Frustration

If I wrote a blog entry today, it would be a long and tiresome rant. So I'll spare you.

Approaching signal orange

After a little more hoop-jumping the listed building consent application has been submitted, amended and appended. I had to provide a scale elevation showing the proposed colour and new signage. That's it over to the right. Now the plans are posted for three weeks to allow any objections to come in, and I have been assigned an application agent. Or whatever the role is called. Anyway. I'm told the application is to be a 'Fast Track Decision'. This was in bold on the letter, too. Which means I may expect a determination on the application by the 30th of September. Imagine my excitement. Within two months I might be allowed to paint my shop back to the colour it used to be.

Having asked around, I've found it's unusual for people to check before painting their properties. I've found out why, since..

Dog's life

A skull found in Siberia looks like adding to the story of the dog. Dogs are descended from the grey wolf, but when and where it first began is still a developing story. The new find dates to around 33,000 years ago, and the shorter, broader muzzle resembles those of early dogs while the teeth are those of a wolf. Previously the earliest signs of domestication were about 15,000 years ago, so this pushes the date back hugely.

Once tamed, the gradual change to separate breeds - all dogs are the same species, Canis lupus, with the subspecies familiaris - happens in two ways. Initially there's an adaptation to the animal's environment.  This leads to landraces - body forms, colouration, behavioural traits and so on that become a set of distinguishing features particular to a group of a certain habitat. Then there's the human intervention - selective breeding for purpose, temperament or latterly for aesthetics. Which leads, eventually, to the strange idea that a Great Dane and a Chihuahua are exactly the same species. It lends strength to the argument of the genetic 'lumper', I think.

Most had put the origins in Eastern Asia due to the huge variety of breeds with roots there; the thinking being it will have taken longer to reach that level of diversity. Even that's not clear cut. The most primitive breeds (closest to the wolf) are from Asia (Husky, Samoyed) but interestingly another of the oldest breeds, the Basenji, comes from Africa. It isn't descended from the hunting dog, or jackal, though; it's still from the same line. Genetic mixing within world breeds seems evenly spread. So although we're sure about dogs coming from the grey wolf, we don't know exactly where those wolves were.

I'd be very surprised if canine domestication didn't start in many places at many times. The benefits or having a friendly wolf in your family/community are clear. You have a bit of help hunting, an alarm system, something to keep your feet warm. The tendency to report the earliest find as being the first incident of something is a bit of a problem. It's the first known, but to make it sound like it's the actual first is opening a can of worms that will need dealing with later. I don't remember ever having seen canned worms for sale. I suppose the market was pretty much killed when that phrase got popular. I seem to have strayed somewhat, so I'll stop.

Welcome back

The National Museum of Scotland re-opened today after a three year, £47M refurbishment. At 9.15am they pulled back the tarpaulin from a big animatronic Tyrannosaurus rex, which mucked about for a little while, aided by a few explorers in pith helmets. There was quite a crowd. Then there was a bit of drumming and some marching. I'd left by then.

Not because I didn't want to go in, but because I had to open up the shop. I'm a professional. My partner went to a preview night on Wednesday and was impressed, so I'm looking forward to getting in and having a proper look round. I've missed it while it was closed - it's always been one of my favourite places. The cavernous main hall, with its fish ponds and pillars was always amazingly relaxing considering it was often very busy.

There has been a gradual move in museums away from piling everything they have into cabinets and putting a huge list of numbered labels somewhere near the bottom. Nowadays the idea is to have far fewer objects and use the story of the item to flesh out a historical or scientific theme. As an educational approach it's far more engaging, and for those that miss the 'more is more' technique there has been a simultaneous trend towards open storage policies. Meaning you can have access to what's kept in the collections behind the scenes, to varying extent from museum to museum of course. Some have huge racking systems that can be pulled out, allowing a visitor to view rows of stuffed starlings, lines of antique china plates, or trays of Roman coins. And so on.

For an old fashioned, everything on the wall, cabinet of curiosities museum, try Oxford University's Pitt-Rivers Museum. It's a great place, that has deliberately kept its traditional style. Meantime - get yourself to Chambers Street to see the T. rex skeleton.

Red tape

Okay, so not so soon, it seems. I've entered the horrendously bureaucratic world of listed buildings. The shop is part of a C(S) listed building, so I have to make a proper application. This will take six weeks, minimum. I need to give them the proper paint number, which I don't yet know. I need to give them a photo of the shop, which it seems I can't do by email as the file is 3Mb. I have to supply a site plan, but don't know exactly what is required,  even though I asked. I did point out that they have the address, and that they could just look at Google street view, but that's not allowed.

I tried to register online so I could eventually submit my application, but the link didn't work. Another two phone calls and I've found another way to register and am in the middle of that process now. Once the application is in, I will get a visit from someone to have a look at the place and check I'm not planning to demolish the building with a jackhammer. Then there will be a three week period where signs are posted telling people the proposed change and allowing them to object. All to paint the shop back to the colour it was a few years ago.

Fun, fun, fun.

Colours

I'm currently trying to get the front of the shop tidied up. It's looking a little sorry these days. I should have started the process a little earlier so it was ready for the festival, but that would have needed some level of organisation and foresight.

I've spoken to a company about a new sign for above the window. The old one was painted years and years ago in a highly stylised font, which is barely legible from even a short distance away. The new one will use the new(ish) logo and be visible from the bottom of Victoria Street, the way most Grassmarket visitors approach the area. People will be able to see what the shop sells from across the road. I'm hoping that'll help a little.

I've left a message with the guys that painted it last time, some seven years ago. I presume they can come up with something like the dark, coppery orange I have in mind. In the meantime, though, I need to run the idea past the council to check it'll be okay. It should be, as there are currently two orange shops nearby, and the pub next door was a bright orange a few years ago. There is an official application you can use, which costs some money and involves paperwork, but I was told the normal procedure is to phone a planning officer to get the go-ahead or advice on what might need to be changed. I finally got hold of one yesterday, who thought it would be fine, but asked me to email the listed buildings department with images of the nearby orange shops and one of the current Mr Wood's front. That email got bounced by their firewall for being too large. I sent them separately and they all bounced as the destination inbox was full. I might post them coloured-in sketches instead. I don't know how long it'll be to get the official approval I'll need before the painters start and the sign can be put up, but it doesn't look like being early August now.

Soon, though, there will be a new-look Mr Wood's Fossils.

Knew it

A woman is sitting beside a couple of amethyst geodes.

'Are these made in volcanoes?'
'Not directly, no, but there can be a link. The crystals of amethyst gradually grow into cavities in a rock, which can be sedimentary or igneous. Very often, though, the original cavities are related to volcanic activity - they can be bubbles of gas in lava flows. When the lava cools and hardens the pockets of gas are trapped. These little caves can then be filled with mineral growth as the material the crystals need to form and grow is washed through the rock with the movement of groundwater.'
'Ah. I knew it. Because they look like volcanoes, don't they?'

Show time

I leave on Monday for the show in Sainte Marie aux Mines in Alsace. Work, you know. Let's leave aside the fact that it's a beautiful place surrounded by vineyards, wooded valleys and peaceful farmlands. That the Kronenbourg brewery is in nearby Strasbourg. And that I'm staying in a lodge on an organic apple orchard with a group of friends. With a big barbecue area. Leaving all of that aside - this is a work trip.

On the list for this trip are lumps of North Sea mammoth, French ammonites, German urchins, Belgian brachiopods, Russian meteorites, Brazilian agates, Peruvian clams and Moroccan trilobites. Although it's a far smaller show than Tucson, people do travel from far and wide to sell there. I wonder if part of that is just because it's an amazing place to spend a little time. Remember - I do this so you don't have to. I know, I know. You're welcome.

Is there anybody out there?

Different meteorites contain different stuff. Not a revelation, and I've probably mentioned this before. Most that are found are iron, but most that fall are stony meteorites - chondrites. There are a wide range of chondrites, but possibly the most important ones, for a very specific reason, are the carbonaceous ones.

Carbonaceous chondrites have organic content  - and again there is quite a range. They are not common, and the challenge is to find as wide a range as possible - to try to form as complete a picture as possible. This will then provide a fair estimation of the 'starting point' of organic matter at the time the solar system, and Earth, were formed some 4.55 billion years ago. A line of thinking being researched now is common-source hypothesis, which suggests almost all organics are derived from a single source and that the early diversity stems from exposure to hydrothermal activity in their host bodies.

One of the biggest questions science faces is the origin of life. Evolution provides a comprehensive answer to the diversity and complexity of life, but so far the very beginnings are still to be revealed. It's a hot topic and there are many hypotheses currently being explored, but one that has come to prominence in recent years has been the idea that life, or at least the means to it, came to Earth from space. Not in a shiny silver rocket or flying saucer, but by way of a meteorite. This possibility is looking increasingly likely.

It follows that if the vast majority of organics in our solar system come from a solitary source that was being spread at the time of formation, the other planets were likely to have received their share. And, further to that, had the common source been outwith the system to begin with, surely the same material would be more widespread than just our solar system; would probably be elsewhere. Out there. Quick! To Area 51! Or whatever it is.

Mr Wood

A guy walking past as I put the sign out the other day suggested changing the shop's name to Mr Stone's Fossils. A few friends asked when I bought the business whether it would become Mr Dale's Fossils. But it's not a name pulled from the air - there is a Mr Wood, and he set up the business in the first place. They really were Mr Wood's fossils.

Stan Wood was in the merchant navy. He sold insurance. And then he found a fossil, whilst walking his dog, and fossils took over his life. Something about his find sparked his interest and he quickly learned more on the subject. Stan has a vital thing for fossil hunters - the eye. Where others see rocks, he sees fish. It didn't take Stan long to become an expert in the obscure fauna of Scotland's Palaeozoic, and he worked with Glasgow University's Hunterian Museum and others to provide scientifically important material for study. During this time he discovered the famous Lizzie - Westlothiana lizziae - and the shop's logo, the stethacanthid shark Akmonistion zangerli, as well as a host of other rare and wonderful animals. Stan has not only featured in a series by that hero of natural history, David Attenborough - Lost Worlds and Vanished Lives - but was also the subject of his own BBC documentary, Stan, Stan, the Fossil Man. He has a string of creatures named after him and a discovery record to match any. As fossil hunters go, he's a celebrity. And he's still going, wading through the rivers of The Borders to find material that will soon be on display in a special exhibition in the National Museum of Scotland, before touring the country.

It's a name to be proud of, so it's always going to be Mr Wood's Fossils.

Shaken and stirred

On April the 6th, 2009, there was an earthquake which killed 309 people in L'Aquila, Italy. Thousands of people were made homeless and a national disaster was declared. Two years later, though, there are still some after-effects being felt. Legal, not geological.

Increased seismic activity in the area had prompted the setting up of a committee to assess the threat posed. The group felt that while the main fault was clearly active, the consistent series of smaller movements they had experienced was ensuring energy was being released and that, consequently, the chances of a larger scale quake were lessened. Their findings were summarised and communicated to the public by a non-geologist from the group, a government official from the Civil Protection Agency. He felt the geologists had been relatively positive and gave the opinion that the threat of a major earthquake wasn't too serious.

And then...

Currently, six seismologists from that committee are to face trial for manslaughter alongside the government official. Apparently they are being prosecuted because the report offered 'incomplete, imprecise and contradictory public information.' For being wrong. Because they had falsely assured the public. Firstly are we to assume 'the public' will have taken this report as a cast-iron promise nothing bad would happen? I doubt that. Let's also leave aside the fact that some of the geologists feel their discussions had been misrepresented  - that may be legal positioning in advance of the blame game ahead. Predicting earthquakes - while aided now by far more technology and understanding than ever before - is still a very, very difficult job. Even coming reasonably close to accuracy is mightily impressive, given the number of factors at play. So can these guys be blamed? Be given ten year prison sentences for not being able to predict natural phenomena? To me, that seems far beyond harsh. It's looking for someone to blame.

The logistical and financial nightmare of evacuating a city means it rarely happens. Lost trade, the risk of crime, moving the elderly and sick, etc, etc. There have been occasions when seismologists have been advised to play down potential risks to avoid widespread panic, too. Then where would the blame lie? Who would carry the can? If this prosecution goes ahead, surely there will be far fewer seismologists willing to offer risk assessment short of advising everyone to run at the first sign of a tremor. You could employ anyone to wave their arms about and scream, you don't need a seismologist for that. This is stupid and may have serious repercussions.

Shapes

Today I was supposed to leave a little early so Kate could get to her book group. I got the grille up, the sign in and half of the storm doors closed. As usual in these situations, someone came in.

'Hi, the museum sent me down here, because they were too busy.'
'Oh, right. Okay.'
'Here, look.' He pulls a stone from his pocket and hands it to me.
'Look - here - a face. With one of those... you know. Like this.' He gestures.
'A ruff?'
'Yeah. And a big collar, look.'
'Mm.'
'And here is another face, a bit smaller, in this shape... here. You can see it better if you wet it a bit. See?.'
'Okay.'
'Look on the back. It looks like a number.'
'I don't... I can't... really see what you mean. I think it's igneous. A volcanic rock. You don't get... fossils in igneous rocks, though.'
'Do you not see what I see?'
'No. No, not really. Sorry.'
'I have another. Here, look at this.'
'Well this one looks like a piece of ironstone nodule I think.'
'Not a meteorite, you don't think?'
No. Sorry. Look, I really have to close up now. Sorry I couldn't be more helpful.'
'Ok, no problem. It's just the museum folk sent me down here. Too busy.'

Star born

There are over 4,500 named minerals on Earth. There will be plenty more found and named, too, unless the latest bunch of Rapture people are right about tomorrow and things all go pear-shaped. There haven't always been this many, though. At the moment it's thought that when the planet was formed there were only around sixty minerals. Discovering a new mineral must be quite a thrill - I met a guy once who had been named as official discoverer of a few, though I can't remember the names. A couple have been found recently that date right back to the origins of the solar system. Krotite and Wassonite were both found by careful study of meteorite sections.

Krotite was found in a meteorite from North Africa and contains a substance that can only form under conditions of temperature and pressure that match the creation of our solar system 4.55-4.6 billion years ago. Further study of the mineral might help scientists understand more about how minerals originally formed from the collapsing molecular cloud during that time. As the nebula cooled particles of matter began to group together and minerals were precipitated. Those minerals that form at the highest temperatures would obviously have formed earliest, and krotite would have been amongst the first.

Wassonite was discovered in an Antarctic meteorite which had been found some 42 years ago. The crystals of the mineral were too small to be seen until recent technology - the Bond-villain-esque ion beam - allowed a proper analysis. Wassonite is titanium sulphide. And really, really tiny.

As technology develops mineralogists will be able to find more and more minerals in meteorites. Meteorites are pretty tremendous in themselves, just for being a rock that's fallen out of space, but when you think of them as some of the first solids to have formed at the formation of our solar system, they gain a little something. Respect your elders.

Old school malware

Phone rings.

'Good afternoon, Mr Wood's Fossils.'
'Hello, can I speak to Matt Dale, please?'
'Speaking.'
'Hello Mr Dale. Are you in charge of the company's computers?'
'Um. Yes'.
'I'm calling from the Computer Maintenance Department.'
'The what? Computer Maintenance Department of what?'
'Of Microsoft. Do you use Microsoft Windows?'
'Yes.'
'We are calling because your warranty has expired, which is why we have been receiving error messages in our department.'
'Which warranty? I haven't been getting any error messages. My computer's fine. What are you talking about?'
'Your software's warranty has expired, leaving your computer open to virus infection. We have been receiving error...'
'My software's warranty. Right. Well, I haven't had any error messages, and I have anti-virus. Everything's fine. Thanks for being so worried. Got to go now. Bye.'

Hang up.

Cut glass

Obsidian is a volcanic glass made when lava cools very rapidly. It happens too quickly for a distinct structure to form and when fractured, the edges can be just over a molecule thick. Which makes for a pretty sharp edge. Unsurprisingly, then, it's perhaps best known for its use in prehistoric times as a source of arrowheads, cutting blades and the like. Less well known is that obsidian is used to make surgical scalpel blades now, as they produce a narrower cut than a conventional steel blade and result in less scarring.

Most obsidian looks black at first glance, but on closer inspection it is usually translucent if thin enough and dark brown, grey or even greenish in colour. Above left is a polished piece of rainbow obsidian. Layers of tiny bubbles arranged along flow layers create a colourful iridescent effect. There are other well-known forms called mahogany, where high concentrations of iron makes a red/brown pattern throughout, and snowflake obsidian, which has clusters of white cristobalite.

Apache tears (shown right) are little blobs of obsidian found near Superior, Arizona. They are found surrounded by grey/white perlite, which is a hydrated form of obsidian. These little pebbles have a folk story of their own. In the 1870s, a group of US cavalry and volunteers set out to attack a band of Pinal Apaches, prompted by repeated cattle raids on a nearby settlement. The Apache, seventy five strong, were attacked at Big Pacacho and most of their number were killed in the initial gunfight. The remaining warriors, rather than submit to the cavalry, committed suicide, riding their horses over the cliff to their deaths. The tears of their families, on falling to the white sands surrounding the base of the cliffs, were turned to stone by the creator, Ussen, to mark the memory of the fallen Apaches.

Certified

Riley found this image on the net the other day. Sadly it was without context. Would be nice to know how extensive the publication is; whether it goes on to explain why it thinks the planet is only thousands of years old.

I get asked about the dating of fossils frequently, and it's a logical question. How do we know? People ask if they get a certificate of authenticity with their fossil and I have to explain that there is no world authority on everything fossily that supplies a thumbs-up sticker with every sale. With all sales in the shop the customer takes away a label with the basic details. Age, locality, name, etc. The fossils I sell do come with tags on them that tell us how old they are. There's a degree of trust involved here. The label I write then becomes a de facto certificate. It legitimizes the fossil somehow, and I sometimes feel a bit guilty about that. Why should people suddenly take what I write on a card as truth? I do not work out the ages myself. I don't do the tests personally. However - I have an understanding of how the dating processes work, and I know that the tests are repeatable, empirical, objective. Facts are objective. Truth is subjective. I feel comfortable that I'm passing on the best information I have when I sell something - it's important to me that I get as much right as I can. It's very much in the interests of the wholesalers to know as much about their stock as possible, and most do. When they provide detailed information, I'm happy with that. When there is some doubt or missing data, I'll try to look into it; try to find out more by spending a little time on the internet reading about the fossil or the site it came from. It's as 'true' as it can be.

Which takes me back to the original question - why believe the ages involved? My answer is - why not? For a long time I had a regular visitor to the shop who would ask me about my lack of religious belief and he told me he didn't believe the age of the Earth was 4.55 billion years old. He said that just 'felt wrong'. That he couldn't really comprehend that scale of time and that the biblically derived estimations of age as a few thousands of years were far more likely. In reply I'd tell him I didn't think that was justification enough to disregard the scientific view and embrace one based on far more dubious principles. The calculations involved, I mean. To get to be a scientist working in a specialised field takes years of study and a deep understanding of their subject. Why would I not put more store in what they say about that topic than someone who knows nothing about it? I'd far rather put my trust in tried and tested scientific processes than take the religious line without asking why. How can blind faith be regarded as more worthy than reason and critical thinking?

Where it all went wrong

I need a healing stone.
What sort of stone - do you know the name?
A healing stone - so my friend can take the next step.
Well I can give you this book to look through and you can...
Nah, nah, I don't need that. I'll just look... right - there it is. No, dinnae wrap it up, just give us it here.
You don't want to know what it is? 
It's £3.50.
But a label with the name, I mean?
Nah, nah. Nae disrespect man, but that's where it all went wrong.
Where did it all go wrong?
Naming things.

Time of our lives

Our planet is about 4.55 billion years old. Billion. That's four and a half thousand million, or 4,550,000,000. That's a really long time. We humans have only been around for a couple of hundred thousand years as we are now. We've really only been aware of these things for a relatively short time.

You've heard the metaphors before - if the history of the Earth were a 24hr period, etc. This site lets you work out your own metaphor. An easy one being that if the planet's history were laid out as a metre, recorded human history would be the last .002174mm. We just haven't been around that long. It seems like it to us, but we haven't. Until recently we were more concerned with where our next meal was coming from than the bigger questions - why we're here, how we got here. Where are we going? Who's that crouching behind the bushes? We're not geared up for thinking in geological time - we've not had any need to and it remains largely beyond our comprehension.

So. Why am I dribbling on about time and human insignificance again? Well - earthquakes have been in the news a great deal of late. Horribly tragic headlines from a number of countries. It seems to us, amidst the turmoil and disaster, that there have been an unusual number of big quakes in a short period of time, and the natural reaction is to look for a reason behind this. Is there a pattern? Where is it leading? We know a lot more about what causes earthquakes now, and roughly where they are more likely to occur. We can even have a stab at predicting events based on gaseous emissions, small tremors and so on, and seismologists are getting better at it. But as for discerning a pattern within a broader setting, that's just not possible. We view things from our own understanding of time. Geological time is another thing altogether, and current seismic happenings can only really be given their true context with proper hindsight. Not now, and not in the near future. Statistics based on so little information are next to meaningless, and there is no point scaring everyone with warnings of megaquakes, supervolcanoes, Godzilla attacks and so on. In the backs of our minds we know they can happen, but there's not much we can do about it. In a few billion years another galaxy will probably crash into ours, or the sun will turn into a red giant and eat us up. Gather ye roses.

Mother Earth

This Saturday I'll have a stall at a pagan conference. A gathering of witches and druids and so on. It's the third year in a row and it's been enjoyable enough so far - I don't take a great deal on the day, but it costs very little to set up and I think I get a bit of business from it afterwards. I'm not a pagan. I'm very firmly atheist and don't hold any religion or spiritual belief in any great regard. On the whole they're a very friendly bunch - and I'd have to say I can understand the underpinning of spiritual belief with all things natural. Just seems more accessible to me than the more - what? - human-centred religions. An embracing of the natural world rather than some historic prophetic figure.

The world of science has a religion of its own, of sorts, and at its core it has some resemblance to many of the tenets of paganism. In the 60s, James Lovelock, an environmental scientist working for NASA on the possibility of life on Mars. developed an idea that became the Gaia Hypothesis. He worked on it through the 60s and 70s before publishing Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth in 1979. Gaia was the Greek goddess of the Earth. The Earth Mother: a central figure in many belief systems. The central idea of Gaia, very simply put, is that the planet is some sort of self-regulating entity, reacting to constantly changing conditions to maintain some sort of balanced environment suitable for life. A range of interpretations have emerged and broadly the hypothesis can be split into Hard and Soft Gaia, which in turn cover a spectrum of more specific definitions.

I don't have the time, the space or the ability to give an in-depth explanation of the full hypothesis. However - I'll give a brief summary a go.... Soft Gaia holds that most of the processes of life on Earth are connected and influence each other and their surrounding environment directly. That living beings have changed their habitat by their very presence. It's hard to deny there's some truth to this and science will always be learning more about how the natural world fits together and operates as it does. Soft Gaia does not claim the planet has an active part to play in this, though. Hard Gaia goes further, though again along a sliding scale of immersion. It suggests the Earth is more actively self-regulating, and to this way of thinking the extreme is a living entity in itself. Mother Earth watching out for herself, taking steps to redress damage inflicted by her wards. Within this, some believe that all life is intrinsically connected to the point of it all being part of one living whole, a being of beings. You can see how this begins to become quasi-religious.

The concept wasn't exactly universally embraced - Lovelock came in for a bit of stick from the scientific world. Nonetheless, it's stuck around and Lovelock has had a long and very successful career. He's a formidably bright guy, and has been an active environmental campaigner, turning to his hypothesis from time to time to reflect contemporary understanding of green issues. The increasing awareness of global climate change and the unfortunate effect humanity has had on pretty much everything around us has ensured Gaia has stayed firmly in the consciousness. Soft Gaia's highlighting of interconnectivity is a productive outcome - we have become better at anticipating the potential implications of actions we may have previously thought of in isolation.

To me, while a nice idea, Hard Gaia is almost a shrugging of responsibility; a dereliction of duty. Like most religions, I see it as a reassurance - someone, something is taking care of stuff. Taking care of us. It doesn't really matter what we do to the planet, because it can look after itself. I see the appeal, but we need to accept that there are consequences for what mess we humans make.

Wee things big

I got a new toy - a USB microscope. It's not quite as effective as a proper microscope but it's fun to play around with, wasn't too expensive and is easy to use. Plug it into the computer, load a bit of software and muck around. I'm not entirely sure why I got it.

So now I need something to do with it. I think I might have a monthly competition on the Facebook page - name the mineral/fossil win a prize. Actually, monthly sounds like a lot of work. Perhaps annual.

When I stumbled into studying geology I was surprised at just how big a field it was. Maths, physics, chemistry, statistics, biology, etc. A large chunk of time was spent staring down a microscope at thin sections of minerals, learning to identify crystal shapes, growth patterns, associations and so on. I got there, eventually, but I never learned to love the microscope. Maybe that will change.

As you can see, I've had a play around with it now and these images are the results of two or three minutes fiddling. Haven't had to tinker with the images, though, and I'm pretty impressed with the quality given the price. Amber with bugs seemed the obvious choice and it looks like it's going to be quite useful for that alone.