Des Etoiles Electronique

Sountrack - Mars Audiac Quintet - Stereolab



My daughter sat with me while I scanned these, refusing to pick up any of the books or toys which were spread over the floor but insisting that we visit a website. She eventually decided on the CBeebies site but when presented with that list of all the possible programmes she could see, just spent her time pointing to each one in turn saying that she could not choose. This is obviously a hereditary trait. My brother once spent some time in a sweetshop, trying to decide on what sweets he should have until he eventually cracked and pointing wildly in various directions said that he wanted "some of dis, dat, dem deese and dose". My Father started me on scanning objects directly. Before he had the digital camera, he would place anything he could find straight on the glass and scan it in. It is amazing how well some of the pictures come out. He has a wonderful scan of a wooden Kestrel which just looks like it has been photographed standing against a white background. As you can see from the stones above, the platen has rippled where the stones press into it. I would try just several sheets of white paper on top next time rather than the whole platen. Still, the colours have comes out well. It can be quite absorbing, looking at individual stones. Although they are smooth, there are some with chips and faults and mictures of two different types of rock. Some of them seem to have metallic elements which I suspect are Iron Pyrites.

This of course reminds me of the latest series of Rough Science: Series III. There is a meta-task for this series which involves extracting at least 5 grams of gold from the water in the remote part of New Zealand where they are based. They have 1.7 grams after two programmes out of six which seems reasonable bearing in mind that they also have some left not weighed in the fibrous material they use to catch the gold particles from their sluice. This will be burned to retrieve the extra gold left over in the fibres. Oh what a life! All the food you want, beautiful scenery and interesting things to do.