GOOOOD morning to all Conch-Lers,

I'm still alive and trying to digest waves and waves of Conch-L messages.
Now I'm just 4 days behind, but 2 weeks ago I had more than a month of
messages to read.

This year was quite hard here at work, with several working trips (in
January I'll send you a report about my trip to Angola) and I was almost
drowning in work when I came back from each of these trips. Now things are a
little better and I'm not drowning anymore, just floating in a sea of work.
;-))

In the mean time I bought a flatbed scanner and I'm trying to learn all the
tricks of shell scanning. When the shell is flat, there is no problem, the
image is quite well, with the door closed or opened. On the other hand, when
I try to scan bigger shells like a Conus pulcher and Cassis tesselata (both
bought in Angola), only the part of the shell that is close to the scanner
surface is nice. All the rest becomes quite dark. With big shells I scan
with the door open, to get a black background. Any hints and tips?

I wish you all a Merry Christmas and the very best wishes for the year 2000.

All the best,

Eduardo Moreira
Brasilia, Brazil