FROM THE QUILL TO THE PEN TO THE COMPUTER

I have spent much of the day, indeed week, preparing material for the yachting publication that I (voluntarily) put together. There have been some stunning photos coming in and all by amateurs taken on their digital cameras.

Recently a decision was made to move to a different firm to produce this 12 page A4 publication as the previous printer went out of business. (It is folk like me that who do this work for nothing on their Macs at home that are bringing about continuing the demise of the printing industry.)

Well, I am absolutely astonished at how technology has moved on! I now send images and text to a graphics outfit and they do all the work (that I used to do on QuarkXpress which, I gather, no one uses any more).

It means less eye strain for me and they do a hugely better job, e.g. we are now doing full colour and lots of clever graphic stuff.

A couple of hours of having dragged and dropped files in Dropbox - another form of very helpful technology - and the whole job was turned around with a draft proof back to me as a pdf file.

We are not finished yet but while I wait for the last of the material to come (AGM minutes) here is a lovely photo a friend, coincidentally, sent me today. I think the photo is a Fyffe boat Hallowe'en which was on the Clyde in 2008.

So instead of hours of close reading and cropping images Iain and I are heading out for the evening for dinner with friends. The hostess is a wonderful cook! Once, when I asked her how she enjoyed a cookery course she attended several years ago, she responded "M-m-m-m ... I could teach them a thing or two!" Quite so!