NYIP

Tuesday January 15, 2008

On line courses, at home study, learn yourself study. All have sounded very lame to me in the past. No way can you get what you should out of something like that. "Learn at your own pace" when maybe what most of us need is assignment deadlines, taskmasters pushing deadlines on us.

Nick gave me a "distance learning" digital SLR camera course for Christmas from the New York Institute of Photography. What Nick didn't know is that I have gone to their website several times and looked at their courses and just decided that it would take too much of my time, I would never have the discipline to do it, etc, etc. That was actually before I retired and I hadn't looked at it since.

The first "unit" came Christmas Day all wrapped up and ready to start. I decided that I was going to schedule time every Monday or Tuesday and sit down and work with this. Last week it was Monday and it was excellent. This particular learning experience has many many texts and audio tapes with the instructors going over the material. They do it so well that it keeps you very interested. They stop talking, refer you to the text and then you go back to the audio, etc. etc. The speakers are very conversational and hold your attention. It is actually two people who are talking to the student but almost sound like they are talking to each other as well. I have an advisor, phone number, email, office hours-the whole deal. I also have to submit two photo projects before it is over. They encourage you to submit prints as that is part of the learning-how to make excellent prints. Then I will receive an audio critique of my work. I have no idea the nature of what I am supposed to photograph as I refuse to look ahead.

I sat down for my second class today and before I realized it three hours had gone by. They are most gracious in supplying breaks along the way but it all went very quickly and today's topic included the mechanics of a camera which they actually made interesting. Most interesting of it all though was that the camera that is used in the text to demonstrate all of the dials and controls, etc. is my camera. How perfect could that be?

Obama and Hillary have decided to take the gloves off and stop sniping at each other. Congratulations!

I started a new book a couple of days ago. Back to murder and mayhem!

Margaret Maron is an author I have not heard of before but my niece Margaret has told me twice now that she is good. Margaret has about the same taste in books as I do. So I found the first book of one of the series she writes and am giving it a try.

The knitting is coming along quite well. First sleeve of the second sweater. Maybe these actually will be done for the girls' birthdays. I showed them to the mother on Sunday who keeps telling me that she wants to make baby sweaters for her girls. I can't convince her that they aren't babies any more. Toddlers works better.

I made reservations to fly to Michigan to stay at my sister Karen's for a week or so. You know-a good break, change of scenery. After I had the reservations and the car rented I decided to just see what the weather might be like although the forecast only looks at the next ten days and it is maybe 11 or 12 days before I go. A high of 13 degrees. Are you kidding me? Who does that-actually willingly goes somewhere that the high temperature at the hottest part of the day is going to be 13 degrees? Who?