Saturday, November 01, 2014

Happy Halloween!


Oh, wait--Halloween was yesterday.  Oh, well.  It's the SPIRIT that counts!  (Buwa-ha-haaa!)

This ad is from 1966.  I strongly suspect that the "7 amazing plant creatures" advertised above were, in fact, what we would now call Chia Pets.  Just a stab in the park--I mean, dark--but a good one, I think.  And I need to stop with the Halloween word play, because it is, by one day, no longer Halloween.

Did I mention this is no longer Halloween?

In other news, I love how beautifully the "Auto Levels" function works on my cheap NCH PhotoPad Pro(?) photo software--it really brings out the detail in cheaply printed comic pages and such.  In fact, tonight I used the "Auto Levels" function on (a scan of) the copyright page of an 1886 Wide Awake volume, and it brought out nearly every detail from its reverse.  Just sucked it through the page!  Of course, even a tech-challenged soul like me has to conclude that there's no such thing as "bringing out" the details in an image or sound file unless those details are actually present in the first place.  To wit, my software manages to make murky, poorly printed Charlton Comics pages look sharp and brightly colored--something they never were to begin with.  So is the software bringing out or restoring detail so much as imagining and imposing it?  And do I have any idea what I'm babbling about?

In my defense, I'm having a nasty vascular headache.  A measure recommended by my neurologist--namely, applying Lidocaine topically to the inside of my nose--has brought down the pain but left the dazed confusion in place.  At least the pain has been diminished.


Lee


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