Coldest day yet

Daria

Today we had record-setting cold temperatures. Our outdoor thermometer reported -11deg. But its bright and sunny, so I suppose we can't complain too much.

We've been pretty much confined to the house this winter. Lots of snow, with temperatures consistently cold. Linda and I drove over to Great Barrington last Thursday just to get out of the house once over her winter vacation. I've had to deal with lots of snow in the driveway (and in fact have to get some more gas for the snow blower today since they are predicting another 4-7" for tonight). Looking forward to spring!

I participated in e-Week again this year, but unlike previous years, I went for the both days in order to maximize the number of CEUs I could claim. The first day was interesting - none of the presentations dealt with electrical matters, so I sat in on sessions that were selected based on curiosity or current awareness factors. Also did two presentations on the second day, so I ended up with 14 CEUs. I also wrote another course for Decatur that gave me 10 CEUs, so I've made up for not doing any formal continuing education last year and am now ahead of the game. I submitted a proposed presentation for e-Week next year, so that should enable me to honestly report that I have met the NYS continuing education requirement when I renew my license next year.

The Panel of Editors Meeting is coming up the first weekend in April in Los Angeles. Then, I will be home less than a week before Linda and I take off for Williamsburg. We are hoping that Laney will be able to join us there for a couple of days. I'm looking forward to that.

We are also planning a trip to California in July, but need to think through some of the details pretty soon so that we can book flights and hotels. I think we are planning to go up to Napa Valley this time, and have picked out some wineries to visit that are less well known but reportedly pretty spectacular. Linda wants to stay at the Jack London Lodge in Sonoma - we'll see. We've also talked about getting back to Alcatraz. The problem is going to be timing - the 4th of July is on a Friday this year, so we have to work out a plan for how we will share our time between our interests and visiting Dave.

I also have to plan a trip to Clearwater Beach in early May.

Next week will be devoted to beta-testing the new functions in Manuscript Central. Based on the conference call this past Tuesday, I'm not very confident that ScholarOne has understood our needs and that the functions will be what we asked for. That's probably not a surprise - our process is simply too complicated, and in a perfect world, we would have cleaned up our internal act before trying to implement automation. But the ExBoard doesn't have the political will to try to interfere with the autonomy of the Technical Committees, so that will not happen.

I've booked a workshop at Peters Valley this summer - portraiture with Herb Aschermann. I'm hoping that I will have the opportunity to do some work with the 4x5, perhaps with models. I've had a couple of e-mail exchanges with Herb, and he sounds interesting. At least he's not so hung up on digital that he can't deal with film users.

Yesterday, I was doing some Pt/Pd printing using 5x7" digital negatives, and I think I was successful (finally) in making a good print. One thing I've concluded - the negatives produced using contrast "curves" in The Gimp don't print well, regardless of what they say on AltPhoto.com. The best image (the print of Daria) came from a straight negative. I have also learned that I need to boost the resolution, and then print in the highest quality color mode, to produce negatives with smooth tonality.