film can agree on this).

The current cameras' sensors translate light (actually the three "fundamental" colors) into numbers at the (split in three colors) pixel level and put those numbers into computer type files that are written on some type of memory organized the same way as computer files, usually Windows FAT32.

Their capabilities rely mainly on how many bits of information or color depth each physical pixel on the sensor can generate. Usually 10-14 bits per pixel per color in RAW file and 8 in compressed JPEG.

But after jumping from film to digital you will soon be unsatisfied. Go and spend hours on Photoshop with a picture and still won't be satisfied. Here's why.

10, 12, or 14 bits per color is not that much of a range. (Compared to the (almost) continuous (infinite) range on analog). That's why you have to use it properly. But to make things worse, JPEG and this is what your computer (by means of browser and other types of software) can display reduced the color depth to 8 bits per color, that is a total of 24 bits per pixel. Starting with amateur photographers we all know that 24 bits per pixel is one of the earliest standard for graphic cards. Nowadays the better settings and capabilities start with 32 and go to 48 and more. Too bad, cause there is no picture we can see at that resolution, even if we have now the cameras to generate them. The bottleneck is now JPEG and nobody seems to care.

Although i did not thoroughly researched this area, my experience tells me digital pixels saturate pretty fast when exposed non-carefully. That means that they will be almost all 8 corresponding to one color either 0 or 1 and carry no meaningful information when exposed to too much or too little light. Those are what we call the burnt pixels (not to be confounded with the defective, dead pixels sometimes present on sensors or displays as "accepted" fabrication mishaps). The dreaded blinking areas on a picture you just took seen on the playback display of some of the more advanced cameras.

Usually on current cameras there are several type of exposure indicators; classical metering arrays borrowed from later SLR cameras for film photography tied to the classical "scale indicator" in the bottom of the optical viewfinder, dense arrays with histograms, for compact cameras using directly the main sensor or DSLR with an extra "live" sensor or mirrorless or finally the displaying of the saturated (burnt) pixels areas on top of the resulted image in the form of blinking are (i saw these only for already taken pictures on certain cameras on certain display modes).

Unfortunately some designs of the current metering systems are taken directly from film era and not sufficiently upgraded for the technological differences with digital photography. That's why, if you use a classical metering system (not a "live" one, through main or auxiliary sensor) and want to raise quality, it is a good idea to balance exposure manually in order to avoid those saturated areas and maximize your sensor's usage. One good way to do this, if you have time, is by trials, by eliminating, through compromise, as many as possible burnt pixels on both ends of the range and by doing this you will also have more meaningful information on the whole (rest of the) range. In fewer words, if you adjust your exposure towards the middle of sensor's range on a maximum of sensor's area, you will have increased dynamics (the use in a meaningful way) on the entire numerical range corresponding to color depth of the sensor by having, ideally, one and only one burnt pixel on white, that is 0 in the same time with having one and only on color, that is 1) and/or increased information density (higher pixel count or "thicker" histogram on all color intensities) on the same subject, relatively to pictures taken with different, less than ideal, exposures. But this can be done only by looking at the resulting picture on the back display. And this takes time.

Next way to predict the quality of a picture is through live histogram. In digital photography, the word histogram is used to define a graph that has as X axis the intensity (or the numerical value of the pixels from white to color) and on/as Y the count of pixels of that intensity. Histograms sometimes come on each color, sometimes, like the "live" or real time ones on camera's displays, cumulative.

There are not many explanation on how to use a histogram in the manufacturers' manuals.

I read on forums many different interpretations of what it is and how to use it (the histogram), i assume some manufacturer added it as a feature and others followed but with no much explanation of what it is and how to use it, letting photographers and teachers to figure it out maybe for them too. Below are a few examples.

And finally the scale indicator tied to the metering array. With experience, by categorizing type of scenes, you will learn which scenes require adjustment and in what direction. Lately i came to use this in most of situations because of speed and convenience. However, from time to time i take a look at the final picture too.

Compressing, by using mathematical algorithms based on eye perception in order to reduce the size of the output file is possible by taking advantage of lower information density (at least in some areas) when transforming or packing adjusted raw files. If there are not big variations of numerical representations from one pixel to another in the whole picture, that is, less dynamics, the file will be smaller.

A good way to measure information density, besides histogram, is by how big the output file is compared to different one taken in identical conditions, in fast succession (bracketing) . The better the exposure, the bigger the output file.

(This could be a good idea for an exposure optimization algorithm, even in real time on the cameras of the future. (Generate and measure the size of a temporary file while bracketing exposure around the value suggested a by a metering array, even at a lower resolution or selected areas, for speed)).

High dynamics (the histogram touches both the right and left limit of the graph), low information density (thin histogram), but due to the monotonous nature of the subject, burnt pixels on white on an insignificant area (the cloud on the upper left). Most of the pixels are in the thin high intensity area on the right. Not major exposure or WB mistakes. If i w

Usually on current cameras there are several type of exposure indicators; classical metering arrays borrowed from later SLR cameras for film photography tied to the classical "scale indicator" in the bottom of the optical viewfinder, dense arrays with histograms, for compact cameras using directly the main sensor or DSLR with an extra "live" sensor or mirrorless and finally the displaying of the saturated (burnt) pixels areas on top of the resulted image (i saw these only for already taken pictures on certain cameras on certain display modes).
ould have lowered exposure i would have had a more even histogram but unrealistic brightness colors and general look.

High dynamics, high information density, well balanced histogram. However, the trees look unrealistic due to extreme contrast of the subject, but still discernible details and colors. General realistic impression.

Pretty underexposed (with about on step) due to hurry to catch the subject and failure of the of the automatic exposure and lack of more manual compensation (it is only one step up) due to hurry - not so high dynamics (highest intensity pixels missing on the right side of the histogram). Under average information density (histogram thickness). Burnt pixels on white (histograms touches the upper limit on right only). Still useful to show for composition and dramatism. Still wouldn't get better through processing.

I used earlier the word dynamics related to digital photography. I would make here an analogy with digital recording of the sound, when (instead of finding the optimal volume for recording,) you record at a lower volume, not using all the range of the analog to digital converter and never reaching the highest volume available for sampling on your analog to digital converter but instead using lower numbers and leaving part of the range unused.

Similarly, if your volume is too high, you would have saturation thus no meaningful information on those samples above the maximum range of the converter that would be all of the same value of the total depth or number of bits available (that would be all 1).

If you have more then one type of exposure measuring on the same camera, as it so happens on later models they usually tend to "disagree", sometimes by several steps. Best idea is to try to make a compromise between those. Using the classical indicator as refference, with time, you will learn that some type of scene require always the same type of exposure compensation in order to comporomise with histogram and final result.

You don't even need to learn the basic principles of photography in order to balance exposure manually. All digital cameras, compacts and DSLRs have now a function called exposure compensation. So you can use that feature on any type of automatic exposure program like aperture priority or totally automatic and tell the camera you want more or less exposure if you don't like what you see on the display after the first trial. (I do not ever correct more than 2 steps in each direction of the indicator even if the histogram (if i have time for it) tells me otherwise. I call it the common sense rule.)

You can't burn pixels if you use the histogram, but so far i haven't seen DSLRs with live histogram on the optical viewfinder.

There are some with live (real time) histogram on the LCD on the back and but framing through a display is not the same as through the optical viewfinder due to ambiental light or even sun that can fall on it and also the level of details and even comfort of holding the camera. So when it is possible and also necessary you can actually go back and forth the optical viewfinder and back display for framing and for the histogram, that sometimes that can be inconvenient.

Best way to balance exposure (if you have time) is by looking at the result on camera's playback display set on histogram (without actually using it) and trying to make the best compromise between saturated white and saturated colored (burnt) pixels (both ends of range) represented on most cameras on two different blinking colors on the actual picture (blinking areas of different colors indicating burnt pixels on 0 or 1). (If i'm lucky and don't have any burnt pixels after the first shot, and again i have time, i still try and play around trying to go for the maximum contrast, histogram in the middle and as thick as possible.)

Trouble is... when there is plenty of light you can't see well the picture on the back display for evaluating contrast... Sometimes i think on getting some sort of cap like photographers had for early photography on glass plates...

About processing. There is no software algorithm capable of predicting how a pixel would look as generated by a different light than the original.

Correcting through processing on the computer is way more timely and cannot ensure by far the same result, recover dynamics and especially cannot recover the burnt pixels (except for isolated ones by borrowing or averaging the nearby ones) but generally information once lost (again, a burnt or saturated pixel does not record anything) cannot be recreated. And even in the case of useful pixels, correcting through use of the linear or monotone algorithms the processing software probably uses (according to processing time and use of computer processor seen or observed during processing) is not the same thing as photographing the subject with the right exposure achieved through optical means because, by example in the case of compensating underexposed images, those algorithms simply multiply the values of each pixels or the opposite for overexposed. The same for increasing contrast, when they multiply more the corresponding value of the more intense pixels etc.

When the analog to digital converters samples light (colors) at the pixel level and converts it to numerical values it always rounds the result for the last or least significant bit, rounding implying loosing some information. We all know that if you multiply a rounded value, you will multiply the inherent rounding error as well. What happens when two adjacent pixels have been rounded but each having a different rounding error (one up and one down)? By multiplying those digitized values you will not get the same result as you would have gotten if you multiplied those value before digitizing. By experience, i can tell that if you try to correct through software more than 1-2 steps, you will destroy the quality of the image gathered with great effort and using such sophisticated and expensive optics (in fact what you do is magnify errors, the loss has already occurred at exposure time).

A good way to prove this would be through taking a good picture, process it to simulate underexposure by lowering brightness, save the result, reload it and then try to bring it back to the initial brightness, reversing the process, then compare the results.

I also leave all the settings on the camera that imply real time "on camera" software processing like contrast, sharpness, vivid, dynamic range, etc to normal or zero to make sure no on camera processing occurs at all as well. The only thing that's on is noise reduction on low light and the stabilizer that on better cameras is actually moving the sensor mechanically when trying to compensate for the unwanted motion of the camera).

Color temperature in photography is not the same thing as in physics but it imitates it. It is a convention that allows an adjustment of the final compressed displayable JPEG picture generated from the RAW file picked directly from the sensor based on the light conditions during taking the picture.

We need that adjustment for the same reason our eyes adapt to different color temperatures between dawn and dusk and allow us to see the objects somehow of similar colors making the light source differences bearable for our perception.

We all know that a hotter light source puts out a bluer light and a colder a more red one from physics in school. It is the opposite of our perception or intuition of colder light as warm, like red and hotter lights as cold like blue. Maybe that's why is so confusing to many beginners. Probably because we associate (psychologically) the blue color of the sky with cold and the red color of the fire with warm.

The equivalent color temperatures of light sources in visual range are well beyond our thermal sensory capabilities. As an example, an incandescent bulb filament actually has a temperature of 2700 degrees K and a flash plasma 6800. The surface of the Sun is 5,778 K. What would those temperature be for our skin? Not much difference.

With Sun's actual surface temperature in mind, let's think about the equivalent color temperature of the light on the surface of Earth on an average sunny day at noon which is about 5500 K. Why? Because of the filtering of the atmosphere, that scatters some of the blue photons in all directions preventing them to reach surface directly thus its blue color and cooling the light reaching the surface a little making it a little redder. (As i said in the previous paragraph, the total opposite of our intuition). The effect is much stronger at dawn and sunset where light comes at a steeper angle and has to travel more through air.

There are also light sources that are not hot or barely warm like LEDs that put out equivalents of daylight color temperatures. So it's not really about temperature but the composition or mixture of different visible wavelengths of the light source, or how much of each color(wavelength) has a hot source of an equivalent temperature.

All the colors we see around come usually from the same "white" light that gets reflected in different ways on different objects that absorb some of the colors and reflect others. White light is actually a mixture of colors and not always the same (but we perceive a range of mixtures as white light due to eye adaptation). (We are too used to these things and do not think of them or never did). But if the light source is unbalanced and puts out more colors than others the camera has to know for reference what the eye or brain or whatever does automatically for us and that is the equivalent temperature of the light source in order to transform a RAW file into a JPEG or directly generate a JPEG that would be compatible with our perception of the real image in that light, perception given by the automatic adjustment of our eyes.

There is an automatic function which directs the camera to detect the average color composition of the light on the sensor. In fact the only option most photographers use. But what if the chosen composition of the image is unbalanced like when taking a picture of a red tree in the fall that occupies most of the area of the sensor? The camera will average the framed image "thinking", as programmed, that the average should be white while that red tree is occupying most of the frame, or sensor, will over-correct and the result would be a cold, bluer looking red tree.

There are ways to measure the color temperature of the light source. A notorious one that i've tried until i learned enough is the camera's main sensor and a gray card. A gray card is an A4 piece of cardboard with some gray paint on it. You can calibrate the camera with by taking a picture of the card placed in the vicinity of the subject using camera's specialized function to measure color temperature just before taking the picture in the same light. But after a little experimentation that lasted several months i learned to do without.

Most of the situations between sunrise and sunset come in the range between 5500 and 5700. Then it goes quickly all the way to 7500 within a half hour after sunset then when we are starting to loose color perception into the light condition we perceive as dark but not completely night quickly all the way up to the limit of the setting of the camera.

Flash is 6800 but if the camera is on automatic it will know you used it.

There are cameras with settings like daylight (5500), clouds (5700), incandescent (2700), flash (6800) etc. So you don't have to set the color temperature but just to recognize the type of light and set it on the camera.

For color temperature, any manual approximate setting is better than automatic.

During daytime is better if you leave it on daylight or cloudy all day long then on automatic. You can have at most 100 or 200 degrees difference when shooting outside in different conditions which is less than if the camera picks automatically the wrong correction and it does so too often. A little effort to learn how to set it and you will have dramatically improved pictures with less or no necessary correction through processing (if you still want to do processing after reading this).

If you have degrees settings for white balance on your camera if you set at 5500 you are covered in 99% of daylight situations. Unless if i'm in the middle of a field with no clouds and the sun is above me when i use 5500. Or in a forest on a cloudy day when i use 5600 or 5700 towards the evening. Or... you can start playing around and make subjective photographs, over-correcting 100 degrees in one way or another. + for a warmer impression or - for a colder one according to everything i tried to say before. And you will want to give a colder impression in a forest so you better live it on 5600!. If you don't have degrees settings the best setting is on daylight or cloudy, depending on the situation, camera and results. (some cameras work better on cloudy even if there's sunlight). But not on automatic!

I set the camera for output both RAW and JPEG. But i never use the RAW files, i just keep them for reference just in case. The camera manufacturers are very interested in giving you the best possible JPEG directly out of the camera because there are many people that don't use RAWs so i just use those. I used for a while the converting software that came with the camera to generate JPEGs out of RAWs on the computer. But it had a very slight tendency of turning the pictures towards green. I like better the JPEGs that come directly from the camera. But just in case you don't like the colors on the final JPEG or simply didn't have time to set the color temperature on the camera at the time you took the picture, you can always generate a new JPEG out of the RAW on the computer adjusting the color temperature. And this is not processing but merely imitating the generation of the JPEG file on the camera.

In the RAW file color temperature information is not contained within pixels as is in JPEG but is just a parameter in the file's header. The information in each pixel in the RAW file comes directly from the sensor's physical pixels as it was when you took the photograph. After converting to JPEG the correction is taken from there and included in each pixel. Reprocessing a JPEG file just for adjusting colors or for any reason is the worst possible idea. You should always use RAWs as source for processing, if possible. However there are softwares that allow this for the reason that many photographers are not aware of the options and choices given by using RAW files or simply because they use cameras that do not have that output option or they must correct an older JPEG photograph.

Now that i write this i remember a conversation i had with someone a few days ago. I agree now that by using optical filters towards sunset you may level the color balance and increase the amount of useful information or dynamics in the RAW file on the colors that are less intense due to imbalance of the source and decrease the more saturated ones by purely optical means. Doing this, you should limit the amount of correction by adjusting the color temperature parameter when generating the jpeg file. But i also believe this is necessary in the areas where correction exceeds +/- 1500 K. When close to 5500 there are no major differences in dynamics on different color information coming straight from the sensor with no filters and i like the freedom of not needing to fiddle with filters while on a photography trip.

 http://cdn.cambridgeincolour.com/images/tutorials/wb_bbdiagram.png

And for taking pictures without flash with fluorescent lamps as source the problem is more than color temperature which by the way is around 4500. You will need a filter to correct the holes in spectrum that fluorescent lamps have.

Here are a few examples about what i was talking above. Can click on each picture for better view.

5600 - Mixed light: Sun, and clouds.

Lake Oswego, OR, street intersection. Click to enlarge

6000 - Mixed light: daylight, fluorescent, flash, done by trials.

My place, 2012-10-20 09:26:18, click to enlarge

9900, 7+ Magenta, almost night, by trials (LOL had to be quick), beyond the camera capabilities. Everything is too blue.

January 29, 2012 at 9.54PM PST, Cannon Beach, OR. Click to enlarge.

Since on current processing software adjusting focus is an option (is more like an imitation or simulation of focus adjustement), true focusing adjustment can only be achieved through optics, a few words on that too.

Many current cameras won't let you shoot unless they achieved focus that is detected through various means. But the big problems is the angular motion or angular speed of the optical axis of the camera in the moment that button clicks. Most cameras have a shutting button based on a two step switch. It's a switch that has one or two flat slightly spherically shaped springs that deform when pushed then pop, delivering a high switching speed but also a tiny, non neglectable mechanical momentum in the moment of popping. By pressing half it pops once and the camera measures light and focuses. By fully pressing it pops again and sometimes slightly shakes the camera. That mechanical momentum tends to give the camera an angular motion enough to blure the image. Everything is ruined because of that.

My experience tell me that most of blurred shots are because of that. There is no remedy to it except holding the camera, squeezing as opposed to pushing the button, and praying not to move. Lately i discovered a new trick. If you bypass the first step that implies focusing and metering, and push it quickly to the end and keeping it like that, most cameras will have a slight delay due to focusing and metering time that can go up from several tenth to a full second, enough time to mechanically stabilize the camera.

Short of using a mono-pod, a tripod or other mechanical fixture that holds the camera in place. The smaller and lighter the camera is, the more likely to get blurred images because of angular motion of the camera while pressing the button.