Sunday, February 28, 2010

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.
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Monday, February 15, 2010

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.

Sunday, February 07, 2010

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.