I recently bought a sensor cleaning kit with a blower and two brushes not very unlike the one featured here. Luminous Landscape has a great article on sensor cleaning that I followed. So here follow a few pictures from my cleaning session. It should be noted that I have tried cleaning it with a swab and some lens cleaning stuff before so rather than being nicely spread out, my dust was here and there collected in little stacks. Have a look at the changes. I did three sweeps and got to the point where I couldn’t quickly spot any dust. Bonus points to find dust I didn’t spot. The entire thing took about 5 minutes:

The following two cleaning pages are also nice: photo.net and Rob Galbraith.

First, let me invite you to post links to faximiles available on the net as a comment to this post. I’ve been puzzled by the lack of faximiles available on the net. For us early music lovers these books should be in the public domain as all copyright claims have long expired. Many are locked up in libraries and private collections that only give republishing-rights to certain publishers, making faximiles very expensive. Don’t get me wrong, I think the S.P.E.S. faximiles are some of the most gorgeous books in my book-case. But apart from a very nice cover, what new have they added that decides that we cannot scan the prints and republish it for everyone to see?
The question comes from our podcast where I’d love to put the Philidor suite available so that you can look through it and make up your own mind rather than to rewrite it myself and just post a few bars that explain a problem in the faximile. Would this be illegal? Or should it be considered in the public domain and be encouraged? I know I mentioned republishing rights, but what rights do these libraries and collections have? They make an agreement with i.e. S.P.E.S., my local library acquires a copy that I borrow. Then I’m no part in that republishing-agreement and stand with a wonderfull piece of art with no copyright.

I hope I’ve given you a little insight to my confusion and I’m really looking forward to hearing your thoughts on the matter and your links to faximiles that are available on the net.

I’m reading lots of student reports these days (their exams are coming up soon), and in one I found a very interesting word: balderdash. Not quite knowing the meaning of it (I know it’s a game, but from the context it wasn’t the game that was talked about) I looked it up, and from Weird Words I found a funny little quote from the 1766: That which is made by the peasants, both red and white, is generally genuine: but the wine-merchants of Nice brew and balderdash, and even mix it with pigeons’ dung and quick-lime. This adjective is also used as a verb, in addition to the substantive being the game.

Too cool! Today I found pdf which is Pure Data’s take on mxj. It’s supposed to be API compatible with mxj, which is great because that’s what I use for all my Java-based externals. Suddenly I feel like I’m in the open again after having been digging myself further and further into Max/MSP. Don’t get me wrong, Max/MSP is nice but Pure Data is closer to my heart. Well, as far as software goes, anyways.