At my slide talks, I am praised for my slides. A lot of work and time is spent to get it right. And darkness during projection is essential.
If the source is from the web, the image is saved in 'my pictures'.
Opening 'fine pix', I can trim unwanted edges and sharpen the image.
Opening 'Serif portrait plus' [from Ruth], I can change contrast & brightness, rotate - if the image is not quite straight, and adjust canvas size to create white margins, to give the 3:2 proportion for the print and its slide.
It the image is less than 40 or 50 KB, it will be rejected at Boots or Tesco. I can print it on our HP printer - often it is still of adequate quality.
From books I also occasionally have to print on the HP printer first: Either to enlarge small images for easier photography, or to avoid difficult access of the camera in a book, or to avoid seams across pictures on 2 pages. I print twice and do plastic surgery. The seam must be lengthwise - to avoid light penetration.
I find 'normal' print speed adequate, and I can still change contrast and colour intensity.
I also retouch many pictures, both photo prints and HP prints, to emphasize lines, to add colour or correct blank areas etc.
Slide film is becoming less common - but I do not plan to invest in PowerPoint equipment and to convert my 3,000 plus slides.
For photography, I wait for a time with steady ambient light - cloudy or sunny. The SLR camera has 3 extra 'plus' lenses attachable, to attain images from 3 cm to 80 cm. The camera is fixed to an old overhead projector column movable vertically and it is also tiltable, all on a wheeled frame that can be moved nearer or further from the glass pane for adjusting the lighting. Exposure also has to reckon with varying darknesses of parts of the image.
Rarely, I can tilt the image relative to the horizontal, to compensate for parallax in the image.
When all is worked out then, for maximum sharpness, the aperture is set to minimum and the shutter time is increased to compensate. For exposures of more than 1 second, this is timed on my watch.
There was a time when I bordered the image for photography with black plastic strips to fill the whole slide area. But this was fiddly, and often needed further blackening of the area on the film. So now I stick pieces of 'post-it' over void areas, and blacken them with an indelible felt pen just before mounting.
To avoid mis-cutting the film between slides by the laboratory, I order films to be returned uncut. I use Gepe plastic mounts and write on each frame the identity of the image & artist, including their dates, painting method, size, current location and source. A black dot in the lower left corner ensures correct orientation in the carousel: for each slide there are 7 wrong possibilities of placement - sideways, upside down and back to front...
The slides are stored by topics in hanging files of 24. But some slides are used in more than one talk, so I hope to create a database at some free time.
Tuesday 29 January 2008
Friday 25 January 2008
04.Update
Mainly trivialities.
Recently I got new reading glasses but the lenses were clearly wrong. Furthermore, I can read easily without glasses. To watch the computer screen I use the 'double-glazed glasses with the outer lenses hinged up'.
So we took the dud pair to Costco's optical department, where mum was taking delivery of a new pair of glasses. She had had to wait an extra week, because the lens was not right. I asked them to measure the 'inner' lenses of my double glazed pair - refraction and cylinders, and to copy this as new lenses into the frame of the above new 'dud' reading glasses.
Normally they need to re-test my vision, but
a. my last test was only 9 months ago, and therefore could not be repeated on the NHS in less than a year, and
b. Mum had a new pair on order and thus we were valued customers.
So they agreed to order copies of my lenses without re-testing - and I signed to confirm.
The optician strongly recommended high-refraction plastic, which gives thinner and lighter lenses - at treble the price. But I declined. The present double glazed pair had normal strength plastic lenses, and the pair I was ordering would be single glazed and therefore half the weight. So they agreed and I signed once more to confirm.
At this point they re-measured the distance between my pupils. They used a clever electronic gadget, whereas my previous optician had always just used a ruler in front of the eyes.
I was impressed by their professional standard and pleasant manners, although another member of their staff was a fairly aggressive woman who was obsessed with putting things away even when they were still in use and was totally devoid of any sense of humour. In a fortnight I'll see the resulting new glasses. Unlike my former optician, Costco ask for full payment in advance.
The latest BMJ had a report from a [lady] geriatrician who had done an MA in History of Medicine. The page included an illustration of a painting of an anatomy lesson, probably 16. or 17.c. Normally the BMJ gives particulars of such pictures - but not on this one.
So I e-mailed the author to ask. I remarked that I would have loved to study this topic formally, but it was too late at my age. She replied promptly to say, that she would enquire about the painting - it had been inserted by the journal. And she asked, "whether I was Daphne's father".
I confirmed and said, how nice it was to have a famous daughter. [actually, all my daughters are famous]. Mum thinks she remembers Claire - I'll ask Daphne.
A similar episode in reverse happened a few weeks ago. Pat Horne from Toronto emails an avalanche of fascinating and relevant papers. This one was about arthritis in Durer's family, by a George Weisz from Australia. It was published in an art journal, so I was not sure whether George Weisz was medical. I emailed to ask for further medical details of the Durers: familial arthritis can be associated with Psoriasis etc. I added, that my mother's maiden surname was Weiss - of which Weisz is the Hungarian form. Are we possibly related?
George Weisz answered promptly and excitedly. He too was born in Europe. He too had studied medicine in Israel, served in the Israel army, and then emigrated. In his case to Australia - a step that he regrets, despite having spent his entire professional career there - in orthopaedics! His heart is in Israel. But no, we are not directly related.
Our calls to Australia are free, and we had a pleasant chat in Hebrew, including his wife.
Provided the ambient light is steady, I still have many more pictures to photograph. Cumulus clouds flitting across the sun are the worst. I'm waiting for tomorrow.
Recently I got new reading glasses but the lenses were clearly wrong. Furthermore, I can read easily without glasses. To watch the computer screen I use the 'double-glazed glasses with the outer lenses hinged up'.
So we took the dud pair to Costco's optical department, where mum was taking delivery of a new pair of glasses. She had had to wait an extra week, because the lens was not right. I asked them to measure the 'inner' lenses of my double glazed pair - refraction and cylinders, and to copy this as new lenses into the frame of the above new 'dud' reading glasses.
Normally they need to re-test my vision, but
a. my last test was only 9 months ago, and therefore could not be repeated on the NHS in less than a year, and
b. Mum had a new pair on order and thus we were valued customers.
So they agreed to order copies of my lenses without re-testing - and I signed to confirm.
The optician strongly recommended high-refraction plastic, which gives thinner and lighter lenses - at treble the price. But I declined. The present double glazed pair had normal strength plastic lenses, and the pair I was ordering would be single glazed and therefore half the weight. So they agreed and I signed once more to confirm.
At this point they re-measured the distance between my pupils. They used a clever electronic gadget, whereas my previous optician had always just used a ruler in front of the eyes.
I was impressed by their professional standard and pleasant manners, although another member of their staff was a fairly aggressive woman who was obsessed with putting things away even when they were still in use and was totally devoid of any sense of humour. In a fortnight I'll see the resulting new glasses. Unlike my former optician, Costco ask for full payment in advance.
The latest BMJ had a report from a [lady] geriatrician who had done an MA in History of Medicine. The page included an illustration of a painting of an anatomy lesson, probably 16. or 17.c. Normally the BMJ gives particulars of such pictures - but not on this one.
So I e-mailed the author to ask. I remarked that I would have loved to study this topic formally, but it was too late at my age. She replied promptly to say, that she would enquire about the painting - it had been inserted by the journal. And she asked, "whether I was Daphne's father".
I confirmed and said, how nice it was to have a famous daughter. [actually, all my daughters are famous]. Mum thinks she remembers Claire - I'll ask Daphne.
A similar episode in reverse happened a few weeks ago. Pat Horne from Toronto emails an avalanche of fascinating and relevant papers. This one was about arthritis in Durer's family, by a George Weisz from Australia. It was published in an art journal, so I was not sure whether George Weisz was medical. I emailed to ask for further medical details of the Durers: familial arthritis can be associated with Psoriasis etc. I added, that my mother's maiden surname was Weiss - of which Weisz is the Hungarian form. Are we possibly related?
George Weisz answered promptly and excitedly. He too was born in Europe. He too had studied medicine in Israel, served in the Israel army, and then emigrated. In his case to Australia - a step that he regrets, despite having spent his entire professional career there - in orthopaedics! His heart is in Israel. But no, we are not directly related.
Our calls to Australia are free, and we had a pleasant chat in Hebrew, including his wife.
Provided the ambient light is steady, I still have many more pictures to photograph. Cumulus clouds flitting across the sun are the worst. I'm waiting for tomorrow.
Sunday 20 January 2008
03.religious fanatics
We are told that Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah declared yesterday, that his armed group "has body parts of Israeli soldiers killed in Lebanon during the 2006 conflict."
He said they had the "heads, the hands, the feet and even a nearly intact cadaver".
So the Hezbollahs and their leader are inhuman savages. I can just imagine the reverse situation, with Moslems' body parts being held by Israel for barter. There would be world wide riots - well organized and conveniently used by the rabble to loot as much property as possible.
The Moslems claim to be a peace loving religion. Indeed, many Moslems are not terrorists, or suicide bombers. But every single suicide bomber is a Moslem - and so were all the perpetrators of the 9/11 airplane outrage. They are indoctrinated and groomed by their religious leaders.
The Moslem religion is some 600 years younger than Christianity and they are now in their analogous medieval period. Inquisitions, burning people alive, stoning women who had been raped - and much more. They call their Crusades "jihad". The main target is still the Holy Land. It is an aggressive religion. Factions such as Shiites and Sunnies kill each other - I am not sure why.
Their aim is to create a totally Moslem world - and they will probably succeed. But give them another few hundred years, and they may become civilized as the Christians did. We die in hope...
Saturday 19 January 2008
02.Incompetence
Gordon Brown said, that Peter Hain forgot to declare his receipt of £100,000 because of incompetence. Hain has apologized to his colleagues - bravo!
And a civil servant left a laptop to be stolen from his car with details of 600,000 people. No doubt he too will apologize.
But once a person's responsibility for such a blunder has been established, they ought to be punished financially with a hefty fine. Docking six months' salary of such an individual will certainly concentrate everybody else's mind very efficiently.
In a philatelic collection of post office document from the British mandate in Palestine there is the written apology of a clerk, who miscalculated the postage on an item. It was a genuine mistake of a few mils. But it was noticed and he was reprimanded. He was fined and wrote this apology, and promised never to do it again.
The British High Commissioner for Palestine said, that the only way to hit the 'Jewish terrorists' was through their pockets. It does not work against fanatics - but it would certainly work against incompetence!
And a civil servant left a laptop to be stolen from his car with details of 600,000 people. No doubt he too will apologize.
But once a person's responsibility for such a blunder has been established, they ought to be punished financially with a hefty fine. Docking six months' salary of such an individual will certainly concentrate everybody else's mind very efficiently.
In a philatelic collection of post office document from the British mandate in Palestine there is the written apology of a clerk, who miscalculated the postage on an item. It was a genuine mistake of a few mils. But it was noticed and he was reprimanded. He was fined and wrote this apology, and promised never to do it again.
The British High Commissioner for Palestine said, that the only way to hit the 'Jewish terrorists' was through their pockets. It does not work against fanatics - but it would certainly work against incompetence!
Friday 18 January 2008
01.My First Blog
Ruth has just helped me to create a blog.
This is to test what it will look like.
Watch this space!
This is to test what it will look like.
Watch this space!
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