9-pin
Know what this is?
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It's a modern day representation of the ASCII art music paper I made on my 9-pin dot matrix printer in junior high when I ran out of real music paper.
I was scanning in some old manuscripts, in my ongoing effort to preserve some of this stuff in case of a fire, flood, hurricane, earthquake, volcano eruption, meteor strike, or what have you (seems like I posted something about this back in August or so — yeah, effort is still continuing. Incidentally, more on the scanner later. . . .), and I can't help but be sort of amused at the clever tactics I used back in those days when trying to perfect my Art. (Imagines my geeky seventh grade self saying, "No, no, monsieur. Je suis un artiste!" Of course, I didn't know any French back then, so who knows what language I would have tried to emulate.)
Anyway, it's sort of a funny way of skimping. Imagine the argument:
Kid 1: Man, we're so poor at home, that when I want to go out in the snow, my mama won't buy me boots and instead she puts plastic bags on my feet.
Kid 2: That's nothing, man! We're so poor, when it came time to buy school supplies, I still had to use my #2 pencils from last year, all nubby and stuff.
Little Matt: Dude, that's nothing. We're so poor, my mama wouldn't buy me music paper, so I had to print out ghetto music paper on my dot matrix computer printer. . . .
Kid 1: Dude.
Kid 2: Dude.
Just doesn't work, does it? Perhaps it's the "so poor" and "computer printer" phrases in the same statement. I don't know. Regardless, going through this old stuff is cracking me up.
On the other extreme, I found another manuscript (on real music paper this time, and not even a photocopy of real music paper — I was really splurging, let me tell you) on which I'd spent so much time on the detail of it that 1) not only are the measure lines all drawn with a ruler, and 2) not only are the little trill symbols drawn with calligraphy-quality detail (yes, I was into this neoclassical sort of thing back then), but 3) I even drew in a little miniature staff over each trill with a detail of how it should be performed. I think I saw this in a J. S. Bach book I had and thought it was the coolest thing ever — musical footnotes. If I only had that kind of time these days — between school and everything else, I don't know where I got the energy.
* * *
So the scanner thing. Yesterday, after around three months of searching for my scanner, I finally officially declared defeat, ran down to the Staples next to my building, and bought a new one.
When I got it home and got it setup, I found out what I'd been missing all this time. It's USB (which gives you an idea of just how old my other one was, since it was parallel — and yeah, I realize this is turning into an outdated-technology-themed entry). Not only is it USB, but even derives all of its power from the USB cable (like mice and keyboards do), so no big clunky power cable needed. And it's fast — very fast — can do a full page scan in about one fifth the time of my old one. And it can scan propped up sideways, so I no longer have to sacrifice about 2 square feet of desk real estate to the thing.
So, all of this is all fine and good, and I'm veritably in love with my new toy, then what should turn up today but my old scanner.
I'm really not all that superstitious, especially as I get older, and I don't believe in Murphy's law, arguing that people only remember the cases when things piss them off, thus skewing the perceived probability of negative vs. positive outcomes, but even so, this was just too much to take. I wasn't even looking for it.
I'd spent several concerted efforts intentionally going through boxes and crates trying to find it, to no avail, and then it turns up when I'm not looking for it. You'd think it was a runaway kid who got his feelings hurt and came back around when he saw that I'd adopted a replacement.
Regardless, I've decided not to take the new scanner back. It wasn't all that expensive for how well it works (C$99), and I don' think I could put up with the old one's quirks now that I've seen what else is out there (oh, did I mention that when the scanner software is running for this one, it actually lets you shift focus away from it and do other things? Who would have thought of that?). I guess the old one will have to go back into hiding.
Anyone need a gently used yet fully operational though somewhat outdated scanner? I'm serious. Free to a good home.
* * *
Just because a visual aid seemed so appropriate, here are samples of the manuscripts mentioned.
_________________________
|________________________
|________________________
|________________________
|________________________
|
|
|
|________________________
|________________________
|________________________
|________________________
|________________________
It's a modern day representation of the ASCII art music paper I made on my 9-pin dot matrix printer in junior high when I ran out of real music paper.
I was scanning in some old manuscripts, in my ongoing effort to preserve some of this stuff in case of a fire, flood, hurricane, earthquake, volcano eruption, meteor strike, or what have you (seems like I posted something about this back in August or so — yeah, effort is still continuing. Incidentally, more on the scanner later. . . .), and I can't help but be sort of amused at the clever tactics I used back in those days when trying to perfect my Art. (Imagines my geeky seventh grade self saying, "No, no, monsieur. Je suis un artiste!" Of course, I didn't know any French back then, so who knows what language I would have tried to emulate.)
Anyway, it's sort of a funny way of skimping. Imagine the argument:
Kid 1: Man, we're so poor at home, that when I want to go out in the snow, my mama won't buy me boots and instead she puts plastic bags on my feet.
Kid 2: That's nothing, man! We're so poor, when it came time to buy school supplies, I still had to use my #2 pencils from last year, all nubby and stuff.
Little Matt: Dude, that's nothing. We're so poor, my mama wouldn't buy me music paper, so I had to print out ghetto music paper on my dot matrix computer printer. . . .
Kid 1: Dude.
Kid 2: Dude.
Just doesn't work, does it? Perhaps it's the "so poor" and "computer printer" phrases in the same statement. I don't know. Regardless, going through this old stuff is cracking me up.
On the other extreme, I found another manuscript (on real music paper this time, and not even a photocopy of real music paper — I was really splurging, let me tell you) on which I'd spent so much time on the detail of it that 1) not only are the measure lines all drawn with a ruler, and 2) not only are the little trill symbols drawn with calligraphy-quality detail (yes, I was into this neoclassical sort of thing back then), but 3) I even drew in a little miniature staff over each trill with a detail of how it should be performed. I think I saw this in a J. S. Bach book I had and thought it was the coolest thing ever — musical footnotes. If I only had that kind of time these days — between school and everything else, I don't know where I got the energy.
* * *
So the scanner thing. Yesterday, after around three months of searching for my scanner, I finally officially declared defeat, ran down to the Staples next to my building, and bought a new one.
When I got it home and got it setup, I found out what I'd been missing all this time. It's USB (which gives you an idea of just how old my other one was, since it was parallel — and yeah, I realize this is turning into an outdated-technology-themed entry). Not only is it USB, but even derives all of its power from the USB cable (like mice and keyboards do), so no big clunky power cable needed. And it's fast — very fast — can do a full page scan in about one fifth the time of my old one. And it can scan propped up sideways, so I no longer have to sacrifice about 2 square feet of desk real estate to the thing.
So, all of this is all fine and good, and I'm veritably in love with my new toy, then what should turn up today but my old scanner.
I'm really not all that superstitious, especially as I get older, and I don't believe in Murphy's law, arguing that people only remember the cases when things piss them off, thus skewing the perceived probability of negative vs. positive outcomes, but even so, this was just too much to take. I wasn't even looking for it.
I'd spent several concerted efforts intentionally going through boxes and crates trying to find it, to no avail, and then it turns up when I'm not looking for it. You'd think it was a runaway kid who got his feelings hurt and came back around when he saw that I'd adopted a replacement.
Regardless, I've decided not to take the new scanner back. It wasn't all that expensive for how well it works (C$99), and I don' think I could put up with the old one's quirks now that I've seen what else is out there (oh, did I mention that when the scanner software is running for this one, it actually lets you shift focus away from it and do other things? Who would have thought of that?). I guess the old one will have to go back into hiding.
Anyone need a gently used yet fully operational though somewhat outdated scanner? I'm serious. Free to a good home.
* * *
Just because a visual aid seemed so appropriate, here are samples of the manuscripts mentioned.
 | The Ghetto Manuscript. Homemade 9-pin dot matrix printed paper, bad handwriting, and yes, I believe that's PaperMate erasable blue pen ink that it's written in. |
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 | The Nice Manuscript. Real heavyweight manuscript paper. Ruled lines. Mechanical pencil drawing. Calligraphy style trill symbol (and not just any trill — an extended trill from below). And, of course, the trill execution footnote. Draw your own conclusions. |