November « 2009 « Frugal Green Tips

November 25, 2009

Digitizing Slides: A Personal Approach And Solution

Filed under: digitizing slides — admin @ 5:01 pm

The old slides in our carousels are basically dead elephants unless we digitize them.
In the old days they offered the best quality to print from and gave us the opportunity to blow them up on a wall.
Today we can enjoy their slide shows more easily on a computer or a large TV. How large a TV? Not really sure but when scanned, the more mega pixels will yield a bigger clearer picture and the actual slides have a lot of quality to offer for that.
In my experience the digitized slides scanned at 5 mega pixels seemed to show fine on a 32” TV.

I could have sent the slides to professionals to digitize, yet that process can be very expensive and in my uneducated view, it might not have been done as well as doing it myself.
I am saying not as good because no matter how careful a person is, film attracts dust and I am convinced that the digitized slides would have come back with at least one unacceptable dust spot.

Depending on your passion, scanning is really not too bad and relatively fast but the final ‘cleaning’ of dust spots off the digitized pictures is much more consuming.
It is a test of patience and nerves.
3,500 slides were scanned and dust spots removed. It took nearly six months of free time here and there but they turned out perfect. Watching TV and listening to the History Channel while working the slides helped time go by.
The overall as a level of complexity was a 3 on the scale of 10.

Suggestions:
Start with your favorites or most important.
‘Save as’ until you get comfortable in what you are doing.
Save the work done to an external drive.
Work from the easiest to fix to the hardest to build momentum.

Tools:
Film/slide scanner. VuPoint 5 mega pixels quality images. It gave me no problems. $100 at Bed Bath and Beyond about a year ago but saw it for $40 for a day only sale on the web the other day.
If you can get hold of a higher mega pixel scanner, it would be wonderful but at 5 mega pixels the slides produce humongous pictures.
Static master. Mine had expired years ago. They are sold at photography stores and their purchase is highly recommended to brush off dust. A fine bristle paint brush works also but not as well.
Air duster in a can. Costco had the better deals. I believe I used at least 6 cans in all.
Photoshop. My knowledge of this complex program was zero. Not to worry you will need to know about 5 commands or so total and one of them will use 99% of the time.

How I did it:
• The slides were loaded 3 at the time on the slide tray provided.
• They were brushed and air dusted.
• Scanned.
If you do not care about dust then you are done. Otherwise…
• Each slide was then opened in Photoshop.
• Learned to use the ‘navigator’ to get around the picture.
• Learned to use the ‘heal’ command with an appropriate size brush and used it 99% of the time.
The icon for ‘heal’ is a band aid. It is miraculous and almost unbelievable to the eyes!
It blends easily and can be used to also copy and paste.
• When done, I used ‘auto color’ and ‘auto contrast’ under the Image/Adjustments Tab.
• In the Image Tab I sometimes used ‘rotate’ to straighten the picture a couple of hairs.
• All the steps taken showed on the ‘history’ window on the side and undo was a click away.
If the shadows of some of your digitized pictures are bluish go to ‘mode’ in the Image
Tab. Notice RGB is checked. Check CMYK and save as.
Easily explained, RGB and CMYK have to do with colors. After comparing the same slides in RGB and CMYK, most of my slides have been saved in CMYK because they looked better.

Tips:
• The Alt on the keyboard is a very important key to get commands to work in Photoshop.
Your left hand will be on it most of the time.
• Slides in plastic mounts will have much less dust.

My slides were very important to me and I am extremely happy of the outcome.
The actual slides have been retired to plastic inserts and filed away in binders.
The digitized pictures can now be easily burned on CDs as slide shows with Microsoft Windows and then watched on the TV.

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November 17, 2009

Dish Soap Dispenser

Filed under: this and that — admin @ 12:48 am

Is the built in dish soap dispenser at your sink broken?
Are you still reaching under the sink for the bottle?
The little contraption shown below has been pumping for 10 years. It has been performing flawlessly, precisely and consistently delivering from a tiny drop to a mother load.

The contraption is an old Colgate bottle crossed with a pump from some of the Costco brand toiletries.
The hero here is the pump.
The pump has a large, long and strong straw which makes it nice when cut to size.
The only inconvenience is to find a bottle that will screw into the pump.

Shown are a couple of bottle alternatives that will work until you find one you are comfortable with.
On the other hand, Scope mouth wash has a very nice feminine bottle that almost looks like a faucet but alas, the pump is a little small. Oh well!
The labels peel off and clean easily with paint thinner, therefore making the clear bottles the preferred ones.
Two days after filling the dish soap dispenser above, the bottom was green and faded upward into orange.

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November 4, 2009

Concrete Light House

Filed under: concrete for the home,the artist in us — admin @ 1:20 pm

This composition is called the Power Point Observatory and Light House.
It has been achieved by composite construction and it is part of a larger whimsical garden theme.

Part 1: How to make: The Cone Head

The square bottom of a basic orange safety cone was cut off. This safety cone could have been lifted off our highways but it was purchased instead at Home Depot for $ 10.00.
Studies of the cones at Home depot proved that the dimensions of the cone would have worked well in the grand scheme of things.
The base of the cone was cut off carefully so that eventually the conical form would stand up as straight as possible. The texture of the cone shown was achieved by spraying a lot of the release agent which consisted of a butter flavor cooking spray and the spraying was not a fine mist but rather sporadic and chunky.
A doubled up plastic bag was wrapped around the smaller hole and fastened with rubber bands.
The cone was placed in a deep container, small hole down, and towels used on the side to hold the cone up straight while the concrete was poured.
A slender classic white plastic waste basket worked fine.
The cone was filled with ready mix concrete. When almost to the top of the base, a flat bowl was placed on the top of the safety cone base to just about cover the big opening.
The flat bowl placed around the cone base fit just right and when the cone was eventually flipped with wet concrete, it helped stop the migration of water.
Holding the bottom of the waste basket with one hand and holding the bowl over the bigger opening over the cone with the other hand, the cone full of concrete was flipped. Then the waste basket as well as the plastic over the small hole was removed.
The square bottom of the cone that was cut off earlier, with teeth up, was pushed down from the top over the cone all the way down to the flat bowl.
The idea was to hold the cone from migrating upward.

I was able to find a thick and tough Tupperware lid from the old days which was used at the base of the cone. This prevented the concrete at the bottom from running everywhere. Small bungee cords were wrapped around the base of the cone in and out of the teeth of the loose cutout square base and were hooked to the Tupperware lid.

When secured, more concrete was poured from the top into the small hole. As the cone was shaken gently to let the concrete inside stack, the cone migrated upward releasing some concrete at the bottom on the bowl. More concrete was gently poured through the small hole at the top but the concrete sunk again. It was a give and take situation but the cone was topped off in the end. The total migration of the plastic cone upward was probably about an inch at the base but that was ok because it was to be used to anchor the cone to the next piece of the project.
A large marble was inserted on the top and tapped down gently until it submerged about a hair beyond the equator. This was to be the light of the light house.
Since the cone had very minimal surface area from which to release its moisture, it was left to cure for 2 days.
With a lid remover for one gallon paint cans, the bottom was pried gently all the way around. The cone slid off easily once the seal at the bottom was released.
The concrete cone head was left in the sun to dry but misted with water every couple of hours.
The making of the cone head sounds like a big job but it is all about planning your moves.

Part 2: How to make: The Light House

The concrete cone was placed in a flower pot saucer but before that the base was soaked with water for a little bit.
This prevented the cone from rapidly absorbing too rapidly the water from the concrete that was to be poured. Attention was also paid so that the saucer and the concrete cone were level.
The saucer had previously been sprayed with a release agent.
A bit of concrete was poured under the cone and then all around its base. Given the situation, the round cap of a detergent jug leveled and compacted the concrete around the saucer in a flash.
With a credit type card, indentations all the way around the cone were made to resemble water.
With a trowel more concrete was delivered around the base of the cone to symbolize rubble.
Marbles were placed as desired and tapped gently down a hair above their equator.
The composition was left to dry and the saucer mold removed 24 hours later while paying great attention to corner edges. Depending on the job you might want to use binding compounds to ease the adherence of dry to wet concrete.

Variant:
The cone heads by themselves with crystal balls embedded at the tip would capture incredible reflections and make very interesting unique garden sculptures when dispersed tastefully in the garden.
The sun’s rays will penetrate the crystal balls making them look like they are on fire and their light would seem to be coming from down deep within the cones. Guaranteed!
Safety cones come in different sizes and proportions. Some, like the ones on the highway, are really pointed and part of the tip with the small hole might have to be tailored.

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