A word of thanks (att: Billy and loafergirl)

by **Billy Mays** » Mon Feb 17, 2020 10:11 pm

Tdarcos wrote: Mon Feb 17, 2020 6:16 amI suspect the prices you have are for books under 200 pages and/or paperback.

No, I typed in the exact number of pages for each book, selected black and white, hardbound, an average page size, and a pretty nice 50 pound paper. 1 printing of each. I'm guessing there is some other hook involved somewhere, like they can just deny the job based on it's not worth their time or maybe they receive publishing rights after they print the first copy or they're assuming that you will also use their editing services which is how they'll recoup the loss? I'm not sure.

by **Tdarcos** » Mon Feb 17, 2020 6:16 am

Billy Mays wrote: Thu Feb 13, 2020 10:38 pm
Tdarcos wrote: Thu Feb 13, 2020 3:44 pmI'm wondering if you've actually read either of my two books?
No. I am a bit old fashioned when it comes to books in that I like having a physical copy to read.

When I first rendered them, PDFs were the standard for releasing documents, and the tools ro create them could be found at low cost or even free; e-book creation tools would not become free and easily available until years later.

Billy Mays wrote: Thu Feb 13, 2020 10:38 pm I was looking it up on some reputable small run publishers in the US and got some basic quotes and it would only cost about 20-40 bucks each to print a single hardbound copy? I'm not sure if I was reading that right but it does sound awfully low.

Yes, it does. Let's take my gitst book The Gatekeeper: The Gate Contracts ("Gatekeeper") at about 320 pages and my second book, Instrument of God ("Instrument") at about 760 pages. Now, the more printing a company does per month the cheaper the per-page rate is because pf economies of scale. If they're doing laser printing quantities of 20,000 or more pages a month, their page cosr is probably 2c/page single-sided and 3c/page double-sided. So since both are already page-formatted PDFs, there's no extra set up. So cover is probably $5 for Gatekeeper, $7 for instrument; binding $3; mailing $5 book rate/media mail; labor, overhead and profit $15; printing single-sided $8 and $15' double-sided $5 and $10, This totals estimated minimums of $33 for Gatekeeper and $40 for Instrument. I suspect the prices you have are for books under 200 pages and/or paperback.

Billy Mays wrote: Thu Feb 13, 2020 10:38 pmBut either way I wanted to ask you first if that would be ok since it is your work?

Certainly. I think it would be kid of ridiculous for someone to release a book free in electronic format but forbid personal-use printing.

Billy Mays wrote: Thu Feb 13, 2020 10:38 pm...And I'm also concerned that there may be legal repercussions involved with printing or even owning whatever sort of crazy shit you wrote about. I know that 99% of the two books is probably good-hearted fiction, but there is that 1% that a publisher or the court system could find worrying?

I'll go over the legal issues and I'll state that there is good US Supreme Court case law for everything I say here and I can find the citations for anything I mention here.

There are only three types of works that could be banned in the US and the first two don't apply: endangering national security (the example is publishing secrets) and the second is "imminent lawless action" (libel, selling uour own tax protester schmes or illegal rax shelters, or (possibly) criminal how-to manuals on murder and maybe not even then.)

The third class of works that can be banned are obscene materials. The rules on that are clear: the work "as a whole, based on contemporary community values, lack any literature, educational or scientific value."
* for a work to be banned the party wanting it banned must either sue the book itself or the distributor.
* Individual possession of onscene material that is not child pornography is not a crime.
* Material simulating child porn is not illegal; only that involving an actual child is.

So: (1) there are no images at all in this book, thus the only wayy anyone could argue either book is objectionable is to read all of it, then claim the entire work is sexuallty explicit material with no other value.
(2) A 320- or 760-page book about one long gang bang might be obscene; one containing maybe 10^ or less that is explicit clearly isn't. (3) Even if it was obscene it's not illegal to own it; and (4) for it to actually be obscene, a court has to decide.

by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Sat Feb 15, 2020 12:32 pm

RealNC wrote: Sat Feb 15, 2020 8:11 am It pretends to be an application (like a news reader), but it isn't. It is a static page. When you click on something, it takes you to another static page that looks slightly different than the previous one, keeping with the theme of pretending to be an actual application :-P Imagine if your mail client would reload the whole window when you choose to read another mail and then paint an emulation of a mail client on the screen.

As much as I hate reddit, it does it correctly. I have to give it that much. When you click something, it doesn't close and reload a completely new page. It just opens/expands what you clicked.

In contrast, this forum right here does not try to be something it's not. And it's great as a result.

(Was that too harsh? Dammit, I think it was too harsh. I'm probably mostly wrong as well.)

Well, it was written in 2002 so it's not a web application as those weren't widespread and the way of doing such things. (Oh, maybe they were, who knows, I certainly don't remember. JavaScript certainly had a reputation back then as kiddie shit.) But also, the pointy forum was written to specifically mimic the custom forum that Old Man Murray had for their forum. I know that forum software went to poe-news and portalofevil but I don't think the creator of it put it anywhere else for anyone.

(Was that too harsh? Dammit, I think it was too harsh. I'm probably mostly wrong as well.)

It's not too harsh at all, the pointy software was created for a specific purpose almost 20 years ago to ape other software, I'm sure the designer of it, if he ever saw this thread would say, sure, I'd do things differently now. (But also, it's pointless to do things differently now as the site hit the point where it won't attract new users and the old ones will just bleed off.)

by **Billy Mays** » Sat Feb 15, 2020 10:50 am

If we're not going to talk about thanking me and how much I contribute to this board here, then can Paul at least address Flack's and my inquiry on acquiring physical copies of both of his books?

by **RealNC** » Sat Feb 15, 2020 8:11 am

Ice Cream Jonsey wrote: Tue Feb 11, 2020 8:16 pm What's wrong with the UI? Keeping in mind it is a threaded forum, and intended to be a threaded forum.

Help me out. One change I made before I took a break was to make it so that when you clicked on the bases, it would load the last 10 threads. It used to not do that. It used to do it by time. So if there were no new threads in six months, nothing would show up. I have no science behind it, but I bet we lost dozens of people over almost 20 years because they clicked on a base and saw nothing.

I'm all about improving the software and yours is an opinion I respect. I can't make it a flat forum, but I do want to know your feedback if you have the inclination, sir.

What pinback said, plus:

It pretends to be an application (like a news reader), but it isn't. It is a static page. When you click on something, it takes you to another static page that looks slightly different than the previous one, keeping with the theme of pretending to be an actual application :-P Imagine if your mail client would reload the whole window when you choose to read another mail and then paint an emulation of a mail client on the screen.

As much as I hate reddit, it does it correctly. I have to give it that much. When you click something, it doesn't close and reload a completely new page. It just opens/expands what you clicked.

In contrast, this forum right here does not try to be something it's not. And it's great as a result.

(Was that too harsh? Dammit, I think it was too harsh. I'm probably mostly wrong as well.)

by **Tdarcos** » Sat Feb 15, 2020 7:21 am

Ice Cream Jonsey wrote: Fri Feb 14, 2020 1:06 pm
Tdarcos wrote: Thu Feb 13, 2020 3:44 pm I'm wondering if you've actually read either of my two books? At the bottom of the TV Tropes page about the book, I put a joke: "Why did Paul have to name his book Instrument of God? Because it would take Divine Intervention to get anyone to finish it!"
Whoa, they let you setup a TV Tropes page for your own stuff?

Ywp. It all started when I was posting refernces to my book in various trope pages. In fact, I started a few pages to identify tropes in my book that they did not havr, like "inside a computer system:" like what The Matrix is, for example. Or "Your universe or mine"" where someone travels to another univers (or another time period), meeta srmeone there, they become lovers, then either the traveler has to decide to stay or they leave; their love interest will stay withouy them or go back with them.

Well, anyway, I was accused of being an "entry pinp" posting trope examples for a non-existent work. So I shocked everyone by making a PDF and announcing they could read the book themselves. Somr of them did, because other people founds other tropes I hadn't thought of.

Ice Cream Jonsey wrote: Fri Feb 14, 2020 1:06 pm I assumed that they would be pricks about it like Wikipedia and have the same incredibly stupid rule about not working on things you have a relationship with. Huh.

No, no, np, as it mentions there, "We're a boatload less formal than Wikipeia." The idea of the wiki is to identify and destibr tropes, the devices used by storytellers as part of their craft. If someone finds a story - or someone reports on one of their own - it serves the site's purpose: to dissect a story and autopsy it for the evidece of the tropes in the corpus of the work.

Jonsey, if any of your Interactive Fiction - like Cyberganked or Crtptozookeepwe - has storytelling tropes in it - and there are thousands of tropes listed on the wiki - you are codially invited to put a reference to wach game under "vvideogames" on the pages for each troppe, and if any game has more than a handful of tropes, you shouldto create a page for that game in the videogsmes section, including links where to download or buy it. Hell, the wiki even covers fan fiction.

by **Billy Mays** » Fri Feb 14, 2020 11:31 pm

Flack wrote: Fri Feb 14, 2020 4:49 pm Paul, why don't you upload your own books to Amazon and then Billy and anyone else who wants a copy could order one and you could make a few bucks on the side.

Yes, if Paul was willing to do the legwork and set all of it up through a reputable small run publisher then I would be willing to purchase physical copies of both of his books through Amazon. As a rough ballpark...I think I would be comfortable spending around 50 dollars apiece if the binding and paper was of sufficient quality, though I feel I may be an outlier as a consumer in regards to this?

by **Flack** » Fri Feb 14, 2020 4:49 pm

Paul, why don't you upload your own books to Amazon and then Billy and anyone else who wants a copy could order one and you could make a few bucks on the side.

by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Fri Feb 14, 2020 1:07 pm

Billy Mays wrote: Thu Feb 13, 2020 10:38 pm ...And I'm also concerned that there may be legal repercussions involved with printing or even owning whatever sort of crazy shit you wrote about. I know that 99% of the two books is probably good-hearted fiction, but there is that 1% that a publisher or the court system could find worrying?

This is worth it for a live-action Trial of Paul Robinson.

by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Fri Feb 14, 2020 1:06 pm

Tdarcos wrote: Thu Feb 13, 2020 3:44 pm I'm wondering if you've actually read either of my two books? At the bottom of the TV Tropes page about the book, I put a joke: "Why did Paul have to name his book Instrument of God? Because it would take Divine Intervention to get anyone to finish it!"

Whoa, they let you setup a TV Tropes page for your own stuff? I assumed that they would be pricks about it like Wikipedia and have the same incredibly stupid rule about not working on things you have a relationship with. Huh.

by **Billy Mays** » Thu Feb 13, 2020 10:38 pm

Tdarcos wrote: Thu Feb 13, 2020 3:44 pmI'm wondering if you've actually read either of my two books?

No. I am a bit old fashioned when it comes to books in that I like having a physical copy to read. I was looking it up on some reputable small run publishers in the US and got some basic quotes and it would only cost about 20-40 bucks each to print a single hardbound copy? I'm not sure if I was reading that right but it does sound awfully low. But either way I wanted to ask you first if that would be ok since it is your work?

...And I'm also concerned that there may be legal repercussions involved with printing or even owning whatever sort of crazy shit you wrote about. I know that 99% of the two books is probably good-hearted fiction, but there is that 1% that a publisher or the court system could find worrying?

by **Tdarcos** » Thu Feb 13, 2020 3:44 pm

Thank you, Billy, I didn't realize he migght not remember my word story. Bad came to worse I'd have posted the video. Thank you.

If you're interested in seeing the TVTropes review of my book Instrument of God, you can find it here: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/ ... umentOfGod
Note that TV Troppes is a wiki that examines tropes, the devices used to tell the story. Some tropes are self explanatory, like one I wrote for them, "Cold Cash": Someone hides money in a refrigerator or freezer, and some tropes are complicated, like "Aluminum Christmas Trees": Something that existed in the past, that people today might not believe is real.

I'm wondering if you've actually read either of my two books? At the bottom of the TV Tropes page about the book, I put a joke: "Why did Paul have to name his book Instrument of God? Because it would take Divine Intervention to get anyone to finish it!"

by **Jizaboz** » Thu Feb 13, 2020 2:56 pm

LOL I never made that connection. Good story.

I've always pronounced and heard it as "Doh-tashi-mash-te". Now thanks to this excellent video I'm going to be thinking of a damn mustache every time.

Things like that actually kind help you remember words if it's your 2nd language I think. Another that comes to mind is またね "mata ne" which to me sounds like "matinee" (ie; a 4:00 showing of a movie) but with the "ma" pronounced "Mah" like "Mario".

by **Billy Mays** » Thu Feb 13, 2020 9:51 am

Tdarcos wrote: Thu Feb 13, 2020 6:03 am
Jizaboz wrote: Thu Feb 13, 2020 1:40 am
Tdarcos wrote: Wed Feb 12, 2020 9:58 amThan
*** Message aborted by the 8-line limit fairy.
ラウンドアイに適したラウンドワーク！ありがとう！ありがとう！

"Round work suitable for round eyes! Thank you! Thank you!"
"Don't touch my mustache."

Annotation added to the above post by The Tdarchive:

by **Tdarcos** » Thu Feb 13, 2020 6:03 am

Jizaboz wrote: Thu Feb 13, 2020 1:40 am
Tdarcos wrote: Wed Feb 12, 2020 9:58 amThan
*** Message aborted by the 8-line limit fairy.
ラウンドアイに適したラウンドワーク！ありがとう！ありがとう！

"Round work suitable for round eyes! Thank you! Thank you!"

"Don't touch my mustache."

by **Jizaboz** » Thu Feb 13, 2020 1:40 am

Tdarcos wrote: Wed Feb 12, 2020 9:58 am
Billy Mays wrote: Tue Feb 11, 2020 11:47 pm Anyway you guys can get back to thanking me here in the topic created to thank me?
Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Than
*** Message aborted by the 8-line limit fairy.

ラウンドアイに適したラウンドワーク！ありがとう！ありがとう！

"Round work suitable for round eyes! Thank you! Thank you!"

by **pinback** » Wed Feb 12, 2020 10:03 am

Tdarcos wrote: Wed Feb 12, 2020 9:58 am
Billy Mays wrote: Tue Feb 11, 2020 11:47 pm Anyway you guys can get back to thanking me here in the topic created to thank me?
Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Than
*** Message aborted by the 8-line limit fairy.

https://bit.ly/39FgXZ1

by **Tdarcos** » Wed Feb 12, 2020 9:58 am

Billy Mays wrote: Tue Feb 11, 2020 11:47 pm Anyway you guys can get back to thanking me here in the topic created to thank me?

Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Than
*** Message aborted by the 8-line limit fairy.

by **Tdarcos** » Wed Feb 12, 2020 9:43 am

Ice Cream Jonsey wrote: Tue Feb 11, 2020 7:16 am
RealNC wrote: Sun Feb 09, 2020 10:48 pm
Caltrops
I don't even know how to use that site. There's a bunch of lines. If you click one, a box with nothing in it appears.
Not really sure what this means unless you're on some weird browser.

it means either they are illiterate (can't read) or inattentive (didn't read).

RealNC wrote: Tue Feb 11, 2020 7:41 am Turns out some boxes are empty, some have text in them.

No shit, Sherlock.

RealNC wrote: Tue Feb 11, 2020 7:41 amIt seems they're supposed to be posts?

To quote Hans in Die Hard, "And you figured this all out by yourself?"

RealNC wrote: Tue Feb 11, 2020 7:41 am Although it's very difficult to make out who is saying what and to whom.

The only difference between this board and Caltrops is when you select a thread, Caltrops shows you all the headlines and the first message of the thread. You can select the next thread through the "Next" button at the bottom (or the "back" button if you are on any thread after the first one.) Or you can click direectly on any thread.

RealNC wrote: Tue Feb 11, 2020 7:41 amDoesn't look like it's a UI anyone would use willingly

Several dozen people - including me - who use it regularly or daily would disagree with your assessment.

pinback wrote: Tue Feb 11, 2020 8:31 am If the post has "N/T" next to it's subject, it means there's no text, just the subject.

Finally! Somebody got it (mostly) right. it's actually NT - that's NT in italic - at the end of the title. It's very useful to distinguish a message from the equivalent of a short "Tweet'".

pinback wrote: Tue Feb 11, 2020 8:31 am That is how a lot of those cretinous reprobates prefer to communicate.

Hey! I resemble thst remark! I created that term, and you forgot to put my ™ on that term, and capitalize it. Like this: Cretinous Reprobates™, or more formally, Cretinous Reprobates™* with a footnote below.

* Cretinous Reprobates™ is a trademark of Commander Tansin A. Darcos.
or
* Cretinous Reprobates™ is a trademark of Paul Robinson d/b/a Commander Tansin A. Darcos.

by **pinback** » Wed Feb 12, 2020 6:20 am

Ice Cream Jonsey wrote: Tue Feb 11, 2020 8:16 pm
RealNC wrote: Tue Feb 11, 2020 7:57 pm If I had to put up with that UI, I would probably become just as cretinous as them.
What's wrong with the UI? Keeping in mind it is a threaded forum, and intended to be a threaded forum.

I'm going to take a guess at what he'll say:

When you click on a base with a popular thread, the entire screen fills with subject lines, with very little spacing in between, and if your goal was to just find the new posts since you were last there, you have to hunt through the entire tree of posts looking for "*New*" or whatever it is.

It's a pretty good UI unless people are using it to post things:

Getting back to the title of this post, though, thank you Billy and loafergirl for not turning this place into that place (points up at the Caltrops thread, shakes head, cries.)

A word of thanks (att: Billy and loafergirl)

Post a reply

Expand view Topic review: A word of thanks (att: Billy and loafergirl)

Re: A word of thanks (att: Billy and loafergirl)

Re: A word of thanks (att: Billy and loafergirl)

Re: A word of thanks (att: Billy and loafergirl)

Re: A word of thanks (att: Billy and loafergirl)

Re: A word of thanks (att: Billy and loafergirl)

Re: A word of thanks (att: Billy and loafergirl)

Re: A word of thanks (att: Billy and loafergirl)

Re: A word of thanks (att: Billy and loafergirl)

Re: A word of thanks (att: Billy and loafergirl)

Re: A word of thanks (att: Billy and loafergirl)

Re: A word of thanks (att: Billy and loafergirl)

Re: A word of thanks (att: Billy and loafergirl)

Re: A word of thanks (att: Billy and loafergirl)

Re: A word of thanks (att: Billy and loafergirl)

Re: A word of thanks (att: Billy and loafergirl)

Re: A word of thanks (att: Billy and loafergirl)

Re: A word of thanks (att: Billy and loafergirl)

Re: A word of thanks (att: Billy and loafergirl)

Re: A word of thanks (att: Billy and loafergirl)

Re: A word of thanks (att: Billy and loafergirl)