January 5, 2016

Tim Boggan Arrives
Yes, it's that time of year again – USATT Historian Tim will be knocking on my door at precisely 9:30AM (after driving 4-5 hours down from New York to Maryland), and then we start work on Volume 17 (!) of his History of U.S. Table Tennis. More specifically, I begin my work, as Tim's already done most of his – the writing and planning. Mal Anderson has also done his part – he's the primary photographer, and has scanned probably 1000 photos for the volume, and sent them to me in a CD I received this morning.

Who are Tim and Mal, you ask? They are both members of the U.S. Table Tennis Hall of Fame (as am I), so we're practically a history of the game, the three of us. (But I'm only 55! They are about 25-30 years older than me.) You can read about all of us in our profiles there.

My job over the next two weeks, as I've done with the previous volumes (usually once per year), is to fix up the photos (many of which are vintage ones or in bad shape – lots of work in Photoshop), and then lay out the pages (text and photos). Tim comes in with notes on where each photo goes, and he's pretty particular about it – he'll be spending the next two weeks looking over my shoulder and saying various versions, of, "No, you fool, the photo goes there!"

It's a pretty big job. The last volume was 427 pages with 1327 graphics. I had to fix up all 1327 graphics, lay the text on the page, put the graphics in place (Tim often has elaborate plans, and often we make last-minute time-consuming changes), flow text properly, type in the caption that Tim dictates to me, put in the "Photo by [somebody]" (most of the time it's Mal Anderson), and so on. There are also a bunch of technical things that have to be done, and then prepress work, and then creating the ad for the volume, updating the web page (which I created and maintain for him), etc. It'll take 10-14 days of work.

We typically start at 7AM each day and go to 2:30 PM, which is when I have to leave to coach (MDTTC afterschool program, other group coaching, and private coaching). On weekends we work around my coaching schedule – I'm mostly free Saturday, with a busy Sunday schedule.

It means all my normal work is squeezed into nighttime, after I return from coaching, typically around 7-9PM. For the next two weeks that's when I'll have to do the blog, the Tips of the Week, my USATT work, and all the other stuff that comes up every day. Plus I've got a book launch for my own science fiction novel coming later this month, so I've got to do a bunch of publicity work for that.

So if anyone, and I mean ANYONE, sends me something they need me to do, or asks me to help them with something, or even thinks about doing this, here's my answer.

The 50-Foot Serve
Here's video of me doing it in an exhibition last year with Stefano Ratti at the Smash TTC. (The link should take you to 18:07 in the video.) I do this all the time, not just in exhibitions, but during breaks at MDTTC. It's a fun trick! If you want, go to the beginning of the video and see the entire exhibition, where I pull out all sorts of tricks.

Dean Johnson Inducted Into USATT Hall of Fame
Here's the ITTF article.

Maryland Table Tennis Center January Newsletter
Here's the new issue. (I'm the editor/writer.)

Ma Long & Liu Shiwen End 2015 as World Number Ones
Here's the ITTF press release.

Yunhao (Kaden) Xu – Interview
Here's the USATT interview by Rahul Acharya.

Qualification System for the Rio Olympic Games
Here's the info from USATT.

We're #10!
Here's the article, "17 sports to try in 2016 that are way more fun than the gym."

Here's a Nice 53-shot Rally
Here's the video (54 sec).

Table Tennis is for Everyone
Here's the new video (60 sec). Pretty nice!

Great Table Tennis Drawing
Here's the picture!

Penguin Pong!
This is in honor of a humorous story I recently sold to Galaxy's Edge, about two penguins who have to make the trip from Antarctica to the Middle East to get on Noah's Ark.

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