Geek: The Digitization Project, a trip down 1987-1994
So today on the chopping block, er scanner.
* School Mascot drawings from elementary-high school 1987-1992
* Drawings of D&D and Warhammer characters, several Predator inspired creatures, and NeverEnding Story, 4 armed ninjas, insectoid looking things and D&D book inspired characters.
* doodles and artwork from elementary school
* Dixieland Music from junior high 1987-1988 when I used to play with a group called 'Beyond Dixie'
* The Wiz script and music (I was the Tin Man) circa 1991 or so. I wore a silver leotard, and neon green shorts. Funny another greyman man (literally moment)
* Jazz Sheet music from College Jazz class circa 1993-4, and some jazz comping theory.
* Off shore investing 1995, with the now defunct Global Prosperity Group.
This amounts to about 10lbs of fat, er history...er slowly decaying paper. Odd as it is, paper from printers and school work aren't archival quality and do tend to decay. I can't really tell how old many of the pages actually are (my filing system is by year), I wonder if there is some crumple dating system? the folds/dog-ears on the corners is somewhat similar to tree rings.
Some of the artwork, is hokey (uber cute kittens), some of it's twisted (dragons asking for gold investment advice).
In many ways after the scan it looks better on the monitor in it's better contrast digital vibrance than it does on the sad looking, aging cellulose and graphite. I have a fixation on right eyes it seems, as many of the drawings start and end near there.
My desire to keep the paper equivalent seems directly proportionate to the degree of completeness, which is also a reflection of the hours that went into making it. Many of the sketches I could almost just throw away. However the intricutely detailed 4 armed ninja ended up getting scanned in at 10200x13302 pixels (13MB jpg). Which is high enough resolution to see the paper fibers. Anyway I'm glad I can do that in gray scale, 32 bit color would be hugemondobigous.
My handwriting *in the same year* varies from attrocious (even I miss the decoder ring) and microscoping to stellar enough to print on signs. I remember intentionally trying to fit 3 lines of writing onto a single line of college ruled paper, to make my teachers go blind, er rather subterfuge *Troy's smart enough.. I'll just skip that skip skip skip* I seem to remember putting my brilliant ideas at the beginning of the sentence, and decaying towards the end of the paragraph run on sentences for similar purposes.
I still find it amusing that my 4-5 lb dark blue calculus book, is serving me to keep the many crumples in check like some bizarre iron, much like it used to crush my shoulder carrying it around school and back home on my bike, in betweenst calculus homework there are many doodles, which shows how much I was paying attention in class.
After sifting through at family funerals, various photos, that nobody recognizes, and antique stores. I recognize it all ends up in the trash at somepoint, and contemplate the tonage of paper that schools go through, still It makes me wonder what happens to the pages discarded, much like my understanding of calculus and reading sheet music, as looking over my homework is like wow, I didn't know I could do that!
Sadly after futzing with it, I've given up with the Automatic Document Feeder, it just sucks, as does the microtek software, the help manual, as does the customer service so far. I think they bypassed useability testing, and it really pisses me off when they have a whole ui to customize the look and feel of a window but don't expose the buttons I need. Of course I could just have a bad ADF, but seems unlikely. It's not to horribly difficult to scan, but it is kinda tedious refilling the scanner every 45 seconds, anyway during programming hitting the compile button and scanning the next page tend to interleave nicely.
Most of the documents get scanned in at 96dpi for screen, the majority of art is 300dpi which is probably higher than the blunt pencil and a few special ones make it at 1200dpi..which takes forever to scan in. Someday monitors will have the same resolution as paper.
Not sure at this stage if I want to store things as hyperlinked documents, doc or PDF. I have been leanign towards HTML for the majority of it, but some of the page layout isn't preserved as it uses tables and produces lots of files. For now I'm saving them as all. Any of the formats are indexable for searching, which is typically how I'll access them. The art I'm just naming which I'll have to tell the search engine to use. Only about a 30 binders left.
* School Mascot drawings from elementary-high school 1987-1992
* Drawings of D&D and Warhammer characters, several Predator inspired creatures, and NeverEnding Story, 4 armed ninjas, insectoid looking things and D&D book inspired characters.
* doodles and artwork from elementary school
* Dixieland Music from junior high 1987-1988 when I used to play with a group called 'Beyond Dixie'
* The Wiz script and music (I was the Tin Man) circa 1991 or so. I wore a silver leotard, and neon green shorts. Funny another greyman man (literally moment)
* Jazz Sheet music from College Jazz class circa 1993-4, and some jazz comping theory.
* Off shore investing 1995, with the now defunct Global Prosperity Group.
This amounts to about 10lbs of fat, er history...er slowly decaying paper. Odd as it is, paper from printers and school work aren't archival quality and do tend to decay. I can't really tell how old many of the pages actually are (my filing system is by year), I wonder if there is some crumple dating system? the folds/dog-ears on the corners is somewhat similar to tree rings.
Some of the artwork, is hokey (uber cute kittens), some of it's twisted (dragons asking for gold investment advice).
In many ways after the scan it looks better on the monitor in it's better contrast digital vibrance than it does on the sad looking, aging cellulose and graphite. I have a fixation on right eyes it seems, as many of the drawings start and end near there.
My desire to keep the paper equivalent seems directly proportionate to the degree of completeness, which is also a reflection of the hours that went into making it. Many of the sketches I could almost just throw away. However the intricutely detailed 4 armed ninja ended up getting scanned in at 10200x13302 pixels (13MB jpg). Which is high enough resolution to see the paper fibers. Anyway I'm glad I can do that in gray scale, 32 bit color would be hugemondobigous.
My handwriting *in the same year* varies from attrocious (even I miss the decoder ring) and microscoping to stellar enough to print on signs. I remember intentionally trying to fit 3 lines of writing onto a single line of college ruled paper, to make my teachers go blind, er rather subterfuge *Troy's smart enough.. I'll just skip that skip skip skip* I seem to remember putting my brilliant ideas at the beginning of the sentence, and decaying towards the end of the paragraph run on sentences for similar purposes.
I still find it amusing that my 4-5 lb dark blue calculus book, is serving me to keep the many crumples in check like some bizarre iron, much like it used to crush my shoulder carrying it around school and back home on my bike, in betweenst calculus homework there are many doodles, which shows how much I was paying attention in class.
After sifting through at family funerals, various photos, that nobody recognizes, and antique stores. I recognize it all ends up in the trash at somepoint, and contemplate the tonage of paper that schools go through, still It makes me wonder what happens to the pages discarded, much like my understanding of calculus and reading sheet music, as looking over my homework is like wow, I didn't know I could do that!
Sadly after futzing with it, I've given up with the Automatic Document Feeder, it just sucks, as does the microtek software, the help manual, as does the customer service so far. I think they bypassed useability testing, and it really pisses me off when they have a whole ui to customize the look and feel of a window but don't expose the buttons I need. Of course I could just have a bad ADF, but seems unlikely. It's not to horribly difficult to scan, but it is kinda tedious refilling the scanner every 45 seconds, anyway during programming hitting the compile button and scanning the next page tend to interleave nicely.
Most of the documents get scanned in at 96dpi for screen, the majority of art is 300dpi which is probably higher than the blunt pencil and a few special ones make it at 1200dpi..which takes forever to scan in. Someday monitors will have the same resolution as paper.
Not sure at this stage if I want to store things as hyperlinked documents, doc or PDF. I have been leanign towards HTML for the majority of it, but some of the page layout isn't preserved as it uses tables and produces lots of files. For now I'm saving them as all. Any of the formats are indexable for searching, which is typically how I'll access them. The art I'm just naming which I'll have to tell the search engine to use. Only about a 30 binders left.