the big picture

Three weeks into its existence, this blog is clinically dead already. I'm not a fanatic in any way. A computer is a computer, and I can get along with anything that thinks in numbers. The Mac is a different kind of machine in many respects, but at its hearts, it's all zeros and ones.

I installed some crystallography software without much trouble but also without much passion. I'm not doing crystallography yet and haven't encountered the true challenges, either in the lab or on my desk. I can say that PyMOL is faster than ever. Making figures will be a snap.

What is going to keep me busy, on the other hand, is a humongous squat grey box with two silver buttons that's been occupying the better half of my desk for two days now. It's a Nikon Coolscan 9000 ED, the best film scanner there is. I used to shoot slides when I still owned my faithful 8008 SLR and loved the simplicity of the normal lens, the brightness of the viewfinder, and the air of superiority slides gave my photography. No more holiday snaps on negative film. Then came digital, and everyone started sharing memories. Mine were safely stored in three cardboard boxes.

This morning, some came out for the first time in four years. I slipped five slides onto the scanner's black tongue and stuck it into the opening at the front. After two-and-a-half hours, the scan was done, and I had five files on my hard drive. The images are brilliant, colorful, and extraordinarily clean, but the quality comes at a price. I'm not just talking about the scanner worth twice the MacBook Pro. No, each file weighs in at 24 megapixels and 136MB. More than one film won't fit on one DVD.

If I get the settings right, I should be able to dramatically cut down on the scanning times. Sixteen-fold sampling might just not be necessary. I had started out with only one slide, playing with the options, activating this and that and comparing the results. In the end, I decided for the all-out assault, to get the maximum I could because telling which scan was best was impossible on the PowerBook's LCD screen. Not only are LCDs notorious for their poor color reproduction, my screen is also LED backlit. While this technology is easy on the battery, it's much harder on the eyes. Lightness is far from uniform and colors seem to come and go. I couldn't even tell which black was the deepest.

Good thing there is no danger of the scanner moving anywhere in the near future. I have all the time in the world to feed it one handful of slides after another until all memories are ready to be shared. Maybe I'll even have a scientific break-through to report by the time all is done.