Scanning is for snails

Recently I was faced with the task of quickly scanning quite a few books. There was a scanner at home I decided to use. A hp scanner; which I thought will do the job just fine. The last time I had such a requirement, I borrowed a scanner from a friend and did the job. 3 days later (with intermittent breaks) I had completed scanning 101 pages of my first book.

I soon realized that using a camera to take a picture of each of the pages would get the job done just as well. Whipped out the camera, and completed 5 books in one day (actually not even a day, more like an evening). What's the difference in quality? Well, the scans are definitely better that the photos, but my main requirement was that the text be legible. The camera was more than enough for the task. Moreover the difference in quality was due to uneven light sources for the photos (which I'm sure can be alleviated once the technology is perfected).

It then got me thinking about Google's task of creating a searchable archive of books. I sure hope they didn't use a scanner to scan all the pages of all the books. A photo of the pages and then using a OCR software should get the job done faster (I think). My next thought is, why don't they make scanners based on camera technology? Wouldn't scanning time then be reduced to a fraction of what it currently is?

Maybe its a cost factor, but hopefully the next generation of scanners will perform much faster (or be based off of photographic technology)

Blue Lagoon

A less known part of Mysore, the 'Blue Lagoon' (is what I was told it was called), is basically the backwaters of the river that runs in to the KRS dam. What really interested me though is an island; it instantly reminded me of Lost. What if we had our very own island which allowed people to time travel as they went back and forth from it? Maybe there are people of the Dharma Initiative. A seemingly harmless island wrought with perils.

But it is actually just a few hundreds of meters away. Also, the island is reachable at some point in the year via a road that is exposed when the water levels reduce.

Also paid a visited to KRS (from the outside). The throngs of people were way too much to push myself to wander inside to see a musical fountain and another pressure induced fountain (which increases in height depending on the amount of water in the reservoir {is what I was told}).