Small Things Make Me Happy

I have finally got hold of my microscope.
It is a Watson 'Microsystem 70' and has a lot of optional extras including a proper stage and a binocular viewing head.
It also has a monocular viewing head and a camera attachment to attach the included Minolta SR-T 101 camera to. The camera has standard, zoom and macro lenses. The metering works wonderfully and is probably the best metering system I have used on an SLR which is a huge bonus.
I have box upon box of slides. A lot are blank but some are prepared with plant samples. There are tools and books and manuals and everything although old is in class A condition. It may need a little cleaning but I don't mind spending time getting everything up to scratch.
The picture above was taken on my iPhone using the iMicroscope app and the size is accurate. It's a sample of moss no more than 2mm wide.
Expect a lot of pictures in the coming months of all kinds of things.

Grey Day

Grey Day
Originally uploaded by MikiStrange

It's another grey day.
That's not a bad thing. I'm not a sunshine type person. I like the cold grey days this time of year. Winter sunshine has a tendency to blind me while I'm driving. I also have a much better winter wardrobe so I enjoy wearing my overcoats and hats.
I had a dream last night about getting my microscope but there is still two weeks to go. I was also teased as I delivered to a school today, a classroom full of new microscopes for students to use next term. I hope they get a lot of joy from the micro world.
We've all got something to look forward to.

Forever Today Tomorrow

It's Only A Cartoon Kids

Studio Time

This weekend has been all about rebuilding my studio.
The studio is nearly virtual. The heart is FL Studio which has most of the tools I need. I have a separate audio editor. For those that know I'm still using Cool Edit Pro, simply because it is excellent.
My external tools that attach me to FL Studio are my Evolution X-Session UC-17 MIDI control surface and my Zoom H4 which I use as an audio IO.

In order to get everything working this weekend I had to add a decent audio card to my PC and the Creative X-Fi Music is a super silent soundcard. I also replaced the RAM with a faster type and I upgraded the graphics card so that when everything is running in the studio I get smooth visual feedback of meters and stuff.

I also retraced my steps on a track I was working on before I lost all my work last time.

All in all an excellent and productive weekend. It's so good to be back in the studio.