09:04 – Barbara and I are doing the usual Sunday stuff. After Barbara finishes cleaning house and ironing, we’ll get back to building more science kits.
I’ve been saving the dehumidifier water in new 5-gallon (19 liter) buckets. Chemically, it’s as pure as distilled/deionized water from the supermarket, so it’s fine for making up solutions for kits and we don’t have to buy it. It’s not potable, of course, because it contains bacteria, mold spores, etc. that the filter doesn’t catch. I’m running out of new 5-gallon buckets, so I’m going to start transferring it to labeled 2-liter soda bottles that I’ll store for use later in the year when we’re no longer running the dehumidifier.
If you wanted to drink it would boiling be enough? And if it was boiled would it still be effectively distilled/deionized water?
I know this is a dumb/weird question, but is distilled/deionized water from the supermarket potable?
Got a new PC with a SSD boot drive and two RAID-1 mirrors. One of the mirrors is already degraded, with one of its component drives dead. I just set it up yesterday, it’s less than two weeks old. Sigh.
Yes, boiling dehumidifier water makes it potable. And, yes, DI water from the supermarket is potable.
On Friday night I was part of an astronomy field trip to a dark site about 40 km north of Adelaide, with about seventy teenagers. Most of the telescopes were Newtonians, although there was a Dobsonian.
I was fairly disappointed. Saturn was just a small blob – blue coloured because a filter was left on because it earlier had been pointing at something else, saw a few nebula, Mars, etc. Overall hardly worth the effort.
In about 1994 a friend from Sydney loaded up his Meade Newtonian and brought it down to Yass, a town 50 km NW of Canberra. Another friend had a 20 acre farm about 3 km out of town. Viewing conditions were excellent: the town didn’t produce any noticeable light pollution, although a truck stop about 3-4 km away produced a slight orange tinge when looking in that direction.
We saw the moon in detail – fortunately my friend had a filter to reduce the glare – and Saturn and its rings. It wasn’t a huge telescope – boxed up it fit in the boot/trunk of his family sized car. It took two of us to manhandle it out of the car – goodness knows how he got it in there by himself.
We have a small leak in the cellar pipe that goes to the outside faucet and are now having to empty the dehumidifier bucket at least daily; gotta get a plumber in here with the electrician soon. Been dumping that wottuh on the sunflowers and suchlike out back.
Ain’t seen no juvenile marijuana plants in the vicinity but I suspect the finished product is still being sold not too fah away; guy who owns the pub on the corner was busted with some other people some years ago for large-operation pot transportation/selling up the lake. He also had apparently been interested in buying this house at one point.
Gorgeous day again on the bay; Mrs. OFD off to Montreal to retrieve Princess and then I gotta drive them to MIL’s in Shelburne-On-The-Bay thirty-five miles south of here and then they’ll take the latter’s cah to Maffachufetts for the week. New baby grandson was born yesterday at 09:07 and weighed in at 9 pounds and 9 ounces, two weeks early via C-section. One wonders how much he’d weigh if brought to full term. My sister was 10 and 3 and I was 8 and 3. This new kid on the block is gonna be a monster.
I gotta be up at 05:45 tomorrow so I can hook up with the HR peeps at work and get all my papers in order, esp. payroll; supposedly getting a new iPhone 5s and whatever I want for a laptop; I’ll spec out at least 8GB RAM and then double it, preferably an SSD. I get the impression that between Outlook emails arriving on the iPhone and the laptop all day OFD will be a busy bee. Maybe I can parlay this into eventually hiring a person to do the usual daily fire extinguisher stuff and hauling machines around while I sit and fiddle with web development and extend that later to independent gigs. Just ruminating…
We hope to get out after all the touristas leave and the local activity dies down, to some dark skies near here and work on identifying/observing stuff with the binocs. I should probably hook up with the Vermont Astronomical Society…
http://vtastro.org/
At my local supermarket a gallon of distilled water runs about $1.00 to $1.05 depending on brand. Are you really saving money when you factor in the extra work to filter and store the output from the dehumidifier?
At my local supermarket a gallon of distilled water runs about $1.00 to $1.05 depending on brand.
Usually around 60 cents at Walfart.
Greg, I’ve heard that the question about distilled or de-ionised water is not whether it is potable, but whether it is advisable to drink it, long-term. Apparently it is so lacking in minerals compared to normal water that it will leach minerals out of teeth, etc. So I heard, without verification.
There’s very little work involved, and it saves Barbara having to haul home multiple 8-pound bottles of water from the supermarket.
Here’s a little question involving old photographs:
We have a couple of photos from the turn of the last century (my grandfather as a toddler with his toddler brother and toddler cousin from Nantucket, 1898) and others from the last century, including a couple of old slides. We’d like to get these touched up/restored and a quick perusal just now of local area photogs who allegedly do that kind of work and advertise accordingly reveals that they mainly concentrate in wedding and portrait stuff.
What exactly is involved with this sort of work, and would it be possible with our current pooter tech to run it DIY? I’m otherwise clueless; thoughts?
I would recommend doing scans of your old images at the highest resolution and color depth you can–9,600 dpi at 32 bits is good. Be careful with images in frames with glass. They should be matted to prevent the glass from contacting the emulsion surface of the print, but they often aren’t matted and even if they are the print may have come into contact with the glass anyway. If you try to separate such prints from the frame/glass the emulsion may stick to the glass. If you have glass-framed images, I’d recommend using a good digital camera on a copy stand to shoot images of the images. Use either dual 45-degree lamps to illuminate the image, or use a Polarizing filter, or both.
Old images can contain a surprising amount of fine detail, much more than a typical 35mm DSLR can resolve. It’s a shame to lose image data in the pixels.
None of the photos are in glass frames; they’re all paper, that old snapshot/developed paper from the 1960s and previously. One Ektachrome “transparency” slide with Mrs. OFD at age twelve or so on London Bridge. My main interests are getting my grandparents’ pics retouched/repaired and then framed, including my grandpa once again in his Doughboy outfit heading out to La Belle France. We lost a bunch of stuff in two separate basement floods up here in our other house so I kinda wanna preserve what’s left in reasonable condition for the coming generations.
I have our family history in draft form back to the Mayflower on my dad’s side but not much at all from my mom’s; her dad was born in Lancashire and I’ve never seen any pictures from before my time as a kid in the Glorious Sixties.
I suppose I could fool around with Ancestry.com, etc., but it eats up a lotta time I’m not gonna have again for a while, so I thought I’d at least get some pictures saved.
would it be possible with our current pooter tech to run it DIY?
Yes, you can. Scanning beyond the native resolution of the scanner adds nothing except file size. The scanner software merely takes a pixel, splits it up, may add some shading or coloring based on surrounding pixels, and stores the image. If the scanner native scanning resolution is 2400 dpi, that is the highest resolution you need to scan. Scanning at any higher resolution adds nothing to the detail and in fact may make it worse depending on the scanner software.
You are generally never going to print the images at higher than 300 dpi so why worry about scanning at 9600 DPI. With scanning at the highest resolution of the scanner you can crop and zoom much easier than you can at 300 DPI.
I know that file size is generally not much of an issue any more. But consider that if you double the scan resolution you increase the file size by four times. Scanning aa color 8×10 at 9600 dpi will produce a file that may exceed 20 gigabytes in size. Add in a layer in Photoshop and you grow to 40 gigabytes.
If the images are B/W, scan in B/W or gray scale. No need to use color. Scan color images in color naturally.
You can correct many of the image flaws in Photoshop or other capable programs. Use layers. Let me repeat this, use layers. You create a duplicate layer, fix the duplicate layer and save the image as a PSD file. You can always go back and redo the fixes as the changes are only on the layer, not the original image.
I scanned several hundred old photographs that my aunt had. Many I did not correct as I did not need the image. I can correct it later when I need to use the image. Or I can just do a few at a time as the work can sometimes be very tedious.
Services that advertise have people that are good with Photoshop but are doing nothing more than you can do yourself. The question becomes a matter of time.
It’s all good; thanks much, guys; we have a MFP that scans and we also have the “HP Solution Center” app which will scan a pic and has “advanced settings,” including sharpness, removing dirt and scratches, and supposedly goes to 4800 DPI. I may play around with it just for laughs and then look into a real scanner; we also have GIMP and a couple of M$ and Adobe lightweight apps.
“Greg, I’ve heard that the question about distilled or de-ionised water is not whether it is potable, but whether it is advisable to drink it, long-term. Apparently it is so lacking in minerals compared to normal water that it will leach minerals out of teeth, etc. So I heard, without verification.”
Well, here is the verification:
1. When I was a child, we all drank from faucets and there were none among us with Autism, ADD, or Asperger Syndrome.
2. Nowadays, all children drink from store bought bottles and those maladies are widespread and growing.
3. The cause, according to AlGore, is Global Warming.
Why do you hate children, Mr. Slim?
And let’s have a little respect for the great man and inta-leck-shoo-al who shoulda been President!
From the Wish-I’d-written-that department:
“200 years ago today: The British burned Washington
“And do you know we’ve NEVER sent them a thank-you note? Tsk.”
http://althouse.blogspot.com/2014/08/200-years-ago-today-british-burned.html?showComment=1408906062023#c7451484613464841847
Check your privilege, Cowboy Slim! The cause is America’s legacy of racism, nothing more and nothing less.
supposedly goes to 4800 DPI.
That is what I have read. Although there is some confusion as to whether this is optical or through software. My research indicates optical.
Consider that my 10 megapixel camera effectively has a much smaller resolution. The maximum image size is 4032 x 3024 pixels. I can print an 8×10 that looks outstanding. The effective resolution is about 400 pixels per inch at 8×10. Why scan at 4800? That is well beyond the resolution of the original print. Yes, you can zoom in. But unlike CSI no additional detail can be added by software.
If you scan at 1200 DPI you have exceeded the resolution of any commercially available camera on the market. Scanning at 9600 DPI is way overkill.
Do some trials. I suspect that you will find that anything beyond 600 DPI you will be hard pressed to find much difference.
Scan at the hardware’s native resolution. That will keep software out of the equation. Scanning at any other resolution the software has to extrapolate, or combine, the pixels returned from the scanner. And all that software can do is guess and may not always do such guessing correctly. This becomes especially apparent when the software has to deal with scratches.
In my opinion and experience it is best to NOT let the software fix the scratches and blotches. Scan the images as is and you fix the images yourself as you know the content of the image, the scanner software does not.
Re scanning and retouching, I have done that, and Ray’s advice is spot on. I would add that experience and good notes help my work a lot. There is no substitute for experimentation. Unfortunately, this takes time, a LOT of time.
The other aspect is to know what result you are aiming for. If you only want to be able to make, say, a 4×6” print, then many imperfections will not be visible. If you want to correct everything, that will take a lot more work. Resist the temptation to “pixel peep,” viewing at needlessly high zoom levels. The software tools already mentioned are more than adequate for your needs, but you will have to learn how to use them, and this can take time.
If, after you start trying, you get frustrated, maybe you would want to try a professional service. There are lots of them, at all price levels. I admit I have never used them, but I would if I had a lot of work that needed to be done. The real challenge is finding one that will please you. Your need is restoration, and there are lots of those kind of services, too.
Finally, don’t overlook the budding kid who wants to learn. Sometimes, they can be really worthwhile; sometimes, well…
We lost a bunch of stuff in two separate basement floods up here in our other house so I kinda wanna preserve what’s left in reasonable condition for the coming generations.
Do I smell a PHP/SQL learning project coming up for relatives web access?
Greg, I’ve heard that the question about distilled or de-ionised water is not whether it is potable, but whether it is advisable to drink it, long-term. Apparently it is so lacking in minerals compared to normal water that it will leach minerals out of teeth, etc. So I heard, without verification.
There is tons of debate on this out there. I’ve found no definitive proof that distilled does any harm. I’ve read several articles stating 99%+ of your body’s mineral needs come from food. You’d have to drink 10’s of gallons of “regular” water to make it up. I’ve drunk distilled for years because of shitty water supplies where I’ve lived. Especially Korea. I brought my own table top distiller with me. You can always add minerals back in (I take supplements that cover all). You get the benefit of purer water. You need to properly maintain the distiller, though.
The other negative thing that goes around about distilled is that organics with a lower evap will cross over into the collection jug and be concentrated enough to make you sick. Again, there are “Drs.” on both sides. No proof of sickness.
Actually, I was just spoofing on bottled water being the cause of Autism, ADD, or Asperger Syndrome.
It’s truly money. In poor, rural northern CA counties, which have far less per capita tax confiscations than more affluent ones, there are far less children diagnosed with Autism, ADD, or Asperger Syndrome. Down in the richer counties in coastal, SoCal counties, there is a far higher incidence of those diseases.
How does the money cause it? Rich parents can afford psychiatrists to make the positive diagnoses and then hire the lawyers to sue the school boards to provide 8/5 minders to assist the teachers during school hours.
Curiosity takes a selfie:
http://www.space.com/26923-how-does-curiosity-look-after-two-years-on-mars.html
I tried a scan at 4800 using the HP’s sw and I also specified the sharpness, b&w, and fixing dirt, stains and scratches; it came out pretty badly. Will now try at much lower 600 and leave the settings alone. The first attempt also took forever. Tx for the tips, all.
“Do I smell a PHP/SQL learning project coming up for relatives web access?”
Could be; next-older brother has sometimes expressed an interest in the whole enchilada; learning web dev languages and preserving pics for family and also as a retail service to customers for money. He’s still working a dead-end part-time gig supporting legacy Windows machines and answering phones for nurses after thirty years as a UNIX admin. Also wants to try screenplays and songwriting.
“How does the money cause it? Rich parents can afford psychiatrists to make the positive diagnoses and then hire the lawyers to sue the school boards to provide 8/5 minders to assist the teachers during school hours.”
Exactly. Which is why there has been a plethora of such cases among kids over the past couple of decades. It’s not as if suddenly two or three new generations of kids all contracted these conditions out of a clear blue sky. Some days it seems like everybody in the damn country has some kind of effin disability. And is a victim. And needs to be, wait, forget that, demands to be, coddled.
Tried watching Mr. medium wave’s video about the Mars thing and surprisingly, Shockwave crashed. Does Shockwave EVER work, I mean EVER???
I was gonna scroll down to the seven concealed carry myths but lost heart.
And what was that hoopla about finding a thigh bone on Mars???
WSJ nooz squirt a half-hour ago:
Attention: citizens of O Kanaduh!
“Burger King is in talks to buy Tim Horton’s, with the deal structured as a tax inversion.”
Is there a finance wizard or MBA or tax accountant/lawyer among us who can ‘splain what a “tax inversion” is and if me and Mrs. OFD can avail ourselves of suchlike?
Oh, no no no no no. You aren’t nearly rich enough to make use of the non-straightforward elements of the tax code.
Dave, for photo-editing, take a look at IrfanView (Windows s/w, which I learnt about from Dr.Jerry’s site), and XNViewMP (any OS, which I heard about here). They are less capable, but MUCH simpler to drive than things like PhotoShop, which just about needs a doctorate to extract the maximum. My impression is either at their current levels of revision, with all plug-ins, will do much more than is needed for personal and family archives. I’ve used IrfanView for this purpose, at a much earlier revision level, and it did the job capably.
If you need more, try Gimp. It approaches PhotoShop levels of capability and complexity, works on any OS, and costs nought.
And yes, scan at maximum hardware capability, then archive. Work only on copies, not the originals. Maybe even hire the scanning done by a professional shop with maximum-capability hardware, and store images in a lossless format. This will surely be more information than you need, but you’ll never have a better chance of extracting maximum info than today. It might be your grandchildren who do it, but once you’ve captured the info it can be analysed later. Particularly with those old silver-gel on glass plates, if someone has Mars peeking over their shoulder, you’d be able to read the fine print in the back-page “Hatches, Matches & Despatches” of the Martial Tribune, once they work out how to illuminate it with the right laser.
Oh, yeah. If you’ve got a particularly recalcitrant artifact to edit out, try another scan. Sometimes there are hairs, fluff, dust or wrinkles that just don’t appear the second time around. Sometimes you can make it good by cutting and pasting portions of two supposedly-identical images.
We asked our daughter’s doctor a few years ago about the huge increase in the number of children with autism spectrum disorders and what she thought the problem was. Her opinion is that there’s been in increase in diagnosis not occurrence. She said decades ago the kid down the street was just an “odd kid” and people left it at that. Now, he gets assessed and he’s found to be autistic. That “odd kid” has always been there. We just give it a name now and parents are much more likely to get their “odd kids” diagnosed.
Well, how about moving from autism in the young to depression in the aged? Saw the FIL this weekend three times. He has had four surgeries in the last five months and has lived in three different rehab / nursing homes. He is no longer interactive but is only responsive. My wife thinks that he is very depressed. I am wondering if he has had an event or is losing rapidly mental ability in the nursing home.
His girlfriend goes to see him each day and brushes his teeth for him along with a number of other things! His arms work just fine, she is a serious enabler. She told my wife a lot of things that my wife “should be” doing which is not going to happen with a 600 mile round trip. We have told her that she is doing too much and wearing herself out but she refuses to listen. I highly suspect that we have a crisis coming this way, maybe very soon.
My FIL apparently told his girlfriend that my wife has a general power of attorney for him. If so, he did not give her a copy. Nor anyone else. Nor medical or such. He did give my wife a very limited financial power of attorney over two of his bank accounts. What a mess!
The one, big restriction with GIMP: it is RGB only. As long as you don’t need CMYK or pantones, it is pretty good. Be warned: it takes a long time to get used to the GIMP user interface – it does a lot of things differently from Photoshop and other traditional image editors.
I’ve got Irfanview on here but have so far only used it to view pics. I’ll play around with it more often now.
More, later. Gotta run. HR stuff to do this morning early, and my iPhone is telling me of minor crises since 05:20.
IrfanView is pretty amazing. It will automatically correct colors and contrast/brightness to make pics look better than most people’s for Web posting. I wish Image View in Linux was even half as capable as IrfanView. I cannot even paste an image from the clipboard into ImageView.
There is a CMYK plugin for GIMP. They don’t include support for it in the original install simply because most people who use GIMP will never need to send to a commercial print shop. RGB works fine for home use.
Irfanview is a great tool for the casual photographer.
To OFD:
I’m not an accountant, but a ‘tax inversion’ is basically when a US company buys a foreign company, and then though that, becomes a foreign company and no longer a US company.
They move their HQ there and save bootles on the lesser corporate tax rates of the foreign company.
Tax inversion and other such schemes. Switzerland always has the surrounding European countries fussing about this stuff, because some of the cantons offer low tax rates for corporate headquarters. These are often little more than a PO Box, just like in Delaware.
There’s no easy solution. The fussing country could drop its tax rates, but they fear a loss of revenue. While we libertarian types might figure that a general loss of government revenues would be a good thing, the government types somehow see it differently…
http://humanevents.com/2014/08/26/burger-king-plans-to-escape-insane-u-s-corporate-tax-system/
This is good. Keeps our government from taxing business (and indirectly us via price increases). When enough businesses leave to affect revenues to that greedy old Uncle Sam, then taxes will have to be lowered to keep others from emigrating.