Palm Tree

I am afraid today's blip doesn't quite match up to the one of the classic car yesterday. To tell you the truth, this shot of the palm is very much an emergency blip.

On Sunday, I acquired a scanner that had been left at the side of the road outside my photographic printers. With all the manuals, documentation and CDs, I reckoned it must be in working order, although the power cord was missing.

Today, I tried to set it up. Luckily, I never got rid of my Mac G4 and the Panther OSX's ability to run Classic Mac OSX 9 applications.

I connected everything up and then suddenly realised that the CD with the necessary drivers was missing. I eventually located a download online and installed the quaintly called MagicScan software, except the magic no longer works.

I spent the best part of three hours this afternoon, installing, uninstalling, checking the connections, powering the scanner off and on but all to no avail.

It is so frustrating to get 80 per cent of the way there and then be thwarted.

I have longed for a scanner for many years but never had the resources to buy one. It would be nice to get all my film prints of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s taken with my trusty Minolta XD-7, how I wish it could be converted to a digital DSLR, stored on the computer. And I have some b&w negatives of the reunification of Germany celebrations in Berlin that I would love to scan.

I think it is going to take the sacrifice of a 16-year-old virgin to the God of Scanners to get the damn thing working. And what are the chances of finding one of those in Riverside? :-)

So with the clock saying 5:15pm, I dashed out of the house and took this shot. I will try to do better tomorrow.