First Class Adventure

Class name:  Adventure 101

Class description:  find new ways to do the job in hand so that you do not land a re-work.

Method:  There is this book that is 18 inches x 12 inches that needs to be digitized.  It will fit under the adequate enough to do that and the center of the page is perfectly in focus, the top and bottom not so much.  This ends up with us getting to redo the book as many times as it takes us to realize that there has to be a better way to digitize this book.

BRIGHT IDEA FROM GOD:  Do the book as a left/right capture.  Been there, tried that, failed miserably.  BUT, if you say do it again – then we will do it again…………….and so our adventure began.

CAMERA ORIENTATION:  This has to be with the narrow end of the aperture perpendicular so that you can capture the height of the book.  The width will take care of itself.  It is a real pain to have to change the camera orientation because you have to grab the metal holder and then release the handle and move the camera up or down so that you can get as close to the page a possible and yet still focus and have the writing be readable and in focus.

We did try to do one of these books last week with a right/left capture and got into such a mess with it that we gave up, put it under the glass and let the chips fall where they may………….and the book passed.  In fact our entire capture last week passed.  I guess seeing that they were in such poor condition it was hard for the adjudicator to tell if we were in focus or not.  Hooray for damaged books!

PRESENTING PROBLEM: How to do a right/left successfully. 

ANOTHER BRIGHT IDEA FROM GOD:  Raise the Camera:  set the page template to fit the page:  focus every 25 pages: be happy about it.

Well, we worked very  hard to get the camera raised.  We manipulated the template to fit the book, started the capture and were sailing along comfortably and then discovered………………YIKES!  We had missed a page somewhere, and not only that, we had fumbled the template and worse yet ……….WE WERE NOT IN FOCUS!!!!!!!!!!!   Now, my dears, it is time to run into the traffic screaming!

We looked out the one and only window and all we saw was an overcrowded parking lot and no moving vehicles – SCRUB the idea of running into the traffic screaming.

We set about trying to rectify the missing page, and then after about 50 or so pages, discovered the lack of template and the blurred images shouted at us ……………..YOU’RE OUT OF FOCUS!!!!!!!   AGAIN!!!!!!

SOLUTION:  we deleted the whole thing, decided that we were doomed to stay working on this book till the 12^th of next year, so we had to devise a plan wherein we would be successful. 

THIRD BIGHT IDEA FROM GOD:  Refocus every 25 or so pages, keep your eyes on the template, make sure you are doing only one page (either right or left) and check the focus regularly to see that you do not have blurring.  We poured our concentration into one set of hands to set up the camera, book, camera array, foam wedges, huge bulldog clips and the other set of hands worked the computer checking image on the screen and keeping an eye on the pages to see that they do not move and if they do to ask for a re-take of that page.  And so painfully, one page at a time we did the left hand pages to the 543^rd image capture, and then we reversed the book and put it under the camera and set  it up to capture the right hand pages.  This took ¾ of the morning hours and all of the afternoon hours and we ended the day exhausted from the effort, and have ¼ of the book left to do.

THE GOOD NEWS:  We learned a lot about the camera, the books, the method of doing right/left single page capture and WE HAVE MANAGED TO CAPTURE IT (so far) WITHOUT LOSING THE TEMPLATE OR PUTTING A RIGHT PAGE IN THE LEFT PAGE POSITION OR A LEFT PAGE IN THE RIGHT PAGE POSITION. 

Aaaah!  The Markhams have had one successful day at the Archives.  Can we do it again tomorrow????

At lunch time David called up.  He is so excited to have the logs from this other group home to take to his new group home so that he can make his raised garden bed.  Secretly I think he was wanting to check and see if we had purchased a gift card for him to allow him to go on a spree at WalMart to buy his favorite smelly product called AXE.  It smells bad enough that it could be considered a good mosquito repellant, but sadly, it is only advertised as the type of pheromone that women will flock to and David envisions himself as a walking chick magnet when he wears the product.  The TV promises that women love this scent…………….but I think that Madison Avenue is run by men, for men and they did not ask a woman’s opinion.

Sad tale to tell – the bat was never captured but now lives in the ceiling among the wires and pipes and who knows what else.  The conversation at lunch time turned to the fact that the bat makes guano and if you wanted extra fertilizer for the garden, one could go up into the ceiling and strive to harvest the guano.  There were no takers for that one.  Anthony told of a young man who lived in the ceiling for quite some time.   Apparently he was homeless and somehow found a way into the ceiling of the library and was living there.  The library personnel noticed that food was missing from the kitchen area and they had no reasonable explanation for it.  It is not clear how they stumbled upon the young man coming down to take the food and then returning to his hiding place, but they did discover him and he was ejected from the building.  Well, with squirrels and bats and young men living in the ceiling, the place seems to be getting a bit crowded up there among the pipes and the wires.