Firefly

The Lampyridae are a family of insects in the beetle order Coleoptera. They are winged beetles, and commonly called fireflies or lightning bugs for their conspicuous use of bioluminescence during twilight to attract mates or prey. Fireflies produce a "cold light", with no infrared or ultraviolet frequencies. This chemically produced light from the lower abdomen may be yellow, green, or pale red, with wavelengths from 510 to 670 nanometers.

About 2,000 species of fireflies are found in temperate and tropical environments. Many are in marshes or in wet, wooded areas where their larvae have abundant sources of food. Their larvae emit light and often are called "glowworms", in particular, in Eurasia. In the Americas, "glow worm" also refers to the related Phengodidae. In many species, both male and female fireflies have the ability to fly, but in some species, the females are flightless.

Biology

Fireflies tend to be brown and soft-bodied, often with the elytra, or front wings, more leathery than those of other beetles. Although the females of some species are similar in appearance to males, larviform females are found in many other firefly species. These females can often be distinguished from the larvae only because they have compound eyes. The most commonly known fireflies are nocturnal, although there are numerous species that are diurnal. Most diurnal species are not luminescent; however, some species that remain in shadowy areas may produce light.

Fireflies (computer graphics)

Fireflies are rendering artifacts resulting from numerical instabilities in solving the rendering equation. They manifest themselves as anomalously-bright single pixels scattered over parts of the image.

Fireflies need to be distinguished from noise (overall graininess in the image), which can be reduced by simply increasing the number of rendering samples (amount of computation) per pixel. Fireflies tend to be harder to get rid of.

Fireflies tend to be confined to particular parts of the image, where they are caused by interactions between particular material and lighting settings that only affect certain objects in the scene.

Curing Fireflies

Sometimes fireflies can be reduced by various tweaks to renderer settings, for example clamping the maximum intermediate amplitude during pixel calculations, or disabling the calculation of caustics if these are not needed. Another option is application of a despeckle filter as part of rendering post-processing, or manually removing the fireflies with the brush or clone tool in an image editor.

Fireflies (novel)

Fireflies is a novel by Shiva Naipaul originally published in 1970. It was his first book, a comic novel set in Trinidad. In an essay in An Unfinished Journey, Naipaul described how in 1968 as a final year student at Oxford University studying Chinese, he had been moved to write down a sentence, which proved to be the beginning of his first novel, which he then worked on for the next two years. The novel was hailed on publication, winning the Jock Campbell New Statesman Award, the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and the Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize.

Writer Martin Amis said of Fireflies

References

Blitz!

Blitz! is a musical by Lionel Bart. The musical, described by Steven Suskin as "massive", was set in the East End of London during the Blitz (the aerial bombings during World War II). The story drew on Bart's childhood memories of London's Jewish East End during the Blitz and, like most musicals, centred on a romance between a young couple, in this case a Jewish woman and a Cockney man, although the largest role and main point-of-view character is that of Mrs. Blitztein, the young woman's mother. Steven Suskin describes it as "Abie's Irish Rose set against the burning of Atlanta." Bart himself described the play as "…three human stories inside an epic canvas; the major human conflict—the major plot—personifies the spirit of London and how that spirit developed during the period of the piece."

Production history

Blitz! opened in London 8 May 1962 at the Adelphi Theatre, while Bart's enormous West End success Oliver! was still running at the New Theatre; at that time Oliver! had not yet been produced on Broadway. Blitz ran for 568 performances. It never ran on Broadway: between its scale and the fact that New Yorkers could hardly be expected to share Londoners' nostalgia for the period, it proved "unexportable". Bart wrote the music and lyrics, and had directed the original London production himself; Joan Maitland contributed to the libretto. Sean Kenny designed the elaborate sets, which included representations of Victoria Station, Petticoat Lane, and the Bank underground station, not to mention London on fire during an air raid. Four revolving house units and an enormous, mobile overhead bridge carried on two shifting towers made it, at the time, the most expensive West End musical ever produced. Noël Coward called it "twice as loud and twice as long as the real thing."

Blitz (album)

Blitz is German industrial rock group KMFDM's sixteenth studio album, released on March 24, 2009, on KMFDM Records and Metropolis Records. It also marks the first use of five letter song titles and a five letter album title since WWIII. The album charted after its release, as did the song "People of the Lie". Blitz had songs written in three different languages, and was moderately well received by critics. Most of its songs were remixed for the band's next release, Krieg.

Background

The symbol used for the first track, , is a variation of the astronomical symbol for the planet Uranus, . Sascha Konietzko, the band's founder, mentions the lyrics "Up Uranus" in his blog, and at the place of the symbol in lyrics, "up Uranus" is sung. "Bait and Switch" contains lyrics from "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing". The lyrics for "Davai" are Russian, while the lyrics for "Potz Blitz!" are German.

Release

Blitz was released on March 24, 2009. It was on Billboard's Dance/Electronic Albums Chart for four weeks, and peaked at No. 9. It reached No. 1 on the CMJ Loud Rock Select chart and No. 15 on the FMQB Metal Detector chart. "People of the Lie" reached No. 1 for three weeks on CMJ's Loud Rock Select Tracks chart.

Blitz (movement)

Blitz is an anarchist, communist and socialist youth community in Oslo, Norway, founded in 1982. The group has often been criticized for their use of violent methods of political protest.

The house

The Blitz House (Norwegian: Blitzhuset) is an autonomous house in the centre of Oslo, Norway. It started out as a squatted building in Skippergata 6 in downtown Oslo in 1981 and has since been a centre of socialist, communist and anarchist activism.

In 1982 the movement were kicked out of Skippergata and moved into Pilestredet 30c, where an agreement was made between the city and the squatters. They were allowed to rent the house for a symbolic rent, and in return they would maintain the building. In 2002 the city council, then led by the Conservative Party, put the Blitz house on sale. The activists responded with a massive action and, among other things, battered the entrance part of the Oslo City Hall, and the sale was stopped.

Among the activities of the house are a bookshop with political literature, the Anti Fascist Action (AFA) network, a group supporting Mumia Abu-Jamal, a feminist group, a children's power group, a non-profit printing office, a photo group and a feminist radio station, radiOrakel. Blitz also has a café specialising in vegan food. The practice rooms, sound studio and concert facilities are a centre for ska, hardcore punk and hip hop music. Concerts are held within the house from time to time.