Beautiful light and new beginnings

An interesting week starting off last weekend with a party for a good friend of mine who got married to one of our radio personalities in Hawaii. Thanks G.&G., it was a lovely time with great music, tasty food, good company and I wish you two all the best. Dinner on the back porch sometime when the weather warms up?

Most of the rest of the week has been a flurry of work on the next review article that I bungled a bit by backing up the wrong folder at 2:30 the other morning. It was entirely my fault and I cannot blame any software or hardware, only a foggy head that was waaaaay too sleepy to be doing any real productive work. That however brings us to the next item on the agenda…. Can I toot my own horn a bit? Of course I can, it’s my blog, right? I just got this editorial comment describing the article that was just accepted from an editor of a journal we just submitted a review to:

“This full-length, yet concise, review is exactly what I was hoping to see when I specifically requested its submission by these authors, who are THE leading experts in the field. Informative, state-of-the-art, lucidly written, beautifully illustrated (as is typical for these authors). I can count on one hand, with fingers to spare, the number of times I’ve accepted a manuscript without any suggestions for revision. Call Guinness Book…this is one for the record books! The authors are to be highly commended for a spectacular piece of work, and this journal is proud to be able to publish it. Kudos!”

Thanks Steve! I would have asked for the cover given that letter, but this journal has a standard cover that is the same for all issues.

Next item: I am creating a new category on the blog here to hold select images from the blog that I am particularly happy with. This Selected images category contains a few photos that have already been posted here, and I hope to continue to add to them provided my old photography skills can sufficiently return. Prints of images in this category can be arranged by request.

Finally, I am excited about another new beginning, a new online publication called the New West. I am hopeful for the future of the New West as they appear to have the right ideas about publication in the 21st century including providing a forum for citizen journalism which is what all of these struggling newspapers throughout the country should have been doing years ago. Right now the New West is running a series of articles on methamphetamine in the West and their first article in the series is impressive. Check it out, sign up and start contributing. Right now, the New West is in its infancy and the signal to noise ratio is good. As they grow, I suspect they will likely have to include some form of moderation (perhaps even metamoderation ala Slashdot), but so far so good. Hey Greg and Jonathan, one other brief suggestion: Put a preview button in the comments section. Being able to preview your comments allows for some degree of self editing so that we don’t post garbage.

The intro image is one of a series on the Great Salt Lake I had on PBS a decade or so ago. It was an unbelievable day out at the Great Salt Lake in the afternoon after a storm had come through that morning. The light was extraordinary and I easily burned through a couple hundred dollars worth of film rolls which at the time came dearly as it was about ten weeks worth of groceries. Now of course shooting digital makes situations like this less of an ordeal. Just shoot and fill up that memory card. If you don’t like it, there is no remorse in throwing away the image, whereas with film, I was always checking myself when capturing an image for fear of throwing money away in film costs, developing costs, printing costs etc…etc…etc…


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