Old Scanner beats Combo

My old HP 5300C Scanjet long bed scanner always had a bit of a haze on the inside of the glass plate, that I swore that I would find a way to clean someday. Then I got a new HP C4200 "all-in-one" print/scan/faxer, and put the old Scanjet away. After a few scanning tries with the C4200, and: waiting at least 4 minutes for it to start to scan, another 4 minutes to render the image, and trying to locate the scanned image, I decided to go back to the old Scanjet and clean it up. The Scanjet takes about 10 seconds to scan, and gives great images once it is cleaned!

I have a lot of old images that need to be digitized, so I wanted to see what the best image dpi tradeoff would be. What I found out from the tests are as follows:

1.There is no noticeable quality difference between (300 dpi) .bmp and (300dpi) .jpg files. They are equally quiet, and both get jaggy at the same magnigfication, so the jpeg compression doesn't seem to add any artifacts and has a whole lot smaller file size.

2. (300dpi) .jpg images really beat (150dpi) images for low noise and high resolution, and average out at about 1 megabyte per file. (which is not a big deal these days)

3. (150dpi) files seem noisy and jaggy with no magnification, and are unsatisfactory for quality archiving.

Well there you have it! Old beats new! Combination products (scan/print/fax) have to cut so many corners to be profitable, that they end up being slower and less efficient than older single purpose products.

This time I got to see the ending

Well... I went back to see "The Soloist" again, just to see the ending and the credits, after the projector malfunctioned yesterday. I'm a big sucker for movie credits. I'm always the one, standing in the aisle watching the credits to the very end, as the theater janitors are sweeping up. I also got a better perspective on the story this time. That's the way it is with me. Music and Effects have such a "Shock and Awe" effect on me, that some plot elements get lost in the shuffle, until I see the movie the second time. Everybody did such a great job on this one. But then again, I am a big sucker for L.A. movie stories.

A big dry spot

Well..... I hit a big dry spot in my writing , lasting seven whole days! A lot of it was caused by trying to finish installation of a vanity sink and medicine cabinet in a bathroom in the house. This was a real ugly job that involved crawling under the house many times on my knees and elbows wiith only a one to two foot clearance. After this job, I am retiring from home do-it-yourself construction work. If I can't afford to hire someone to do it, it won't get done.

I did get to do something positive though during this period and that was to post my first Youtube video http://tinyurl.com/gumboboogie. It took close to an hour to render and then upload a five minute video to Youtube. Once it was up, it looked a lot better than I thought it would. I have two more clips to upload tomorrow. Then I have to shoot some more media, and post it.

Last night I went to see the film "The Soloist. What a great film! Near the end, the projector stopped, and they gave us all free passes. I'll probably go back and see it again. I'm so lonely for Los Angeles, and my home, and my friends. Besides the great acting, The Soloist was just one big commercial for Los Angeles, The Los Angeles Times, and Arts in L.A.. I'm a big sucker for anything about L.A.. The Los Angeles Times is my home page.

The Other Side Of The Room

This is the other side of the room that I spoke about in the previous post. The Cockpit is off to the right, out of the picture. You might wonder why I would show this picture or talk about it. I don't know. It just seemed like an interesting still life. Artists in the 1800-1900's used to paint images like this. Actually the private rooms of humans are their temples. They fill them with things that have meaning to them, and bring comfort. Teens are especially skilful at decorating their rooms. Older people fill them with pictures of their children, and their parents. But in all cases, admittance to these rooms is by invitation only. That is probably why in most houses, they are in the rear and out of public vue. Probably the only other place that is more private in any home is the bathroom, and that usually has a lock on the door.

In this room: the large lithograph over the bed came from one of my offices. The Toucan bird drawing over the bed traveled in a book for about 10 years before I got it framed. The bear at the end of the bed was given to me over 35 years ago. The moose at the other end of the bed jumped into my arms at Macy's about 10 years ago, and insists on being at the head of the bed. The bed and the end table came from my Dad's house. The dresser from Ikea. etc...

I guess the reason for talking about this is: home appreciation. Without places like this, out of the elements, humans have trouble making sense of their lives.

The Cockpit

It's probably strange I would call it that. It's the room where I work and live mostly now. It reminds me of when I visited the Pima Air and Space Museum in Tucson, Az., and I got to sit in the cockpit of a Boeing 707. I had no idea that there was so little room to work in that space. Everything was within finger tip reach. Well, my current space is like that. 8 ft by 10 ft. I have access to other areas of the building, and some storage in the back, but mostly I live and work here when I'm not out making video or audio, photographing, building things, or going shopping. It's a bit different than when I was in Los Angeles. I had a work room there too, but it was in the back of the house and I lived in the house. Looking back on all my jobs I seemed to create spaces like this. They were all small spaces with everything at fingers reach, where I could get away, and think. Soon this room will join the others in the anals of history, and I will move on. Once all the paper images, films, video tapes, and audio tapes are digitized, there will be no need for it, and it will belong to someone else. What will they do with it?

Be careful of Crusades

I have to be careful about going on crusades with email, or in person. Well.... after all, I am MacGyver in all respects. I can see what's wrong with anything or anybody and I know what to do to fix things. I can get annoyed and impatient when I can't get answers. Like today: I was tracking down an internet problem. Everytime I went to a particular website that was supposed to be in service, it redirected to another website with an infomercial on it. So rather than just move on and find another source, I dragged myself into this four hour thing to see why this site got redirected, and got invloved in offering free advice. I haven't done this for a while. I used to do it a lot in my last job. I can see that the best advice is: if it doesn't work, let it be, and move on. Leave the Crusades to the middle ages.

Airborne really works

Well.... if last weekend (and once about a month ago) is any indication, Airborne (dietary suplement) immune booster fizzy tabs, really work to stop the onset of the flu. (at least for me) What I do at the first sign of a sore throat, or that yucky coughing flu discomfort feeling, is: disolve one Airborne fizzy tab in a mug of water and drink twice daily for two days, and the symptoms are gone. I also swallow a teaspoon of listerine twice daily during this period to kill the sore throat. The Listerine tastes yucky, but it really kicks out the sore throat. My former technique was to wait until I got really sick, and then crawl into the doctor and beg for a prescription for Zithromax Antibiotic, and be sick for an additional week. Since I have been using the Airborne and Listerine at the onset of symptoms, the flu has stopped before it got serious, and I have not been to a doctor in over a year, or had a flu shot this year.

Disclaimer: This is just my experience. You have to check out this claim for yourself and make your own judgements on my technique. Any warantee that it will work for you is denied. If you are taking medications or combinations of medications for any reason, you should consult your doctor before trying this, or any holistic or homeopathic flu remedy.