status of AAS poster ...

[Stupendous Man <richmond@a188-l009.rit.edu>]

  Well, it's time for me to go home and catch a little sleep before
my flight to San Diego tomorrow morning.  I wasn't able to prepare
the TASS poster as carefully as I wanted to ... there just wasn't
enough time between the end of classes and the meeting to 

       - make all the necessary calculations
       - wade through the TASS data
       - find interesting stars
       - make plots of their light curves
       -  etc.
       - write it all up 
       - print it out nicely
         
  Rats.  

  I spent several hours trying futilely to assemble a set of 
individual Postscript files into a single, large mosaic,
which I tried to print on a wide-bed plotter.  That would have
made a very nice poster, all by itself on a single sheet of paper.
But ... there were a lot of problems.  I think I finally made a
very nice poster-sized Postscript file, but the printer wouldn't
take it.  If anyone out there, preferably in the San Diego area,
happens to have access to a wide-bed plotter that understands
Postscript, try printing this:

      http://a188-l009.rit.edu/tass/meetings/aas_1998/assemble.ps

  If you can do it, and if you happen to be near the Town and Country
Hotel in San Diego before Wednesday, June 10, I'd be willing to 
bow down and acknowledge your mastery of printing technology
before the world in exchange for a copy of the print :-) :-)

  I've placed most of the pictures which will appear on the poster,
together with most of the text, into a subsection of the "Meetings"
area on the TASS WWW site.  You can get there directly via

      http://a188-l009.rit.edu/tass/meetings/aas_1998/aas.html

  Included are plots of TASS measurements of known variables,
plus plots of new variable-star candidates.  There's also a simple
ASCII table of the candidates in the Dayton area (alone) which look
best to me.

  I just haven't been able to put together a press release yet,
let alone an Illustrated Press Release, as the AAS recommends.
I do have a single laser-printed copy of some nice pictures,
and I have some ideas for a press release, as well as a nice
draft from Tom.  I guess it will be possible to write the text
of a press release on the plane, discuss it with other TASSians
at dinner on Saturday night, then print it out somewhere on Sunday
morning, make 90 copies of it and the best picture at some 
local copy shop, and use that.  I guess :-/  Sorry, all, but 
I just couldn't do it all, and I figure the poster takes precedence.

  I'll be reading my E-mail as much as possible during the meeting,
but may skip a day here and there.  The TASS poster goes up on
Wednesday, in the Atlas Ballroom:

       Session 55, New Digital Sky Surveys: paper 55.08

I'll be standing next to the poster, or near it, for much of 
Wednesday.  Please stop by and say "Hello!"

                                     Michael Richmond