Tag: microscope

Firefox, Bacteria-snot, and job-hunting geologist

'Human Statue' striking a constipated looking pose on a toiletI have to say that suffering through periods of chronic blogstipation is seriously annoying.

There have been a number of things I’ve been wanting to post about, but I’ve been way too loaded down to have time to sit down and compose them. Therefore, lest anyone think I’ve abandoned bigroom.org, I’ll throw a few of them out here in shortened form.

First, a public service announcement: HTML 5 is not just about turning the internet into Television. I keep seeing articles about “HTML5” and they all seem to focus obsessively on the <video> tag. The same is largely true of articles about the recent Firefox 3.5 browser release, since arguably the biggest feature of the new version is HTML5 support. Although there are quite a few other new features, the main one I wanted to briefly remind everyone of is that there’s also an <audio> tag. I think audio is important, because it’s a lot simpler for people to generate audio for the web than to produce a video. Also, the “Vorbis” audio codec is a definite step up in quality from the de-facto “mp3” codec. The latest Opera, Google Chrome, and Firefox browsers all support the <audio> tag with “Ogg Vorbis” files. Apple’s Safari browser doesn’t by default, but that’s easily fixed. If you install the free QuickTime® component from Xiph, it teaches QuickTime about Ogg files, allowing you to watch and listen to the same HTML5 audio and video that everyone else (aside from Microsoft, as usual) can. It apparently also allows you to create Ogg files through QuickTime, so you can make your own content available for everyone else to watch and hear if you want to.

If you’ve seen some of my earlier map-and-pictures posts, you can probably guess that I’m also interested in the new geolocation feature. As far as I can tell, it’s currently natively implemented in the new Firefox, but will be showing up in Safari, Opera, and Chrome (at least) in the relatively near future. My only real complaint is that right now Firefox can only get the location through Google via your current IP address, and that isn’t at all accurate (when it works correctly, the precision is limited to “somewhere around this city” – when it doesn’t, where it thinks you are depends entirely on whose network your internet connection comes from.) It’s still baffling to me why they didn’t include a simple “manual entry” option for geolocation. Anyway, I’ve not had time to dig into this either, so enough said about that. For now.

And now a question of science and microbiology enthusiasts who may read this – I may soon, finally, be able to buy a microscope. Any recommendations on where to get one? The only “special” features that I really want (and can afford) would be a sufficiently bright light source and ability to swap in a darkfield condenser from time to time.

Penultimately, bacteria snot Xanthan Gum is hereby declared my Favorite Food Additive of the Month. It turned out to do exactly what I hoped it would do in the lemon-ginger ice cream I made a couple of weeks ago. I must play with this delightful edible substance more.

Finally, is anybody in California actually hiring geologists? As if marrying me wasn’t proof enough of insanity, my wife really wants to move back there. We can’t stay here forever in Southeast Texas on just my meager academic staff salary, as nice as the job itself is, and although for months she’s been firing off applications all over the country (and even a few beyond the borders) she’d really prefer to take her geophysics experience and PhD in Geology from UC Davis back to California. Although I’m personally a bit less enthusiastic about the idea, the possibility of getting into UC Davis’ Fermentation Science or Food Science graduate programs definitely has some appeal. Plus, I’d be able to listen to This Week In Science live while it’s being broadcast.

Do Not Want: Celestron LDM

Back in Idaho for the moment. The trip was somewhat exhausting, but I thought a followup to The previous post on the Celestron LDM microscope was in order, as I finally got a reply back after almost two weeks.

(20080329:Quick update. I am surprised to see this post is getting more interest that I’d anticipated. I’ve added a brief summary to the end of the post to help clarify my opinion since it seems people may be interested.)

I had asked them if it was possible to replace the objective lenses (so as to be able to use an oil-immersion lens to get 1000X magnification – pretty much a neccessity for decent bacteriological work – such as examining yogurt cultures) and whether the camera could be swapped for a regular eyepiece. Larger yeast cells used in brewing might be okay in 400X, but even there it’d be nice to be able to zoom in adequately to get better detail – like watching conjugation or budding of yeast cells.

The answer:

“The answer is ‘no’ to both because of the sizes, etc. are specific to this unit.”
Email ID: ZZR-372549
Department: Technical Support
Priority:
Status: Closed

I guess there’s no point in asking about getting a darkfield condenser for it. On the plus side, they did actually give me a reply at least.

I’ve got to say I’m seriously disappointed that Celestron has evidently intentionally engineered this microscope product (and their other offerings as well, perhaps?) to Not Play Well With Others. Why else go to the trouble and additional expense of coming up with your own special specifications for the parts when standard parts are readily available?

This seems especially absurd in a product aimed at science enthusiasts, who strike me as very likely to be strongly aligned with the “Maker” attitude…at least if they’re any good at Science Enthusiasm. I think the “if you can’t open it, you don’t own it” concept meshes very well with the investigative attitude necessary for science. So, we want “internet”, and they give us “AOL” instead. A sad, sad fate for an otherwise great concept, and on this basis I must render a verdict of “Do Not Want”.

Find me a version of this product – from any vendor – which can accept standard oculars and objective lenses and I’ll sell blood plasma and beg on the street to raise money for it. (If nothing else, it’d give me an excuse to finally start up the “science begging” blog-post series I’ve been threatening for a while now…) Of course, it’d be nice to have an ordinary “real” microscope, too…this blog still doesn’t have enough pictures.
(P.S. Dear Celestron: although I doubt anybody at Celestron will ever even see my obscure blog, and in that respect my previous post’s comment about sending me one to review was just a joke. Despite this, I was sincere, so in the unlikely event that someone out there sees this post and has the authority and inclination to do so, feel free to send me one to review anyway. And a pony.)

SUMMARY (in my opinion):
Good:

  • VERY nice, highly desirable concept overall.
  • Self-contained, platform-neutral design, should work with anything that can support SD cards or USB Storage devices.
  • Potentially a nice field microscope? (Probably not hard to hack together a battery pack that could be used in place of the AC adapter)

Bad:

  • Does NOT appear suitable for bacteriological or similarly high-magnification applications
  • Non-standard components prevent upgrades.
  • Non-standard components mean vendor lock-in problems (if Celestron gets tired of making replacement parts and some kid scratches your objective lenses or cracks the viewscreen, you’re out of luck.)
  • Digital camera and viewscreen appear to be integral, so if the camera or viewscreen dies I’d guess the whole device becomes a useless lump.

My recommendations for Celestron or other microscope manufacturers (should any of them care about the opinion of some nerd on some obscure blog like this one):

  • Please, please use standard parts wherever possible – it makes your device a much safer bet for anyone thinking ahead towards possible upgrades or replacement parts.
  • Don’t ignore bacteriological applications.
  • Easily replaceable parts make for graceful failures. For example, if the camera on this model could be swapped for an ordinary ocular, the microscope would at least be usable while the camera portion was being sent in for repair or replacement.

WANT(?)

Picture of Celestron's LCD Digital Microscope My parents, apparently comfortable with being microbiology “enablers“, ran into a digital microscope (pictured at right) that they pointed me to. It looks pretty nifty for the price, except for one issue: it only comes with three objectives, topping out at 40X. I can find marketing materials for this microscope, but no technical information beyond what’s on the company’s website (click image to reach that). Therefore, I can’t tell if the objectives are replaceable or not. If they are, the idea of picking up an inexpensive surplus 100X oil-immersion lens and ending up with a decent microscope with which to watch the Yeast Porn and such – on a nice digital screen, no less, rather than squinting into an eyepiece – has a certain appeal to it. The fact that the digital camera takes the pictures itself and only needs a computer connection to transfer files – and not even then if you use an SD card – means that I wouldn’t have to worry about ending up with something that requires Microsoft® Windows® just to look at some microbes (or post glamour shots of them to this blog).

However, I don’t think trying to view conjugating yeast cells or, say, Lactobacillus or Gluconobacter/Acetobacter bacterial cells at 400X would be very rewarding, so an oil-immersion lens is a necessity. And don’t let the “up to 1600 Power with Digital Zoom” thing fool you – it just makes the picture bigger and blockier, not actually more detailed.

So….do I WANT, or not? I sent off an email to Celestron asking about whether I could swap out objective lenses on this model or not. I got back the form “we got your email” email – we’ll see if I get a real reply from them or not. If so, I’ll update this post.

Speaking of which – still no reply from Bristol Brewing Company. Guess they’re either just not “nerd-friendly”, or the person who handles email queries is on vacation or something.

P.S. Dear Celestron – if you were to send me an evaluation model, I’d be happy to review it here on my blog for the thousands hundreds dozens pairs of people who read my elegant prose incoherent babbling…