My Own Private Project Panama

I’m continuing to buy issues of Comics Buyer’s Guide lethargically whenever a really cheap lot shows up on ebay. (It’s just a strange category of magazine — it really has no discernible value, so it’s not worth the work (for sellers) of putting them up for sale. So you almost only see people who are er somewhat misguided putting up some lots for $$$, and then the listings stay up for years because nobody buys them.)

Anyway, I got a nice cheap lot of newer issues (i.e., post-2000 when they shrank the format) today, so I thought I’d try a new methodology: Just cut the spines off with my spiffy new paper cutter thing and use my spiffy new cut-sheet feeder (both sitting on my spiffy new workbench) and see whether that works.

I wasn’t sure whether this would work (because the paper is so thin and some of these issues are two hundred pages long), but the Brother seems to handle them very well. Of course it helps that the paper cutter does such a good job, too…

Before you go “BUT *GASP* HOW HORRIBLE”, I would have put the magazines into the recycling anyway after scanning, so tant pis. But I have to admit that snipping the first few felt very, very odd. *gulp*

When I scan manually on my A3 scanner, I do two pages at once. This scanner uses about ten seconds a page, so I’m able to scan things faster manually… but I think I was getting RSI at the end there of the previous batch.

And, of course, I don’t have to sit there looking at it while scanning, so it takes a whole lot less time anyway.

Anyway — you can send me magazines to scan if you want. After scanning, I’m uploading to The Internet Archive and kwakk.info. Which I guess Anthropic aren’t doing after they scan books. So there! I’m better!

You’ve Got Mail

I read with interest about the new EU packaging directive the other week — among other things, there’s stuff in there about using as little packaging as possible. That is, the box you ship stuff in shouldn’t be bigger than necessary, which I think most of us will like — I think we’ve all (at some point or another) received a 60x60x20cm box containing a 0.5×0.5x4cm USB stick, right?

Anyway, today I was rudely awoken by a UPS guy who gave me the box above. It’s about the same height as I am.

Guess what it contains.

Yes, exactly — a few yards of fabric.

But I mean — I do appreciate that there are no folds or anything, so I’m probably whining unwarrantedly. I read a German article about the directive (can’t find it now) about how the directive was going to ruin all smaller businesses who didn’t have the requisite machines to pack things minimally…

OK, I don’t have a point here. Sorry!