Enhancing scanned images with ImageMagick

Having nailed down a faster b/w workflow for digital images, using Bibble, I've been considering something similar for scanned negatives. Obviously, the bulk of time is unavoidably expended on developing and scanning those negatives (which is why I now have four unprocessed rolls of film sitting in a drawer), but that time can be amortized over all the frames on a roll, whereas taking those scans through to a finished print absorbs more time per image. What I want is a quick, automated way to perform the minimum remaining steps necessary to produce an acceptable result.

With a little help from Classic Rock Announces Prog magazine (OK, that's not precisely the title but we like the acronym better), and carefully avoiding ITV in the evenings, we finally found some decent music.

ELC Baby Rattle

Shake and throw audible rattle for babies aged 3-12 months.

How this toy aids your baby's development:

• Develops hand and eye co-ordination
• Stimulates senses, including hearing, sight and touch.
• Strengthens muscles.
• Introduces principles of rhythm.
• Builds tolerance in adults.
• Develops an appreciation of nuclear physics, the environment and the more obscure Shakespeare texts.

Some time ago, I used a handy Perl script called fp2flickr to import some Fotopic collections into Flickr. It was crude but it did the job usefully. After a moderate amount of hacking and bodging, I've now modified it to import PhotoPost albums into Flickr: pp2flickr.

(Blows dust off category in blog.)

I am slowly coming to the conclusion that if you built up a billion dollar company over ten years but never did any backups, and then a massive data loss wiped out the organisation, you still wouldn't have lost as much money as you would had you tried to develop and manage a working backup solution in that period. Nevertheless, here are some interesting links on the topic that I've found recently.

Dan Smith, 1968-2009

Scarlet Martyrs guitarist Alan Brown called me today to convey the sad news that our bassist Dan Smith (aka the Cult of Dan) passed away suddenly on 25th February. This has come as a great shock to his family and to those of us who knew him. Although Dan had suffered some serious health complications in the past few years, he appeared to have put them behind him and had gradually rebuilt a normal life. I spoke to him on the phone for the first time in several years only a couple of weeks ago; he was as voluble as ever and already planning future musical projects. Ironically, another band he once played with and taught, Nightvision, recently signed a record deal. He was proud of that.

One of the great things about the Internet is that, while you can still read the newspaper online - for free - you can also read lots of other news sources, for free. This variety (and lack of obvious revenue stream) might change the news media industry in all sorts of unexpected and initially disconcerting ways, but it also means that one can often gain more than a one-sided view of any particular story with ease. For example, take the woman whose child was allegedly reprimanded for talking about Jesus. Only it turns out that it wasn't quite like that, and the best efforts of the conservative press and certain Christian pressure groups can't hide key facts that put a different spin on the tale.

The wonder of Woolies

It was a Sunday out of season and we were in Denbigh. Think we'd been to the castle, which is worth a visit (especially if you ask for the key for the magic gate that lets you walk around the town walls).

Denbigh town centre is, to put it kindly, less of a highlight, at least on a Sunday. Almost nowhere was open. No one was around. What might have been open looked rather uninspiring anyway. But one shop on the high street was open: Woolworths.

We spent half an hour in there.

Regular writing and photographing, amongst much else, are currently on hold - even more so than previously - due to pace of life and a corresponding lack of investment. In the meantime, we are currently pursuing a separate personal project with more regular bloggage elsewhere.

Michael Janke grabs a meter and checks the power consumption of a few household electrical items, chiefly those power blocks we're now being told to switch off if we want to save the planet. His main conclusion is that they aren't worth worrying about if you're still going to run your tumble dryer every day or drive everywhere.