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Comment by olyjohn | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure if this is related, but one time while tripping balls, we got a kaleidescope and put up to a CRT that was displaying only static. Looking through it was the craziest feeling that I had ever gotten while tripping. We even filmed it with our phones and watched it again and it did the same thing. It was like we all got sucked into the visual. You could almost feel it pulling you in. But it created other crazy visual feelings too. You could see the individual RGB pixels in the CRT all lighting up randomly. Highly recommend if you're gonna trip balls. Haven't tried it sober though to know if it could have the same effects.

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We hooked up my fisheye lens to the projector and pointed it back at the projection from inside a blown glass plasma lamp. Good times.

Getting some Snowcrash vibes from this

I think that for a non native english speaker, I'll head to Duckduck go to search for "Tripping balls" as a verb

probably should just head to UrbanDictionary for looking up slang

"having a quite powerful psychedelic experience"

This native english speaker thanks you. Never heard "trip balls".

https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/balls#Adverb

Think of a stoner / surfer / skater saying it. That seems the most appropriate origin.

Tripping itself is easy to understand. This is from acid trip.

The balls part is like balls-out (a locomotive term, popular because it was similar to ballsy or they suspected it was related to testicles somehow) or balls-deep (an obviously sexual term). We like to make things about balls, IDK.

Tripping balls just means very very high. Typically mushrooms or other psychedelics, but not necessarily. You could come out of an anesthesia and have someone say “he was tripping balls when he came out”, and it wouldn’t be too out of place.

How similar was it to this?

"Videotaping Static Through a Kaleidoscope", 42 seconds https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pU9SrubEx58

Something tells me that directing a cathode ray with a series of mirrors directly into your retina isn't a phenomenal idea, all things considered.

We were just looking at the screen through the kaleidoscope with the scope pressed up against the glass. It wasn't taken apart or anything. If that's dangerous than I'm doomed from all those years sitting too close to the TV, as my parents told me!

Can you do a Show HN with some more technical details?

Probably not worth a full Show HN. Just get an old TV turn it on so a dead channel so you just get "snow" on the screen. Get a cheapie Kaleidoscope and put it near or up against the glass. Look through it at the CRT and enjoy the show. Helps a lot if the room is dark too.

could you share your videos?

Do you still have the video?

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