I saw this over on Yahoo today (What Not To Buy…), and since it didn’t really offer any solutions, I thought I would present my own. I can’t speak for Mom’s or 40ish women so much, so I’m not even going to try that, but since I’m nearing my 45th birthday, I figured I could help out with the Dad type gifts. These are not in any particular order, just what popped into my head while writing. Gift Certificates – especially to Amazon.com, Home Depot, Best Buy, or even a … Continue reading
The scanner showed up and so I’ve started scanning slides in earnest this week. So far I’ve been pretty pleased with the results. The only time the scanner fails, miserably, is in shots that are mostly of the ground with a lot of rocks (as is commonly found in the Southwestern U.S.). A lot of the pictures I’ve been scanning are slides that my Dad took when he was following up on mining claims on the Colorado River in Glen Canyon prior to the creation of Lake Powell. So there are … Continue reading
I’ve been pretty busy laying the groundwork for this project. The photo scanner is scheduled to arrive early next week, and I’d like to have a process of some kind worked out by that time to get the photos/slides scanned, tweaked if needed, and uploaded to the web-host with supporting data added to a database of some kind. So I’ve been working on the web backend that will include the photo loader and data entry forms. I’ve also created a database with a few tables to support the data that … Continue reading
I’m gearing up to dive into a huge project at home, digitizing a sizeable photo-archive. This week I’m planning on ordering a scanner build just for photograph scanning, an Epson Perfection 600. I’m really hoping the “Digital ICE” is as good as reported. Some of the slides, negatives, and photos I’ll be scanning do have some damage, so I’m very hopeful that this built in corrective software can really do what it’s claiming. In the mean time, I’m trying to convince my mom to give me full access to all … Continue reading
I decided to try my hand at taking a city (Tulga) last night to add to my collection of two castles (Distar and Asugan) to add to the Markovian Empire.. It was a battle between my army of 120 mainly Sarranid (Bedouin) troops against appx. 400 Khergit (Mongol) defenders. It was a long, hard fought battle, but in the end the Markovians won! Afterwards, there were several battles with the local warlords who hadn’t arrived in time to save their city, but were still bent on taking it back. All were successfully repelled, and I even took a … Continue reading