Comments for No Media Kings

Comment on Syncing Selling and Sincerity by Jim Munroe

Jim Munroe — Tue, 15 May 2012 16:59:24 +0000

I wouldn’t call myself a pessimist. To me, consolidated power is like a loaded gun, and it’s just a matter of time before it goes off. I’m in favour of gun control.

Comment on Syncing Selling and Sincerity by Matthew Bin

Matthew Bin — Tue, 15 May 2012 02:52:47 +0000

Sure it’s useful now, but a few generations down the line some equally unethical Murdoch-esque person will weasel their way into the machine’s cockpit and start wreaking havoc on the world.

Probably by getting the sole-sourced government contract for it, after the fear du jour makes people willing to let anything, anything happen just to make the bad men stop trying to hurt them.

The possibilities are very real. Obviously I share your fears about how these technologies will evolve so that the general public is the tool of the technologies’ owners, not the other way round. But I’m an optimist — I have to be, with so much of my own life tied, in so many ways, to Google’s and Amazon’s servers.

Comment on Do-It-Yourself Book Press by Hamish MacDonald

Hamish MacDonald — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 08:17:16 +0000

Yeah, it does! Although the website has a “download” link, that’s for downloading “the code”, which seems to then need to be installed on some kind of server and accessed through the web. I’m not sure what the process is from there, but I don’t think I’d like to trust making edits to a whole manuscript while refreshing pages and all that.

This is encouraging, though. Someday soon, someone will come up with the all-singing, all-dancing e-book and print book package, and it’ll fill a much-neglected gap.

Meanwhile, though, I’d like to say that I’ve been using Scrivener (http://www.literatureandlatte.com) to output e-books lately, and — aside from being a wonderful program for keeping all the files for a writing project in one place, letting you work in split-windows, and such — it exports ePub and Mobi files beautifully, with an automatic table of contents, cover art, and meta-data, too.

Comment on Do-It-Yourself Book Press by Rick Holbert

Rick Holbert — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 13:43:08 +0000

This looks interesting:

http://www.sourcefabric.org/en/booktype

Booktype is a free, open source platform that produces beautiful, engaging books formatted for print, Amazon, iBooks and almost any ereader within minutes. Create books on your own or with others via an easy-to-use web interface. Build a community around your content with social tools and use the reach of mobile, tablet and ebook technology to engage new audiences.?

Comment on Everybody Dies Takes Bronze at IFComp by Color, Comics, Death, Player-Characters, Everybody Dies — Electronic Literature

Color, Comics, Death, Player-Characters, Everybody Dies — Electronic Literature — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 01:37:22 +0000

[...] but haven’t written in depth about any interactive fiction. So, I will take a closer look at Everybody Dies by Jim Munroe and Michael [...]

Comment on How to Silkscreen Posters and Shirts by Jacob

Jacob — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 00:32:42 +0000

Robert, letting it sit after you burn it really won’t hurt it but exposing it to the UV rays for too long will cause it to harden in the screen like the rest of the screen. My best advice is to start over. This time do a time test. I just made a transparency that said the word “TEST” a bunch of times. And you start off with all the words except one “TEST” being covered, and turn on the light. In 1 or 2 minutes, uncover another, wait a couple minutes, uncover another, wait a couple minutes, etc. What that will do is by the time you finish your first one that started uncovered will be the longest, and the last the shortest. You then wash it out. Some will wash completely out and you know the exposure wasn’t long enough. Others however will just wash out the word test and it’s up to you to then examine it and decide which is your happy medium.

Comment on How to Silkscreen Posters and Shirts by Robert

Robert — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 23:27:35 +0000

Hello ive burnt the image into my screen and for some reason it dosent print anything ?? I washed it after burning it and im wondering if i waited too long before washing it ?? Is there any way to still use this screen or do i have to start all over??

HELP….Sgined Robert!

Comment on How to Silkscreen Posters and Shirts by shaun

shaun — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 08:53:43 +0000

Hi, I am have a problem applying water based blister or heat seal varnish to paperboard. I am using a 61 mesh count screen. I am getting an eggshell finish with the print. Can anyone offer some advice.

Comment on How To Get a Book Deal Without an Agent by Corinne

Corinne — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 02:12:21 +0000

For the publishers that only wanted manuscripts through an agent, how did you find the proper place to send everything to? Many do not list it on their website, as they try to discourage writers without agents.

Comment on Do-It-Yourself Book Press by Rick Holbert

Rick Holbert — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 15:30:48 +0000

Betsy,

Hamish is correct. A creative commons printshop is an excelent idea. InkScape and Scribus are great tools for smaller projects like ‘zines, covers, and graphics. I tend to use other tools to do the bulk of my book typesetting/layout. TeX (rhymes with blech) and GUI wrappers for it like LyX work well for larger projects.

http://www.ctan.org
http://www.lyx.org

Another interesting tool is writer2latex. It converts OpenDocument format into other formats like LaTeX. This would allow people to edit their books using Open Office or Libre Office and then convert them to LaTeX for high quality typesetting.

http://writer2latex.sourceforge.net/

Happy Hacking!

Rick