What colour is the MetaTalk background? November 26, 2010 8:42 AM Subscribe
What colour is the MetaTalk background? I have terrible colour vision and can't tell if it's grey or a sort of muted lilac. Thanks.
Fluorescent grey.
posted by blue_beetle at 8:46 AM on November 26, 2010 [1 favorite]
posted by blue_beetle at 8:46 AM on November 26, 2010 [1 favorite]
Which is not to say that the idea that it's some variant of purple or brown hasn't come up before, yea even unto the point of parody. Monitor calibration and local context likely have an awful lot to do with the variation from person to person.
posted by cortex (staff) at 8:47 AM on November 26, 2010
posted by cortex (staff) at 8:47 AM on November 26, 2010
Funnily enough when I look at the #666666 here it looks a lot "greyer" to my eyes. Presumably the other colours on the page influence your perception.
posted by Ted Maul at 8:49 AM on November 26, 2010
posted by Ted Maul at 8:49 AM on November 26, 2010
It's the color of the beast!
posted by Metroid Baby at 8:54 AM on November 26, 2010 [2 favorites]
posted by Metroid Baby at 8:54 AM on November 26, 2010 [2 favorites]
The color of two beasts!
posted by boo_radley at 8:57 AM on November 26, 2010 [18 favorites]
posted by boo_radley at 8:57 AM on November 26, 2010 [18 favorites]
Always looks puce to me.
posted by francesca too at 9:05 AM on November 26, 2010
posted by francesca too at 9:05 AM on November 26, 2010
Neutral colors like grey are perceived as taking on a bit of the color opposite to the colors they're contrasted with. The most prominent color on the page is yellow used for links. Lilac is the compliment of yellow, so it looks a bit lilac-ish. If the links were red, it would look greenish. It's not poor color vision.
posted by nangar at 9:19 AM on November 26, 2010 [40 favorites]
posted by nangar at 9:19 AM on November 26, 2010 [40 favorites]
Brilliant, nangar, I was just wondering whether there was a connection.
posted by Namlit at 9:22 AM on November 26, 2010
posted by Namlit at 9:22 AM on November 26, 2010
It's the color of magic.
posted by The Whelk at 9:31 AM on November 26, 2010 [3 favorites]
posted by The Whelk at 9:31 AM on November 26, 2010 [3 favorites]
What's the hex designation for octarine?
posted by Tesseractive at 9:32 AM on November 26, 2010
posted by Tesseractive at 9:32 AM on November 26, 2010
Tesseractive: What's the hex designation for octarine
#88888888
posted by paisley henosis at 9:35 AM on November 26, 2010 [10 favorites]
#88888888
posted by paisley henosis at 9:35 AM on November 26, 2010 [10 favorites]
It's only the last quadrant used for the octarine ting.
so probably #000000FF
posted by seanyboy at 9:36 AM on November 26, 2010 [5 favorites]
so probably #000000FF
posted by seanyboy at 9:36 AM on November 26, 2010 [5 favorites]
I've always thought I had decent color vision, but recently I had to put some ends on some Cat-5 cable. There's a handful of color coded wires. There was White, Orange-White, Blue-White, Brown-White, Brown and Blue (or something like this). I couldn't tell the difference between the Brown-White and the Blue-White.
I may have the above colors mixed around, may have forgotten some, may have added some, but the point remains that I would suck as a network guy.
posted by cjorgensen at 9:42 AM on November 26, 2010
I may have the above colors mixed around, may have forgotten some, may have added some, but the point remains that I would suck as a network guy.
posted by cjorgensen at 9:42 AM on November 26, 2010
Ted Maul: "Thanks a lot. I always have trouble with greys."
Telling people about your abduction experiences is not really what MetaTalk is for.
posted by Happy Dave at 9:46 AM on November 26, 2010 [14 favorites]
Telling people about your abduction experiences is not really what MetaTalk is for.
posted by Happy Dave at 9:46 AM on November 26, 2010 [14 favorites]
A little bit more about this effect here. It's not a particularly good article, but it explains a bit.
I'll see if I can find something about Land's experiments on color perception; they're pretty impressive. He found that if you take two black and white photographs of something, one with a green filter and one with a red filter, and then superimpose the images as slides in darkened room, projecting the image taken with the green filter without a filter and the image taken with the red filter with a red filter, people see a full-color image with blues, greens and yellows, even though objectively it's a grey-scale image superimposed over a red one and so consists entirely of of shades of white, grey, pink, reddish grey, chocolate brown and black. Your eye is making the same adjustments it does to see things in fairly true colors under firelight.
So here, when you're look at the MeTa page, your eye is perceiving a bit of a yellow bias and correcting for for it, so the grey ends up looking a bit lilac.
(I've said "eye" twice. This kind of correction actually happens after color information to your brain from your retina. But that's being picky.)
posted by nangar at 10:28 AM on November 26, 2010 [2 favorites]
I'll see if I can find something about Land's experiments on color perception; they're pretty impressive. He found that if you take two black and white photographs of something, one with a green filter and one with a red filter, and then superimpose the images as slides in darkened room, projecting the image taken with the green filter without a filter and the image taken with the red filter with a red filter, people see a full-color image with blues, greens and yellows, even though objectively it's a grey-scale image superimposed over a red one and so consists entirely of of shades of white, grey, pink, reddish grey, chocolate brown and black. Your eye is making the same adjustments it does to see things in fairly true colors under firelight.
So here, when you're look at the MeTa page, your eye is perceiving a bit of a yellow bias and correcting for for it, so the grey ends up looking a bit lilac.
(I've said "eye" twice. This kind of correction actually happens after color information to your brain from your retina. But that's being picky.)
posted by nangar at 10:28 AM on November 26, 2010 [2 favorites]
Uhm, "after the color information gets to you brain ...," I meant.
posted by nangar at 10:34 AM on November 26, 2010
posted by nangar at 10:34 AM on November 26, 2010
The color of two beasts!
MetaTalk: The background with two beasts.
posted by Rhaomi at 10:42 AM on November 26, 2010 [4 favorites]
MetaTalk: The background with two beasts.
posted by Rhaomi at 10:42 AM on November 26, 2010 [4 favorites]
I've always thought I had decent color vision, but recently I had to put some ends on some Cat-5 cable. There's a handful of color coded wires. There was White, Orange-White, Blue-White, Brown-White, Brown and Blue (or something like this). I couldn't tell the difference between the Brown-White and the Blue-White.
I may have the above colors mixed around, may have forgotten some, may have added some, but the point remains that I would suck as a network guy.
For one thing, there should be 8 wires, not 6. Depending on the type and brand of cable, distinguishing all those different colour codes ranges from not that bad to horrendous.
But honestly the main trick is to remember there are four pairs of wires, (orange, blue, green, and brown) and the two wires in each pair have a solid colour version and a "white/" version. Since these two wires are twisted together inside the cable, it's easiest to identify them all before un-twisting the pairs. Even if you can't tell if that's supposed to be white/blue or white/brown, you can usually tell if it's wrapped around a blue or a brown wire pretty easily.
posted by FishBike at 10:55 AM on November 26, 2010 [2 favorites]
I may have the above colors mixed around, may have forgotten some, may have added some, but the point remains that I would suck as a network guy.
For one thing, there should be 8 wires, not 6. Depending on the type and brand of cable, distinguishing all those different colour codes ranges from not that bad to horrendous.
But honestly the main trick is to remember there are four pairs of wires, (orange, blue, green, and brown) and the two wires in each pair have a solid colour version and a "white/" version. Since these two wires are twisted together inside the cable, it's easiest to identify them all before un-twisting the pairs. Even if you can't tell if that's supposed to be white/blue or white/brown, you can usually tell if it's wrapped around a blue or a brown wire pretty easily.
posted by FishBike at 10:55 AM on November 26, 2010 [2 favorites]
nangar, Land's experiments sound awesome! Thanks for showing me something new today.
posted by shelleycat at 11:51 AM on November 26, 2010
posted by shelleycat at 11:51 AM on November 26, 2010
> Neutral colors like grey are perceived as taking on a bit of the color opposite to the colors
> they're contrasted with. The most prominent color on the page is yellow used for links. Lilac is
> the compliment of yellow, so it looks a bit lilac-ish. If the links were red, it would look
> greenish. It's not poor color vision.
Also, in addition to eyeball and mind effects, if you haven't jumped through a fairly challenging series of hoops to color-calibrate your monitor who knows what it's actually showing you? Here, PC #1 which is used for graphics work has a monitor that is color-calibrated and checked often. On that one the grey looks grey. Across the room PC #2 has an uncalibrated monitor. On that one the grey appears as a medium-dark mostly desaturated lilac.
posted by jfuller at 12:05 PM on November 26, 2010
> they're contrasted with. The most prominent color on the page is yellow used for links. Lilac is
> the compliment of yellow, so it looks a bit lilac-ish. If the links were red, it would look
> greenish. It's not poor color vision.
Also, in addition to eyeball and mind effects, if you haven't jumped through a fairly challenging series of hoops to color-calibrate your monitor who knows what it's actually showing you? Here, PC #1 which is used for graphics work has a monitor that is color-calibrated and checked often. On that one the grey looks grey. Across the room PC #2 has an uncalibrated monitor. On that one the grey appears as a medium-dark mostly desaturated lilac.
posted by jfuller at 12:05 PM on November 26, 2010
I got distracted by the same color illusion image next to that section and stared at it so intently and for so long that I forgot about the bread I'd just put up to toast. Naturally the sudden smell of burning toast led me to irrationally and flailingly decide I'd had a stroke.
stupid wikipedia.
posted by elizardbits at 12:06 PM on November 26, 2010 [7 favorites]
stupid wikipedia.
posted by elizardbits at 12:06 PM on November 26, 2010 [7 favorites]
I like to think of the color of metatalk as the color of ash. The ash of fires stoked by acrimony and fueled with vitriol and bile. Furnace hot they burned through the the arguments and strawmen leaving only the fine grey emptiness behind the words you see here.
Unless you use the white background like me, because then it totally looks like a cute baby polar bear hiding in a snowstorm.
. .
See. Those are the eyes off in the distance.
posted by quin at 1:09 PM on November 26, 2010 [2 favorites]
Unless you use the white background like me, because then it totally looks like a cute baby polar bear hiding in a snowstorm.
. .
See. Those are the eyes off in the distance.
posted by quin at 1:09 PM on November 26, 2010 [2 favorites]
nangar's explanation is really interesting (thanks!) but to me the grey in MeTa has always had a brownish tinge rather than purple. (tho I sort of "get" the purple when I disable the marvellous f.lux)
posted by ClarissaWAM at 1:49 PM on November 26, 2010
posted by ClarissaWAM at 1:49 PM on November 26, 2010
I couldn't tell the difference between the Brown-White and the Blue-White.
Enough light also makes a huge difference. Which is one reason I keep a Mini-Maglite in my desk. (And one in my coat pocket, and one in my car, etc.) Of course, that won't help with emitted colors.
posted by Bruce H. at 2:24 PM on November 26, 2010
Enough light also makes a huge difference. Which is one reason I keep a Mini-Maglite in my desk. (And one in my coat pocket, and one in my car, etc.) Of course, that won't help with emitted colors.
posted by Bruce H. at 2:24 PM on November 26, 2010
Well, ALL Meta*s look white to me (and thank goodness and matthowie too, because I really, REALLY hate the *filter shade of blue, for no reason I can understand...).
posted by OneMonkeysUncle at 2:56 PM on November 26, 2010
posted by OneMonkeysUncle at 2:56 PM on November 26, 2010
It's actually Jennifer Grey. Pre-surgery.
posted by Eideteker at 3:44 PM on November 26, 2010 [2 favorites]
posted by Eideteker at 3:44 PM on November 26, 2010 [2 favorites]
nangar: I'll see if I can find something about Land's experiments on color perception
Land's name is new to me, thanks for that. Claude Friese-Greene used that technique or one very much like it, to create the colour footage of London featured in a post made by Miko.
posted by GeckoDundee at 5:29 PM on November 26, 2010 [1 favorite]
Land's name is new to me, thanks for that. Claude Friese-Greene used that technique or one very much like it, to create the colour footage of London featured in a post made by Miko.
posted by GeckoDundee at 5:29 PM on November 26, 2010 [1 favorite]
I know it's called the grey, but it looks brown to me.
posted by bigbigdog at 6:24 PM on November 26, 2010
posted by bigbigdog at 6:24 PM on November 26, 2010
It has always looked brown to me, no matter what monitor I'm using. Even when it looks grey, it's brownish grey. I don't think of it as "the grey," I think of it more as "the taupe."
posted by Miko at 9:09 PM on November 26, 2010
posted by Miko at 9:09 PM on November 26, 2010
GeckoDundee: Claude Friese-Greene used that technique or one very much like it, to create the colour footage of London featured in a post made by Miko.
Yes. That's pretty much the same effect. I had no idea anyone had gotten this to work for cinema. I'd completely missed Miko's post. Thank you! (Apparently Land didn't know about this either when he first started his research. He found out later that there was a patent for using almost the same process in cinema.)
I found an article about Land's early experiment with filters, using black & white plus red, here, with pictures showing how it works.
(Edwin Land was the inventor of the Land camera and co-founder of Polaroid Corporation.)
I think this deserves a MeFi post.
posted by nangar at 7:13 AM on November 27, 2010
Yes. That's pretty much the same effect. I had no idea anyone had gotten this to work for cinema. I'd completely missed Miko's post. Thank you! (Apparently Land didn't know about this either when he first started his research. He found out later that there was a patent for using almost the same process in cinema.)
I found an article about Land's early experiment with filters, using black & white plus red, here, with pictures showing how it works.
(Edwin Land was the inventor of the Land camera and co-founder of Polaroid Corporation.)
I think this deserves a MeFi post.
posted by nangar at 7:13 AM on November 27, 2010
This effect is the basis of the Spanish Castle illusion
posted by Lanark at 9:50 AM on November 27, 2010 [8 favorites]
posted by Lanark at 9:50 AM on November 27, 2010 [8 favorites]
the Spanish Castle illusion
WHA
that's one good illusion.
posted by Miko at 10:33 AM on November 27, 2010
WHA
that's one good illusion.
posted by Miko at 10:33 AM on November 27, 2010
On the web, you can tell that a color is gray based off of its hex code.
Web colors are represented as a mixture of red, green, and blue in the form of #RRGGBB.
Nerdfilter: Each digit is represented as a hexadecimal number (0-15), which is a neat trick that allows the programmer to represent any number from 0 to 255 using only 2 digits (or 8 bits). Digits "over" 9 are represented using letters (counting to 15 in hex would go 0123456789ABCDEF).
To use more than 1 digit to count beyond 16, you need to do a little math, and multiply each digit by a power of 16, starting with the 0th power on the right, counting up from there, and then adding all of the resulting numbers together.
As a basic example, #2C would be equal to (2 * 161) + (12*160).
As long as each RR GG BB pair is equal, the resulting color will be monochrome. For instance, #333333, #121212, and #A1A1A1 are all gray. #123456, #121213, and #AABBCC are all colors.
On the web, you also sometimes see 3-digit hex codes, ie. #333 or #1A4. This is simply a shorthand for each digit being represented twice. #333 becomes #333333, and #1A4 becomes #11AA44.
posted by schmod at 11:26 AM on November 27, 2010
Web colors are represented as a mixture of red, green, and blue in the form of #RRGGBB.
Nerdfilter: Each digit is represented as a hexadecimal number (0-15), which is a neat trick that allows the programmer to represent any number from 0 to 255 using only 2 digits (or 8 bits). Digits "over" 9 are represented using letters (counting to 15 in hex would go 0123456789ABCDEF).
To use more than 1 digit to count beyond 16, you need to do a little math, and multiply each digit by a power of 16, starting with the 0th power on the right, counting up from there, and then adding all of the resulting numbers together.
As a basic example, #2C would be equal to (2 * 161) + (12*160).
As long as each RR GG BB pair is equal, the resulting color will be monochrome. For instance, #333333, #121212, and #A1A1A1 are all gray. #123456, #121213, and #AABBCC are all colors.
On the web, you also sometimes see 3-digit hex codes, ie. #333 or #1A4. This is simply a shorthand for each digit being represented twice. #333 becomes #333333, and #1A4 becomes #11AA44.
posted by schmod at 11:26 AM on November 27, 2010
I've been shopping for laptops, and HP describes one model as "biscotti colored". To stay with the trends, I think with need to start describing sections of MeFi by their closest colored baked goods.
posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug at 4:39 PM on November 27, 2010 [1 favorite]
posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug at 4:39 PM on November 27, 2010 [1 favorite]
it's unprofessional - that's what it is
posted by pyramid termite at 9:06 PM on November 27, 2010
posted by pyramid termite at 9:06 PM on November 27, 2010
To stay with the trends, I think with need to start describing sections of MeFi by their closest colored baked goods.
What kind of (tasty) baked goods are this kind of grey? Or ask.me green now I think about it?
posted by shelleycat at 9:20 PM on November 27, 2010
What kind of (tasty) baked goods are this kind of grey? Or ask.me green now I think about it?
posted by shelleycat at 9:20 PM on November 27, 2010
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posted by cortex (staff) at 8:43 AM on November 26, 2010 [3 favorites]