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2004-08-18 - 7:18 a.m.
Hoo boy! Am I ever feeling my age. So, I got this scanner, the first time I've had a scanner all to myself, and I bought a transparency adapter for it. So I figure now is the time for scanning all those old slides I took back in my conventional photography days, and all those old photos lying around that I never look at. And going through the slides last night, seeing my friends, and myself, 10 and 20 years younger, well, it makes me feel my age.
I can't believe how thin I was, relatively. Heh, that's what 20 years of alcohol abuse will do to you. Crap. I wonder how long it takes to make a difference when you stop drinking so much. I guess about a year or two, judging from my friends John and Sheldon. They both quit drinking and dropped a lot of weight.
Alcohol is so damn insidious. It seems like innocent fun. Social lubrication. A relaxing balm. The perfect respite from your troubles. But if you starting drinking anything more than just as a social thing, it really takes its toll, financially, physically, and psychologically. Christ, I've wasted so many years. I've hurt myself profoundly.
I wonder what the long-term consequences of antidepressants are? Shoot, I know what can happen if you abuse speed. (Yeah, speed. It surely does help out in the ADD area. But at what cost long-term?)
So, anyway, a lot of nostalgia going on over here in the 'Solitude. So many old shots. It's gonna be an 80s urban dance party in the "random pix" section of my web site. All these shots of the city, all the places I hung out in my early twenties. Shots of friends and acquaintances.
A cool thing is all these slides shot on Polachrome, the old Polaroid 35mm transparency system. Cool technology, I wish I'd kept the system. I wonder whatever happened to it? The slides, though, didn't hold up, so I'm glad I'll be able to scan them to digital.
That transparency adapter is nice. Very good quality for consumer level equipment. The scanner too, 2400 dpi. It's about as much as I'd bother with and can afford, since I'm not a pro. I highly recommend the HP 4600 series Scanjet scanner. Even if I would change a few things about its design. The cables for one thing, way too stiff and bulky. But overall very nice. Plus it looks cool.
I've got a lot of work to do with this stuff, though, hours and hours of scanning and image processing. But, a nice retrospective. It'll be good to see how my vision has changed or not over the years.
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So, how do you like them apples?