Foreign Perspectives

If you’re in the market for something to scan medical cards you really need a specialised scanner as you’ll spend ages getting them scanned using a standard scanner.

The Medicscan scanner offers you all the features you would expect of a specialised scanner and all you need is a USB port on your computer to use it. Both the scanning and the image processing are automatic and start as soon as you insert a card into the scanner. To save your time, the image processing takes place in the background so you’re not left waiting around for that to be done.

Once you’ve got it into your system you’ll not need to be constantly referring to photocopies of the cards as the scanned image can be pulled up right in front of you whenever you need it. Naturally both sides of the card can be scanned.

The ScanShell 800N is a small-footprint, twain compatible, A6 color scanner with 600DPI scanning resolution for sharp and clear images. What’s “twain compatible”? That just means that it’s compatible with just about all scanning software. Since it’s USB powered, you don’t need yet another power socket to plug it into either which, as we all know, seem to breed!

We’re definitely planning on going somewhere this evening and as we’re going by car it needs to be within around three or perhaps four hours drive of here.

As of this morning, we have three places in the frame:

Valencia, the front runner from yesterday, has now dropped out as it’s supposed to be raining there tomorrow. No big problem though as we had it pencilled in for later in the year when it gets colder here yet is still quite warm there.

Albi, the former haunt of Toulouse-Lautrec and what looks to be quite a charming little village is also out as the weather is looking a little dodgy there too.

Which leaves Arles looking good. The weather forecast is fine for there and there’s quite a lot to see in the general area too. I’m not sure if we’ll have the time to see it but the Camargue nature reserve is supposed to be really good.

James doesn’t go to school on Wednesdays so we are planning on going somewhere or other whenever we hit a Tuesday night and don’t have any guests booked in.

Anyway, the first of these little trips is tomorrow all being well.

Where to though?

Well, the game plan is to pick him up from school at 5pm and start driving so we don’t want anywhere more than about three or four hours drive of here. Therefore the initial short-list is Albi (of Toulouse-Lautrec fame), Arles (for the Roman history) and Valencia (‘cos it looks nice and is warm).

So far, it looks like Arles and Albi are out on weather grounds so ’tis off to Valencia (or some point south anyway) tomorrow.

OK, I’m not there yet, but at least it seems to be heading in the right direction.

As we’re edging into the Winter here, it becomes more and more appealing. We’ve obviously a lot less to do during the day and, possibly more importantly, I’m not doing the studying as the Spanish course is finished.

So far, it would appear to be quite a good fit with our normal activities as we’re busy in the Summer when there are relatively few paid post opportunities yet don’t have much to do in the Winter when there seem to be a lot more paid opportunities available.

The castle at Chantilly is one of the small collection of spectacular chateaux in the general Paris region. Yet, there’s a whole lot more to it than that as you can see from our Whole Earth entry on it.

Perhaps surprisingly, the castle houses one of the foremost collections of historical paintings in France and yet it receives relatively few visitors for that collection.

It’s easy enough to get there from Paris and very worthwhile too. Not only do you get a chateau, there’s the magnificent gardens and the artwork thrown in too!