This is my busy time of year, performing at the Dickens Christmas Fair
near San Francisco.

Most of my scanning efforts are pretty well known, but to recap, I built
a scanner with a USB interface based on designs by Richard Stibbons and
Spencer Chase.  With this I scanned the collection of APP rolls put
together by the late Tom Grace.  Several MMD members loaned me other
APP rolls.  In total I have scanned all but three of the APP rolls
offered by T.R.T. and Doyle lane.

The masters for these rolls, currently reside in the Herschel Carousel
Factory Museum, North Tonawanda, New York.  This last summer I have
been working with some of the staff there that are cataloging these
master stencils.  Recently I worked out a PostScript program to plot
the scanned files on the same grid paper used by the arrangers.   This
is currently being tested to see if such a process can replicate areas
where the master stencils, have become damaged.

A side effect of this is to create some Mac OSX and PostScript programs
for printing out the grid paper used.  I also have a new OSX viewer for
the CIS scanned file format.

Also in my collection are 700 or so book music stencils collected
by the late Mike Kitner.  I have not had time to scan most of these,
however I did scan the 67-keyless Gebr. Bruder music that plays on the
fair organ Jerry Pell brings to Sutter Creek and other rallies on the
West Coast.

For those who still have a Rollscan-1 interface, I do have a fix for
the race condition that prevents full color scanning.  Should I find
the time, I want to put a USB front end on one of these boards, which
should allow for the capture of the un-perforated Kitner stencils.

A side note on the Dickens Christmas Fair.  We have a cast of between
700 and 1000 costumed performers.  Thousands attend this international
event, which may be the largest celebration of Dickens' work in the
world.   For the last three years I have been performing with my John
Smith busker organ.

Today we had the dress/tech rehearsal, since we open Friday.  As in
past years, I placed a table where my cast members (hundreds of my
friends and acquaintances) can watch me transcribe music by hand.
I print out the templates with Piet Paardekam's "Midiboek" program.
I then staple a page onto the roll paper and cut it with a knife.
The Smith organ scale is close to the Gem roller organ scale, which
gives me access to many Christmas carols and pop tunes of the
Victorian era.  Often these transfer with little or no modification.

Although this is a slow process, it shows that the music I am playing
does not come from a computer chip.  This allows the other performers
to tell the audience that they have seen me make the music.

Julie Porter
San Francisco Bay Area