Scanners live in Sunnyvale
May. 8th, 2013 05:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
desperanceOh, the fun we have...
This morning, as noted, I made bacon and fed m'wife and so forth; also, poked some at the scanned-and-OCR'd copy of THE GARDEN that Lethe Press will be reissuing when I get it cleaned up and back to them. This is my first conscious experience of OCR; it's fun trying to fathom out why on earth it makes the mistakes it does, but I'm getting a little tired of the same old same old, especially when there's half a dozen of them on every page. I'm actually quite reassured by the quality of the text itself - given that I was, lawks, thirty when I wrote it, and I'm older than that now - but oh, it is a bleak and gloomy book. Also, I know what is coming. So I can only steel myself to do a bit at a time, what with one thing and another.
This afternoon I zoomed off to the library and wrote a thousand words of newstuff, which is much more fun.
And then I came home and figured something out, which is that I'm dim, essentially. We've borrowed Katherine's scanner, and I thought it wasn't working because it didn't light up or buzz or do anything, nor did any bright new icon appear on my desktop. Hah! Why would it? It was waiting for me to ask it to, y'know, scan something. When I eventually understood, it went zoom! and there it was, scanning merrily away.
So I downloaded an OCR program and lo: we can has words. Early stories are recoverable, in-house. I wouldn't want to tackle a whole book without refined technique and probably other equipment, but for short stuff I could muddle through as I am, just on instinct.
This morning, as noted, I made bacon and fed m'wife and so forth; also, poked some at the scanned-and-OCR'd copy of THE GARDEN that Lethe Press will be reissuing when I get it cleaned up and back to them. This is my first conscious experience of OCR; it's fun trying to fathom out why on earth it makes the mistakes it does, but I'm getting a little tired of the same old same old, especially when there's half a dozen of them on every page. I'm actually quite reassured by the quality of the text itself - given that I was, lawks, thirty when I wrote it, and I'm older than that now - but oh, it is a bleak and gloomy book. Also, I know what is coming. So I can only steel myself to do a bit at a time, what with one thing and another.
This afternoon I zoomed off to the library and wrote a thousand words of newstuff, which is much more fun.
And then I came home and figured something out, which is that I'm dim, essentially. We've borrowed Katherine's scanner, and I thought it wasn't working because it didn't light up or buzz or do anything, nor did any bright new icon appear on my desktop. Hah! Why would it? It was waiting for me to ask it to, y'know, scan something. When I eventually understood, it went zoom! and there it was, scanning merrily away.
So I downloaded an OCR program and lo: we can has words. Early stories are recoverable, in-house. I wouldn't want to tackle a whole book without refined technique and probably other equipment, but for short stuff I could muddle through as I am, just on instinct.