One of the great things about working on a computing magazine is access to a lab full of all sorts of geeky stuff – including a microscope. This belonged to PCW Magazine, may she rest in peace, but on Wednesday Anthony managed to get it working again, and so during lunch we rigged up a camera to take some photos. Here's the ball on the end of a .5mm Bic Cristal biro:

.. and the embossed letters on my (surprisingly spangly) credit card:

.. and the end of a pin on an Athlon CPU, which as it turns out is made of two metals:

We also managed to shoot some video. Here's the minute hand of my watch, ticking along 1/2600th of a revolution every second:

It's quite impressive. The camera setup we have is somewhat jury-rigged at the moment (picture here) but I'm hoping to find a proper camera adapter – Nikon used to make Coolpix camera mounts for this SMZ800 microscope. In the meantime, more pictures of stuff up close can be found here.