Ch-ch-changes!

Yesterday, I confirmed that the Lexmark scanner/printer with the multpage feed had died, so there's no scanning available to me right now (besides using a "Magic Wand," which has its uses, but only in emergencies).

I've seen a number of getups that will allow you to mount a camera to photograph a series of documents (or the pages of a book), but the other day, I ran across a fairly heavy piece of glass, about 18 inches on a side, and an idea occurred to me.

I put a hole in the bottom of a lightweight crate made out of translucent material and placed the crate on a tray, in such a way that I could insert and remove an upward-facing camera on the tray. Then I put the glass on top of the crate, focused two halogen lights on either side of the translucent crate, and took a few shots to adjust the exposure on the camera. In the end, I ended up with a crude copier, and although the photographs suffer from some spherical aberration, the end product will do in a pinch.

The problem is, it very definitely is not a long-term solution to the scanning problem around here.

A browse at Amazon shows that there is a new Lexmark out there, apparently no longer in production (it's discounted and there's a model with a higher number on sale), that does its copying with a digital camera instead of a traveling scan element. The specs claim a speed of 3 sec for a scan, and although I haven't gotten any deeper into the specs, from its appearance, the unit is not intended for multipage scanning. (On the other hand, at 3 sec/page, the assumption might be you can stand by the unit and hand-feed the document you're scanning, and the result will still be fast.)

As for the day, it's gone by all too fast, and I'm not exactly sure where the time went. I know Galina and I went to McDonald's for a sandwich a couple of hours ago, which is the first time my credit card has darkened the slot of their cash register in quite some time, and my stomach regrets the foray.

In other news, I've cleaned up yet some more of the junk in my office, but there's still a long way to go.

Cheers...