These particular signals, which are unusual, are used to warn oncoming trains of a temporary interruption in voltage between two track sections fed by different power substations, called a "phase break". There are only a handful of these in the system. Infrastructure is heroic.

Captured with a DSLR camera and an 85mm shifting lens (with a small amount of vertical shift). This "Signal Bridge" is a fairly iconic example of the industrial design style used in the electrification of the Pennsylvania Railroad in the early 20th century (and largely still standing today). It […]

Signal Bridge with Phase Break Indicators, Pennsylvania Railroad, Perryville, MD, 2010. 12KV of pixels at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/54481107849 #photography

Had the weirdest dream last night where Donald Trump was president and announced that he kidnapped the head of another country.

Signal Bridge with Phase Break Indicators, Pennsylvania Railroad, Perryville, MD, 2010. 12KV of pixels at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/54481107849 #photography

Captured with the Rodenstock 70mm/5.6 HR-Digiron-W (@ f/6.3) lens. Phase One IQ4-150 back (@ ISO 50), Cambo WRS-5005 Camera (shifted vertically -22mm, pushing the limits of the lens). 16x9 crop. This fire escape stairwell, retrofitted onto the back of Georgetown's Healy Hall, reminded me a bit […]

Fire Escape, Georgetown University, Washington, DC, 2025. All the pixels, none of which can be used to escape from fire, at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/544811078 #photography

Fire Escape, Georgetown University, Washington, DC, 2025. All the pixels, none of which can be used to escape from fire, at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/544811078 #photography

Many of the design elements of the new hall pay deliberate homage to the original, befittingly grand, Penn Station, including especially the prominently exposed steel beams. There are no seats in the main hall, though there are smaller ticketed waiting areas to the side, as well as a […]

Adding the Moynihan Hall was a welcome improvement to Penn Station, but didn't address the main problem, which is insufficient capacity for the number of trains that run through it. There aren't enough tracks, the platforms are too narrow, and the tunnels entering and leaving the station have […]

Moynihan Hall occupies part of what had been New York's main post office building, a block west of the original Penn Station. It was situated over the tracks, with access to platforms, to facilitate Railway Post Office mail delivery, which was common into the 1970's. After the post office moved […]

Captured with the Rodenstock 23mm/5.6 HR-Digaron lens and the Phase One IQ4-150 XT camera. The 23mm Digaron is a sharp wide lens, but doesn't really have a large enough image circle to support extensive movements (which weren't required here). Captured from the balcony on the south side of the […]

Moynihan Train Hall, Pennsylvania Station, NYC, 2021. All the pixels, but mind the gap between them, at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/51205135362 #photography

Moynihan Train Hall, Pennsylvania Station, NYC, 2021. All the pixels, but mind the gap between them, at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/51205135362 #photography

I remember thinking 10 years ago tonight "well, at least 2016 can't be any worse than this was". Oops, never mind.. Let's hope this will be the year breaks the cursed streak we've been on.

The scale of these wind farms is beyond what we're equipped to process in day-to-day human experience. They conquer the landscape in ways we can't fully comprehend even when they're in front of us. In a sense, they're abstract sculptures of themselves, mostly visible in fleeting glances from […]

This was captured near the Tesla substation (no relation to the car company) near Altamont Pass with a DSLR and a 400mm lens, compressing the turbines in a way that made them resemble a histogram. There's a *lot* of power being generated in those hills. There was an audible hum in the air and […]

Wind Turbines, near Tracy, CA, 2010. All the pixels, none of which actually cause cancer, at flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/4491948497 #photography

Wind Turbines, near Tracy, CA, 2010. All the pixels, none of which actually cause cancer, at flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/4491948497 #photography

Captured with a full-frame mirrorless camera and 21mm lens. This is mostly a study of lines, particularly the handrail (which provides an anchor for the eye to follow), but also the curved railing at the bottom of the stairs at left. I was attracted to the austere, utilitarian design, yet the […]

Track 13 - Watch Your Step, Grand Central Terminal, NYC, 2013. All the pixels, off peak tickets accepted, at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/10101066135 #photography

From a new book, "New York's Secret Subway"—a pneumatic tube under Broadway—there is this marvelous description of Broadway in 1870: "covered, as it always was with stinking piles of garbage that mixed with mud and animal excrement to create a foul bouillabaisse that residents called […]

WTF?? https://fosstodon.org/@adafruit/115810815370282865

I don't know about the new decorations in the Trump-Kennedy Center auditorium...

Track 13 - Watch Your Step, Grand Central Terminal, NYC, 2013. All the pixels, off peak tickets accepted, at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/10101066135 #photography

Another weird complaint I frequently get here (in addition to not using enough hashtags, failing to content warn about ordinary, innocuous comments, and posting insufficiently chromatic art) is that I have too many followers. This is cited as evidence that I must be some kind of parasitic […]

Correction: George Washington University. I always get those confused.

If these fail, you can always complain to my dean, who definitely wants to hear your thoughts about how faculty use social media. That's George Mason University. Operators are standing by.

I know you think I'm ruining this place for you. Let me offer some solutions that work better than telling me how, or about what topics, I should post (which works very poorly): - Don't follow me - Mute me - Block me These also work if you replace "me" with any other accounts you find […]

Very interesting summary of the alleged J6 pipe bomber's interrogation in this filing: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.287328/gov.uscourts.dcd.287328.17.0.pdf A couple observations: - Friends don't let friends plant pipe bombs, but if you somehow find yourself accused […]

This capture made extensive use of view camera tilt movements. The depth of field is quite shallow here, so the lens was tilted forward to keep the stems and leaves in focus from the front to the back.

Captured with a Sinar P camera. a 240mm/5.6 APO Symmar lens, and a BetterLight scanning digital back. This is a minimalist studio still life, so it's all about lighting and geometry. Illuminated by a single hard light placed at the left of the frame, yielding well defined shadows. The […]

Three Persimmons, 2008. All the pixels, none of the seeds, at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/2207576183 #photography

@woe2you all good. I appreciate your apology. For reasons I don’t really understand, I’m frequently lambasted and dog piled here for imaginary offenses like failing to include enough hashtags, failing to use content warnings on discussions of common and innocuous topics, or posting black and […]

Grateful to the people who took the time today to remind me that I had somehow previously neglected to block them.

@woe2you Oh, was I not clear? I'm sure your local homeowners association would value your services more than I do.

@woe2you #fuck #off

Once again, the War on Christmas has been decisively won, with Christmas supporters now quietly and sheepishly removing their partisan slogans and decorations from homes and businesses.

Going to need to get my block button refurbished soon.

More yelling from the homeowners association #the #hashtag #mob #can #go #fuck #right #off.

For the record: I don't generally post pornographic material, gore, or subjects that I believe might reasonably cause harm or undue distress. And if I do, I would put them behind a CW. But I do post about a variety of topics that may not be of universal interests, such as US law and politics […]

Three Persimmons, 2008. All the pixels, none of the seeds, at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/2207576183 #photography

The bottom line here is that while being the subject of attack by a deranged internet mob is never fun, sometimes it's the cost of doing business for doing interesting work. And for those who yell at me for posting black and white photos or not putting content warnings on discussions of current […]

So while openly publishing offensive security techniques might indeed help criminals, that harm is outweighed by significant benefits. Every properly trained computer science student should understand how to exploit vulnerabilities. Because the attackers DEFINITELY understand it.

It occurs to me that people outside the security field might find it odd that we openly publish stuff like this. Why help people who might use the knowledge to do bad things? There are a number of reasons. The first is that only through open discussion are we able to identify and fix problems […]

I wrote that paper after I had moved from AT&T Labs to U. Penn. The Penn locksmith went totally apoplectic, and wrote regular angry letters to the dean and to the head of campus security warning about what an irresponsible, dangerous menace I am. But for whatever reason, his efforts were […]

NB: While I never intended to piss off locksmiths with my master keying paper, I did write a followup couple years later about safes and safecracking, partly out of spite. https://www.mattblaze.org/papers/safelocks.pdf TL;dr: We can learn a lot from safes and safe locks, and the frameworks of […]

I never did reach a truce with the locksmiths. A couple years later, I met Billy Edwards, the author of that editorial denouncing me, at a trade show, and when he learned who I was he refused to shake my hand and asked me to leave him alone. I wish he had seen things differently, but I can […]

Anyway, my intent in looking at locks and publishing my paper wasn't to disrupt the lock industry. I believed, as I still do, that mechanical locks and physical security have quite a bit to teach computing, but also that the abstract techniques of cryptography and computer security can […]

Essentially, their argument was that this would be a huge pain and expense to fix, and so we are all better off just keeping it on the down low. And that kind of worked, for about a hundred years, until more open communities - like computer security research - started looking seriously at locks […]