Really nice website

One of the privileged parts of my work is being allowed to mark accession numbers or inventory numbers onto historic objects. The actual process is not really a part of this post,but the process is carefully designed to cause minimal disruption to the object, and in any sizeable collection is virtually essential to know exactly which axehead, fossil shell or teacup you are looking at.

For all but the tiniest object, I prefer to use a traditional "dip" or "stylus" pen for the ink layer. They're easy to get hold of, inexpensive, and the nibs, being removable are easy to clean (the ink contains a shellac binder which tends to clog if allowed to dry).

I have a bit of a thing for nice pens, pencils and paper, so thought I would share this little website with you. It does everthing that you could ask of a website - tells me about the products, what they are for, how they are used and where I can get hold of them.

http://www.calligraphy.co.uk/

A well thought out, simple and informative web site. I've just bought some of their nibs, so I will try to do a sequence of photos demonstrating how I use them the next chance I have.

Update: The DP6H nib is winning for inventory marking at the moment. I'm also finding that Methanol is a good solvent for the ink at the end of the session, and it's not quite so unpleasant to handle as the acetone either....

Mac to Windows, and back

Anyone who has worked with me for more than a few hours will know that I am very much a dyed-in-the-wool Mac user. Suffice to say that I've been using Macs since before they were trendy, and I still remember when the trademark Apple logo was filled with multicoloured stripes.

Since then a lot has changed, and there are now many more Mac users than there used to be, but it is still a fact of life that much of the world still runs Windows. Until now I have managed to get along fine, either using Mac equivalents of particular pieces of software, or by borrowing a PC here and there. This time however, it was much easier to have access to my own copy of Windows where I could call the shots on what software was running. I needed to go computer shopping....

What PC to buy? Well, there are lots of makes out there, and of course, Macs now run on Intel processors as well - which means that they can run Windows. And for those that don't follow the world of computers as closely as I do, there is no hacking, cracking or patching involved - it's an Apple supported modification, and is really thoroughly documented on their website.

Eventually I had narrowed it down to two options. Either buy a cheap, kronky second hand PC and deal with all the problems that would come with it, or spend more money and get a Mac which I would then install Windows on as well. To cut a long story short, the iMac arrived this morning.

I needed a brand new copy of Windows so I popped out to get this, downloaded the documentation and set to work with the Bootcamp software. All in all a very painless process and a couple of hours later I had a fully functioning dual-boot machine which lets me select which OS I want to use with just the press of a key at startup.

So I now have the best of both worlds - I can run pretty much any software that I need, and I can choose the working platform that is most comfortable and effective. If I'm doing any training work, then the client can choose the one they feel most comfortable with. I'm not going to say anything about the merits of either system, except that I won't be giving up MacOS just yet....

Stereophotographs - no special goggles needed

Neat little tutorial shows taking stereoimages of small specimens
with simple equipment.

http://fossilprep.org/Stereo.html

Stereo-postcards, anyone?

Heads up.... Or down?

A quick heads up to promote this year's fossil festival at Lyme Regis
- have a look at their website at

Http://www.fossilfestival.com

Eype

Aperture

Spent the last couple of weeks converting my workflow over to Aperture. As per usual I've not read any instruction manuals or the like, so this is purely what I've found so far.

Most of my work is shot in RAW on the camera - in my mind there is little point in shooting JPEG, and if there is ever the need, then there is also RAW+JPEG modes and plenty of batch converters as well. Until now, I have found iPhoto to be excellent for my purposes, and of course it has the useful attribute of being free on every new Mac.

Using an external piece of software, iPhoto Buddy, enabled me to manage different libraries for each job, and for the basic levels, straighten and crop adjustments that might be needed on each photo, then iPhoto was just fine.

However I was feeling the need to move up to the next level, and Aperture, for me at least, does just that.

• It's reasonably priced - especially when I recall the conversation I had with a friend a couple of weeks ago regarding how much we used to spend on lab processing on an almost weekly basis!
• It looks professional - it's made by Apple of course
• File handling capabilities are top-notch. Once files are imported, backup is simply a matter of pressing one button. Changes made to photos are backed-up incrementally so edits can be backed-up very quickly. There are clever features for moving photos in and out of the library, which means they are easily archived. I think that best results would be achieved on a diet of large, fast hard discs.
• One more point on the backup - I've not tried yet, but it should be possible to replicate the external back-up disc onto Amazon S3 for complete redundancy given a suitable internet connection.
• I can now shoot tethered, which I've not tried yet, but will be useful for copy work
• Extensible via Plug-ins, again more to come on this

Mostly, it just seems to work, which is surely a good thing.

I'll still need to use one or two of my custom renaming scripts at times, but this is more a result of the way I work at the moment than any failing with the software.

All in all, iPhoto is good, and for most people (and small organisations) would be an ideal image manager. If the need and the operator skills are there, then Aperture improves further on this base.

Thermal Label Printer

I've just taken delivery of a Dymo LabelWriter 400 printer - mostly to help me make sense of the mountains of "stuff" that I seem to own and carry around with me.

Installation is very easy, and the printer functions like any other MacOS printer, albeit with very small paper sizes!

My thoughts are already beginning to turn to investigating the some of the possible applications that the printer might have for photography and collections management.

Here is what I've come up with so far:

• Temporary (?) labelling - label output is quick, easy and cheap. I can already think of one job I will be doing next month where the ability to spew out the numbers of the last batch of photos onto a batch of labels would probably make for less confusion later on in the process. The technology is thermal printing, and whilst we know that the labels won't be archival, I feel that they would make a very good stop-gap measure until there is time to do a proper marking exercise.
• Machine readable labels - a little pet favourite of mine - bridging the interface between objects and computers. I've already been able to successfully output Code 128 barcodes onto the labels, using an open-source barcode generator outputting data from a PHP/MySQL database. And my twenty-quid barcode reader reads them perfectly as well.
• I've run-off a few sample labels and will be using them to label up some of my own geological specimens, and as time passes, I'll report more on how it all pans out.