My daily posts on the propositions and the election must have worn me out. It’s been eight days since my last post! I probably could get away with blaming it on the baby, but I’ll give him a pass this time. 
I will list the contents of this post here, and it’s a doozy!
1) Baby Update
2) Picture Scanning
3) Little Big Planet
4) DVD Sales
Baby Update
The boy is 8 months old now! He was supposed to have his scheduled check-up this past week, but we ended up taking him a little early because of a weird cough. Turns out he has an ear infection! Overall we’re pretty happy it took this long for him to get his first real “illness.” According to my own mother, I had about an ear infection every month when I was a baby, and by 9 months I had tubes in my ears. Luke is doing much better than I did. We got some antibiotics, baby motrin, and saline drops, and we go back this coming week to see how he’s doing.
He was supposed to get his shots, but we’ll have to wait on that until he’s better (so maybe this week). They did weigh and measure him though, and he comes in at 29 1/4″ and 21lbs 13oz. He’s still in the 90th percentile for length, but he’s dropped down to the 80th percentile for weight. I had a feeling he was slowing down a little, but the length surprised me. He added 2″ in just over two months! He’s getting a lot more active, so I wonder how much that affects his weight, because he’s noticeably “leaner” than he used to be. We aren’t crawling yet, but we rollover and sit up like crazy. I think he would prefer to start walking first, but we’ll see what comes first. Right now he’s on the floor pulling the dog bed towards him.
And now what you really want…pictures!
Picture Scanning
Something I really enjoy is researching family history and preserving family memories. A few years back I put all our VHS home movies onto DVD (which I’m no longer happy with and want to redo), but another project I have is digitizing all of our family photos. I’ve scanned some negatives dating back to the 1930′s, but now I’m working on 35mm negatives from when I was a kid. To do that I use a special machine by Plustek called the OpticFilm 7500i SE. You load the negatives on a plastic tray, and then it scans them. I’ve upgraded to this model because it can take out dust and scratches on the negatives and give you a better scan. I finally had some prints done of my first test scans to see how they came out, and I was very pleased.
I went over to my parents and found the original prints to compare. Basically you have two options for digitizing family photos. Either you scan the negative, or you scan the original prints. The only major problem with scanning the negative is that over the last 30 or so years some of them can get scratched and deteriorate. The major drawback of scanning the original prints is that you lose a lot of detail, and 30 year old prints deteriorate also.
The top photo is a scan of the original print, and the bottom is a scan of the negative.
The color in the negative scan is slightly different, but the level of detail is just night and day. It feels like moving from regular TV to high-def! I’m about 6 months old in this picture, so you can compare me to Luke.
This print actually survived very well, but there are some from the day I was born that look terrible. Some of the paper that was used in the 70′s and 80′s turns yellow and gray and just ruins pictures. Thank goodness my parents kept all the negatives! Eventually when I’m done I can have all the photos preserved and easily shared between family members.
Little Big Planet
I’ve only posted about this game once or twice, but it’s my newest addiction. Little Big Planet is a really simple game. You can run side to side, jump, and grab on to certain materials. That’s all. There is a story mode where you can beat the game, and all the while you collect “prizes.” The really cool part though is that the prizes you collect are actually tools that allow you to make your own levels. You can makes ramps, creatures, scary pits, etc. with the in-game level maker. After you make a level, you can then let other people play your level! You can even play online with up to three other friends.
I already beat the game, but now I’m trying to beat every level without dying and collecting every single prize. I’ve published one level where you have to jump up a series of steps without dying, and so far almost 60 other people have played it. It’s a lot of fun!
DVD Sales Update
This weekend I finally sold my last DVD. Total I sold about 105 dvds, and grossed around $325-350. My original intent was to use that money to buy Blu-Rays of the movies I really like, but so far I haven’t bought any. I’ve come to realize that there are very few movies worth watching multiple times, so I’m not going to bother buying movies I don’t absolutely love.
In case you were wondering, the last DVD to sell was Die Hard 1. I sold 97 dvds in the first month, and then it took 3.5 months to sell the last 8.
Thanks for reading my gynormous post!
