Hi professor, If you write about your wife,like you did of Madame Hardy, you will be able to get out of ANY hot water. I enjoyed your "Organic Agnosticism"; I'm related to a Wee. Your photos are very good. You're sure to win your contest. Thanks, Kitty

My ex works in RFID. The question is at what point is it cost-effective to tag every product (including every green pepper - not to mention what about items sold by weight not per item)? Prices are always changing, volume discounts, etc. so I can see it being cost effective for someone like SC Johnson or Kelloggs to tag each product (maybe they're getting tags for 5-10 cents each now) but produce (other than asparagus LOL) and sticks of gum, smaller manufacturers, etc. may not be worth it so won't be tracked. The scanner scans the barcode, which is printed on the package, not the same thing as a unique passive RFID tag with antenna. So Best Buy is probably tagging absolutely everything but Stop and Shop probably not. Oh, and I hate the "please bag your item" voice too - as I'm trying to fit one or two of my bags in the tiny bagging area in self-checkout at Price Chopper, and it doesn't like my insulated bag (too heavy) or yells at me when I remove a bag once it's full. Wish they all had the "Skip bagging" option that HD and Walmart have. But then again I do most of my shopping (other than bulk paper goods) at small local store where they bag for me (using my bags if I want), no self-checkout. BTW, did anyone read in the WSJ where in DC they're taxing paper and plastic bags in food stores? Is that a pain? Here most stores offer 5 cents off if you bring your own bag (but half the time I forget them, and 1/4 of the time I want paper bags so I can recycle my newspapers in them).

We sure did and I was glad to see you response--I had no luck finding the thread. I sent about a dozen negatives to a commercial scanning service and received a CD with very high resolution scans. That was about the time I was hoping to do more myself to save money and got good information from you. My negatives are of varying sizes and quality. I still don't know to what degree a scanner can adjust to denser or thinner negs. Sometimes working with a professional isn't easy. Some of the hand selected negatives were contact printed by student interns is a real darkroom with decent results. I intend to use the best images in an exhibit or two and a PowerPoint presentation to celebrate and educate about a historic district I just got declared elibible for the National Register of Historic Places. I'll take the best legibility I can get and be happy for my goal. During a visit today with the prof, a contributor to my work, I basically heard way too much about the quality of the negatives--too thick, too thin, scratched, poor photographer, improperly stored 60 years ago. As a perfectionist in her craft, she sees these problems and says we can't do much. My approach is if there is a problem, let's solve it. I am at the stage of selling my approach and getting her going. No one had actually scanned anything with the Epson, so I suggested we give it a try since I drove there to see the scans. She put a decent 3x5 neg right on the glass and the Epson produced a great image. I inquired if there needed to be a negative holder and that drew a blank--despite what the reviews of the machine list. So right now I don't know too much except I have faith that if we can get any image it can be manipulated to a reasonable quality. I also found another on-line, reasonable scanning company, and they tell me they can handle about any quality and will send me images on line and I can pick and choose what I want and have to pay for. And the cost to do all my selected images will be less than the dozen I did before. The question here is--do you scan from the glass or always use a negative holder? Have you tried from the glass. I know you talked about one of the photo programs to work on you rscanned images. How much can you enhance a darker or lighter scan? Quite a response for only seeing one scan but I am frustrated by all the negative talk (yup, pun intended) Mike

WOW! Ask us something about "graphics and PSP tutorials and I might be able to answer but I think the best bet is for you to ask at this site. Here is a link that might be useful: Electronics