So what's there to say, here?
I'm a middle-aged man, who used to be a computer programmer/data analyst, but now I'm a forklift operator. That's a strange career change, isn't it? I find that my new career suits me better than my previous one did. I can still play with computers as a hobby. Driving a forklift isn't so feasible as a hobby. My apartment is fairly small, and I very much doubt if my landlord would like what a forklift would do to the nice hardwood floors. The only practical way to enjoy forklifting is to do so as part of one's employment.
I work for a very old, very big, very famous, and very well-respected company. This company makes several well-known lines of food-related products, but is most famous for soup. Think of the very first brand of canned soup that comes to mind. Yes, I work for *THAT* company!
I'm married, since 1995, but no children, unless you count a cat and a dove as children.
Some of my microscopy images…
Another hobby of mine is microscopy. I inherited my father's microscope when he passed away in December of 2008; and soon thereafter discovered that I could take spectacular pictures through it with a cheap digital camera. I've added some of my pictures to appropriate articles here on the Wikipedia. You can see many more at my FaceBook album.
My earliest photomicrographs were taken using a Kodak DC3200. At some point, when it became unreliable, I bought a Sakar 87690 at Wal★Mart for sixty dollars, which I have been using ever since.
No fancy equipment or methods are involved. I just point the camera into the eyepiece of the microscope, and take the picture. When I first tried this, my expectations were very low. I was aware of the existence of various specialized cameras and adapters for this purpose, costing hundreds of dollars, and figured it likely that such would be necessary to take good pictures this way. I have been very much surprised and amazed at the quality of the pictures that I have been able to take using this relatively crude method.
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Spirogyra—Isn't this pretty? It's a kind of algae, very commonly found as the yucky green scum floating on stagnant water. Yes, pond scum—that's what this is. I bet you didn't realize how beautiful pond scum really was, when seen the right way, did you?
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Another picture of
spirogyra. Again, an amazing display of beauty from pond scum that one normally sees as yucky and unappealing.
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A close-up of a single spirogyra cell. Spirogyra is truly a beautiful form of life, which sadly, the vast majority of people will never understand or appreciate; never seeing it as anything more than pond scum.
A close-up of a single
spirogyra cell.
Spirogyra is truly a beautiful form of life, which sadly, the vast majority of people will never understand or appreciate; never seeing it as anything more than pond scum.
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Another kind of algae, probably
zygnema. Perhaps not as pretty as
spirogyra, but still, quite beautiful in its own way.
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A closer look at some of the same type of algae as in the previous image.
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A
spirostomum—one of the largest protozoans (single-celled “animals”). They can get to be up to 3 millimeters in length—big enough to be easily seen with the naked eye. This one isn't quite that big; it's about ½ of a millimeter long.
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A
Paramecium bursaria; a kind of
paramecium that has a symbiotic relationship with algae that lives inside of it.
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An
actinophryid or “sun animalcule”.
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A different kind of
rotifer.
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And still another
rotifer.
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I think this is the smallest
rotifer that I've yet seen.
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Spirochetes — A particularly fascinating form of bacteria.
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Another image of
Dental plaque.
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Some
mold grown from debris shaken from my car's cabin air filter.
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Some
mold grown from a mucus sample from my wife's nose.
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Mildew growing on a wooden soap holder.
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Mildew growing on a plastic shower curtain.
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Mycelium of an unidentified
mold.
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Another
mycelium of another unidentified
mold.
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A closer look at the
fungus growing out of this dead nematode.
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Lichen growing on a piece of concrete dust. This was scraped from a dry, concrete-paved section of a drainage ditch. This entire image covers a square that is approximately 1.7 millimeters on a side. The numbered ticks on the scale represent distances of 230 micrometers, or slightly less than ¼ of a millimeter.
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Microscopic view of a
dust bunny. Numbered ticks are at 230 µM intervals.