technology and audio matters

I’ve recently assisted a colleague by resurrecting a relatively ancient film scanner. Specifically an Epson Filmscan 200 film scanner. The last published drivers were for Windows 95/98 and my colleague only had an old ISA SCSI card. I obtain an Adaptec 21960N PCI card and a 50HD way to Centronics cable off Ebay for the grand sum of £20. We then added the well regarded program Vuescan http://www.hamrick.com/ .  It’s running under XP , (XP provided a default driver) and results to my eyes appear surprisingly good in spite of the modest 1200dpi native scanning capability.  (Although in truth my colleague has a problem, the first scanned negative is always at the wrong resolution?)

Enthused by this process I’ve obtained a Canon Lide500F scanner. Not as elegant as the Epson but a little more up tod date. Simply plug in  to USB and run the supplied toolbox software. I’m using PaintShop Pro 4.15SE to save acquire and save the images.   Results are again surprisingly good. Well good enough me to revisit some of my negatives that hold sentimental value. It’s much slower than the epson as each frame has to be scanned individually. (The Espon can automatically scan 6 slides or negatives by itself). Sample image from my Canon below. Happy Scanning !

I was privileged to attend the presentation of the University’s entry into the TTXGP.  This is a 100 mph electric bike. Perhaps not in itself unique but this has been carried out by a number of students during their final year project with limited resources. For more details see the following links:

http://www.ttxgp.com/

http://www.electronicsweekly.com/Articles/2009/04/24/45967/kingston-university-builds-102mph-electric-bike.htm

I’ve added a few of my own images below:

A friends misfortune turns into my good fortune.  Allow me to explain. I’ve marvelled at the ingenuity of modern digital cameras, and as an engineer have been curious to see the insides of a modern camera. Well my friend recently had some bad luck and broke one of his compact cameras -  my chance to take a peek inside. Interesting to see how modular the design is in it’s construction.  At a level much simpler than I might have imagined. Still I’m no doubt looking at a fairly mature design, the result of many camera design iterations. A single double sided printed circuit board with fine pitch surface mount components. Note the small motors that control the lens assembly. Please see the attached images (Taken with my Canon G9) :