DIY Life

It wasn't so long ago that well-meaning parents, scholars, and knee jerk social engineers were pointing at the dawning of the computer age and claiming that computers were going to usher in increased illiteracy. These people had visions of video screens full of pictures which were activated by keystrokes, and they foretold the rapid demise of the written word. In bold defiance of that warped assertion, I kindly write this blog post.

These days, any person with a computer available to them has many virtual libraries right at their finger tips. These painstakingly assembled databases are growing daily and are providing hungry readers with every type of literature you could imagine. From pulp romance to legal text books and everything in between, it's now more readily available to the average reader than ever before. Let me provide you a few good examples:

Let's say you're on vacation and need to take some info with you-- an address, a map, or several paragraphs of info. Maybe too much to write down, but not enough to hunt down a printer (a futile effort in many hotels). Why not take a pic and let your camera hold the info?

My camera (shown in the gallery), a Casio Exilim Z60, happens to have a Text mode for capturing printed and on-screen text. But most any camera will work provided the following:

• Macro setting is mandatory. Zoom won't do, as usually you can't hold the camera steady enough.
• Flash: macro usually means turn it off, and computer screens will look blank with it reflecting
  
• Make sure autofocus isn't squirrelly.
• The bigger the LCD screen on the back of your camera, and the easier to navigate or zoom into a pic, the better your results.

Be aware that this is a completely improvised method. In theory, you could carry a small (32 MB) memory card around just for grabbing info vs. memory shots. But I find it's just less fuss to grab some info at the hotel and just scan back on the camera until I find it. Usually this info isn't needed all night. It helps that my Casio has a calendar too, which adds to the faux-PDA concept. Amaze your friends by pretending you can access Google Maps on your camera!