Spring - - - Finally!

A Row of Boxes

I think spring is really here. It's warm and sunny today, the grass is rapidly turning green. I went out with the camera this morning, but nothing caught my attention, and I was really thinking more about getting the spark plugs that I need to tune up the lawnmower and snowblower.

It looks like we aren't going to get to the Cape next week. We've been looking for an exchange since December and there has been nothing at all at Brewster Green. There were a couple of places in the P'Town area, but Linda thinks that's too far to go. Of course there were also places along Rt. 28 - Falmount, Hyannis, etc - but I refuse to go into that area.

Montreal was nice. The POE meeting went reasonably well although my sense was that it was more focused on things that might be in the future, and less on what we really have to deal with today. I took the big camera and got some interesting negatives that I need to find time to print.

I also tried making VDBs from digital negatives last week. My initial results are not exciting - preliminary thought is that double-coating the paper is leading to a loss of contrast and staining (streaking). I know the streaks are not in the negative. The digital negatives look pretty good, but I don't want to jump to a conclusion untill I get some good results for comparison. Anyway, the next round will be with single-coated paper, and also a shorter exposure time, to see if that makes a difference, One thing that I have concluded is that Arches HP water color paper produces the best results of any of the papers I have tried.

I picked up the materials on Saturday to put the sensor on the garage door light. Will try to get to that this week.

We are past the deadline for the July/August issue, and there are still people who aren't moving. I'm giving them until Friday, and if they aren't in, their material won't get published. I can't understand why people don't have the courtesy to respect deadlines - when they are late, their tardiness causes tremendous stress on others who are trying to keep the final product on schedule.

The M/S Central project is frustrating. The ad hocracy has been silent, and the society executives are reluctant to let us proceed without engagement from the committees. But at the same time, they haven't done anything to try to get the committees engaged. Sometimes I feel like I'm the only person who really cares about moving this forward.

This image is another from the visit that Linda and I had to Rhinebeck last Fall. That was a nice day!