San Diego and Flash

I had a work trip out to San Diego last week. It was a big brainstorming session with lots of really smart in my company from around the world. We came up with a ton of great ideas. Normally I'm pretty pessimistic about the future of the company I work for because I spend all day looking at the problems we have. I'm probably going to jinx myself, but I think the future of my company looks pretty bright. We certainly seem to have the opportunity to do great things if we execute. Time will tell.

Since I like to include pictures I'll mention a personal project I have been working on. It's a custom made flash that creates a 1 inch spark to be used for photography. Why would I do this? Standard camera flashes use Xeon gas filled tubes which make for a bright flash, but the shortest duration is about 1/40,000th of a second. My flash uses standard air and needs much higher voltage, but it's duration is about 1/1,000,000th of a second. The downside is I need about 30,000 volts. I've done everything I can to make it safe and this flash still scares me. I'm sure I do a much more detailed writeup on my tech blog someday, but I thought I'd post a teaser picture of the device here.