User:Bob Blaylock

  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.
•   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 Euglena.
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    A Coleps.
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    An actinophryid or “sun animalcule”.
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    A bdelloid rotifer.
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    Another bdelloid rotifer.
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    A different kind of rotifer.
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    And another rotifer.
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    And yet another 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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    Streptobacilli.
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    Bacteria from a kitchen sponge.
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    Dental plaque.
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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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    Saccharomyces cerevisiae, the common baker's yeast.
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    A dead nematode, killed by the fungus Harposporium anguillulae.
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    A closer look at the fungus growing out of this dead nematode.
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  A Neutrophil granulocyte, a kind of white blood cell.
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    Three basophil granulocytes, which are another type of white blood cell.
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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.