Scan-dalous!

I could never deny being an obsessive fiddler with settings. I’m playing with every possible way of adjusting the Epson scanner. The automatic setting does some things almost as well as the Canon did.

The processing on this scan is bright and de-screened, while effectively reducing the yellowing of the paper. The problem is a sharpening filter was added, and I really dislike that.

Enlarge this image and you can see there are ridges around everything, including the lettering. If I could disable that, I’d be pleased with this quality. Yeah, I know. Picky, picky, picky.

This is how it looks with only de-screening.

Canary in the Data Mine

Here’s another insufferable explanation of further technical curiosity. I continue to run on the Verizon-supplied G3100 Wi-Fi router for gigabit internet service. Despite my concerns about security, I like being able to check on it from my phone.

Which I did yesterday, when the Epson ET-2985 unexpectedly spit out a piece of paper. Telling the printer in a commanding voice, “Eat your own output!” I have scanned the page.

Signal strength fair? Uh, the router and the printer are only six feet apart in the home office. Pulling out my phone and running the Verizon Home app, I saw the Epson printer was on the 2.4 GHz network. My best guess was the router, which is set to automatically move devices between Wi-Fi channels, must have kicked it off the 5 GHz network for some reason.

As I was looking at that, the app suddenly said the router was offine. Yikes. Yeah, it bounces itself every so often. That’s another complaint I have. I’ve seen error messages in the router’s log in the past that had me chasing down a possible bug in the firmware, but this time I didn’t see the error.

The time was near midnight, so maybe Verizon was running a maintenance routine. What’s interesting to me was the way the printer provided a warning of router trouble.

After everything had settled down, the router’s Wi-Fi signal strength was, as expected, excellent. But note that the printer’s DHCP-assigned IP address changed from .213 to .253. Renewal of .213 must have failed for some reason, or perhaps it wasn’t attempted. I’ll see what I can find in the router’s DHCP log.

Heartening News

The results are here from my third and final time wearing a heart monitor since the ablation fifteen months ago. The test report summary says “normal” and “100% Non-AFib.”

There were quite a few instances during sleep when my pulse dropped as low as 42 bpm. Another effect of being a former marathon runner. Which was also the likely cause of the persistent AFib I no longer have.

A slow heart rate isn’t always a concern. For example, a resting heart rate between 40 and 60 beats a minute is common in some people, particularly healthy young adults and trained athletes. It also is quite common during sleep.

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/bradycardia/symptoms-causes/syc-20355474

Loki Strikes!

Screen grab from 1966 Marvel Super Heroes TV cartoon

Loki, Thor’s wily half-brother nemesis, sabotaged the new printer. Less than a day after setting it up, there was striping.

A test print revealed a problem in the blue nozzle. I ran the nozzle cleaning maintenance process on the printer, thereby defeating the Norse god of mischief.

Fun With Phones and Wi-Fi

I can’t imagine being able to control the scanner from my phone is an option I’ll need often, but it’s nice to have.

This is a painting I bought from Colleen a long time ago. That’s Kovar, a character in her graphic novel series, ‘A Distant Soil’.

Painting by Colleen Doran

Here’s how the scan looks after a bit of tweaking that I wouldn’t have bothered doing with the old scanner. The adjustment overdoes the lighting a bit.

Tanks for the Colors

This is the first scan I have made on the Epson ET-2985.

Everything is working now on the printer. I like the ink tanks. Initializing the printer draws down the ink a bit, but Epson leaves enough in the bottles to top off the tanks. That’s a nice touch.

My only problem during setup was both unexpected and stupid. The opening for the USB Type B connector is too small. Fortunately, rummaging through my large and varied collection of cables, I found one with a plug that fit. Wi-Fi was easy to get going with WPS.

My tax return PDF’s were a good test for 2-sided duplex printing, and I was pleased with the output quality and speed. Scanning is a disappointment, however.

Canon’s automatic adjustments for optimizing scans were almost always spot on. Epson’s images are rather dim by comparison. They remind me a little of the UMAX scanner I had before the Canon. So, I’ll probably be doing a lot more post-scan processing.

Also, it’s very annoying that I can’t specify what part of an image I want to scan with Epson’s software. Microsoft’s own scanning program can do this with the Epson driver, but then I can’t select de-screening or any other advanced option.