Preserved Topic: What about an asyulum encyclopedia? (Page 1 of 1)

Today i was looking into the archives, and i think here is a massive amount off information in there, the same goes for the forums and the faq. Actually there is enough to fill a couple of books. So it might be an idea to sort all this info and put it on paper. And since i'am working at an printshop/publishing company my boss maybe wants to print it. I'am talking about printing on demand here, so if anyone wants a copy we print it and send it to him/her.
However this is some wild idea i really like some input on this.
Also if other people think of this as an good idea and the book will come, help is needed so sort al the info, edit it etc.

"Freedom of speech is by no means freedom to insult others" from the Razorart goodbye letter.

Rinswind 2th: happy Devil's post count by the way.

This has come up a number of times before (although I'm damned if I can find those previous posts) and it is a very interesting idea. I think I ended up favouring something like a tightly focused set of small books covering very specific topics and it might work to actually publish them as PDFs first and see if we could negotiate a book deal from there. Anyway I'm rushed now but have a look around and see what you can find there are a few threds somewhere (unless they have been binned).

One a side note I am toying with an online Gurupedia but more on that in the future

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Emps

FAQs: Emperor

thanks..

i did do some searching but i could not find anything....

May be combining both? Or use the same techniques?


"Freedom of speech is by no means freedom to insult others" from the Razorart goodbye letter.

[This message has been edited by Rinswind 2th (edited 02-16-2003).]

Rinswind 2th: OK thanks for looking - I'll have a look later. If not then we can have this discussion again.

Fancy explaining the prining on demand business? I presume it will be more expensive than ordinary publishing (are there any other restrictions - length of book, etc.) but unless a publisher wants to offer us a deal now (anyone??) it might offer another alternative - buy the PDF or get it printed.

Interesting.

We'll clearly want to get the Doc's input on this (I'm sure he had a few ideas in the other threads where we discussed this). We could also do this through the GN if people were up for that.

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Emps

FAQs: Emperor

Ok i am just working for this company, i just did print and copy work for a year so don't know about it much.
But the printing on demand works as folows.

Most books exists as an .pdf and/or an Coreldraw picture on the HD of our sever. People and bookshops can order little amounts of books at a time e.g. 25 pieces or even less. You could use a website to sell books... Then we print the book(s) on our digital copiers/printers. Print the outside on the color machine and after glueing the parts together we cut it clean et voila a book is born. The advantage of this method is the book should not exist until it's actually orderd by someone. And since we got an digital copy of it changes could be easily made.

This is good idea for writers without fame, jubileum books, manuals, learning material .etc. etc.
In the same building as us is an Sofware company, when they have a new piece of software they give us an pdf and we print some manuals. They give it to an test group and then they could see if the manuals are good and the people understand it.
and other client of us is and old man who wrote a book about his youth it's for family and friends so he don't need 1000's of pieces.

Emps: You thought it was more expensive to print on demand. But it's not or let me say it's not when you only need a couple of pieces. When you just hit the bestsellers lists and are selling 10.000 books a week it is not realy an option.

But when your firm is 50 years old and you want to give a jubliee book to all your relations it is.
since we don't use any kind of press, but digital printers, small amounts are cheaper.
But with real presses big amounts are cheaper.

"Freedom of speech is by no means freedom to insult others" from the Razorart goodbye letter.

[This message has been edited by Rinswind 2th (edited 02-16-2003).]

[puts on Bill and Ted voice]

Listen to this dude Rinswind, he knows what he's talking about.

Oh, and emperor, give my love to the princesses?

[/takes off Bill and Ted voice]

Rinswind 2th: That sound very interesting indeed - I was thinking of the personal type of printing on demand but this is more focused on providing smallish runs of books to various sellers and that sounds like a great compliment to selling them as PDFs.

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Emps

FAQs: Emperor

Nope I've had a pretty major search of the forum and I can't find much (I'm sure there was a major thread in the Mad Scientists forum for starters) except for a passing mention here:
www.ozoneasylum.com/Archives/Archive-000002/HTML/20020926-1-004635.html

So here are a few of my recycled thoughts on this:

We make the books relatively short (less than 100 pages?) so that:

1. One or two authors can work on each book with ease (and it isn't too major an undertaking for all the busy people out there).

2. It keeps the file sizes down if we also offer them as PDFs

3. They could be pitched as an impulse buy

4. We could always provide compilations of relevant sets when sales flag

And so we could aim for things like:

Introduction to PHP - just the basics and pos. setting up a server for home testing, etc.

ditto for just about everything we cover here - PS, XML, HTML, CSS, etc.

Things that come up like:

Logo design
Introduction to web design
etc.

And also why it might be better handled through the GN (Guru Guides??):

1. That is realy its purpose - to distill the the knowledge of the inmates (and anyone else who is interested). This has largely been done through the tutorials (and that is still the jewel in our crown) but we are expanding into various areas.

2. We are moving to a new server with various tools - including ones which would help with the online publishing of PDFs.

--------
So thoughts?

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Emps

FAQs: Emperor

This sounds like fun.

Rinswind is right about the "print on demand" thing. Small amounts of copies is much cheaper to be done on plain copiers than it is for big presses or even duplicators. You can get an 11"x17" sheet printed double sided and it would cost the printing company some where around 7-8 mills ($0.008). As for a large press you have to take the time to change the ink and the color drums and such. Pain in the arse really.

If the front cover was the only thing that was going to be printed in color then it would be somewhere around 4-6 cents.

We have started a print shop at the office that I work at. Pretty cool shit really. These machines are really high tech.

There is a Ricoh mahcine called a 6513. This puppy runs Linux! Kind of freaked me out when I first saw it and the display came up and said "Loading LILO"

If we had more details I could see how much I would be charged to run X amount of copies. We have a binder and such too. Could always do the saddle stitch. However, most of the saddle stitch is for somewhere around 15 pages max.

Alright, I feel like I am at work and it's Sunday morning here. So. . . enough talk about the printers.

Later,

C:\


~Binary is best~

While on this topic, I've thought about the creation of a book with the Asylum artwork.

Just a far fetched idea, and probably rather hard to create, since many of our images is not in a high enough resolution for print, but it would be cool though.

Just imagine.. The Art of The Ozone Asylum - a coffee-table book.
Toss in a few of the Pong-games, some weekly preformances, photos and also some other stuff that people have on their harddisks. Include short biographies on the artists and - hey presto - we've got ourselves a underground hit!
(probably have to make it into a series to keep it from being too massive)

I for one would be proud to have one lying about at home.
...just a thought..

I suspect the main problem is going to distribution - any thoughts? I suppose the low numbers people would have to order would make it a low risk venture for people like Amazon.

Another idea - a range of guides to help ease kids into web design (we probably have enough test subjects out there amongst the inmates children ).

Nimraw: I like the idea. Possibly if we make this a success we will be able to pitch ideas to publsihers more effectively and ideas like that might be easier to implement. I would also imagine that we could probably get publishing deals for authors to write longer books (as I know a few of you out there have it in you).

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Emps

FAQs: Emperor

Oh goodie...this thing is starting.

Let me state some points:

The thing i wanted is to make all the info accesible on paper. I don't care if it's done here or on the guru's network or on both. But i think i will fit in very good at the guru's site.

I was thinking of some kind of foundation which will get the money from the sold books, and who can control the copyrights and stuff like that. And in the happy situation we actually got some money out off it the foundation could donate that to both the asylum and the guru's. To help both to keep on running.

And art book will be nice, also printed versions from tutorials would be nice.

The more i think about it the more it should be a joined effort from both sites.

I like the idea of some smaller books +/- 100 pages because then they might live on the internet and be printed when needed. They also could easily kept up to date..

My company also is a little publisher so i will ask if we could do the publishing part.

Emps: i read the info you linked at, intresting read... we could advertize the books here

I really like to sell them from an webpage so even the guys in china can get them.





"Freedom of speech is by no means freedom to insult others" from the Razorart goodbye letter.

MMm distribution...that is going to be a problem i think. Maybe when it's running we could switch it to amazon but then we need to have the whole thing running first.

My company already takes orders through an website so that might be a could choice let someone order it, print it at company for the europe mainland and send it by mail to the buyer. CPrompt could print the American issues, then we need some others to print it on other places.

"Freedom of speech is by no means freedom to insult others" from the Razorart goodbye letter.

[This message has been edited by Rinswind 2th (edited 02-16-2003).]

Rinswind 2th:

quote:

---

I was thinking of some kind of foundation which will get the money from the sold books, and who can control the copyrights and stuff like that. And in the happy situation we actually got some money out off it the foundation could donate that to both the asylum and the guru's. To help both to keep on running.

---

We can sort this kind of thing later on, as things are still up in the air, but I would like to see the bulk of the money going to the authors (as even at circa 100 pages) this is still a big investment of time and effort with some kind foundation taking a cut for hosting costs and general up keep of the two sites (as well as other things - like pos. promotion). We all will be invovled with various tasks like proof reading and spreading the good word (and various other input like a good tip in a post or a comment dropped in the FAQ) and that is sort of our general 'cut' which would be impossible to calculate otherwise .

quote:

---

I like the idea of some smaller books +/- 100 pages because then they might live on the internet and be printed when needed. They also could easily kept up to date.

---

Yeah - the tools we will have mean we could (probably) store them in XML and then make them available in other formats too like MS Reader and Palm, etc.

I also like keeping them shorter than the usual brick you get so people can mix and match them depending on their level of expertise and their specific interests and I also picture them being in little racks by the check out counter (well we can dream ).

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Emps

FAQs: Emperor

I just posted a link at the guru's it's here

"Freedom of speech is by no means freedom to insult others" from the Razorart goodbye letter.

[Emp edit: Quick fix of the URL so it points to the thread -the previous one pinted to the post ]

[This message has been edited by Emperor (edited 02-16-2003).]

Rinswind 2th: Cheers. I suppose when I said distribution I wasn't really thinking about making the books available internationally (which is an important issue) and I suppose it touches more on the publicity front - how do we get the books stocked in the first place? Its the first faltering steps that I'm mainly concerned about as it may not be deemed a worthwile investment.

That is one reason why having the Doc onboard would be a Good Thing as he is so well known his name may open doors that would make things tricky (clearly his input on all sorts of different levels would be greatly appreciated - I was just referring to things on this front specifically ).

I'm quite happy to write letters to Amazon, etc. but I'm sure they receive an awful lot along these lines and any ideas, tips, tricks, etc. we can use to ease that transitional stage would be cool.

I am disappointed that we can't find the old thread(s) as there was gold in them thar hills.

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Emps

FAQs: Emperor

Magazine! I mentioned this a long time ago, but I never got back to it.
I would like to see a magazine.

Bad Letters to the Editor.
Inmate X in the Spotlight.
This Month's Fire-Retardant Software X Tips.
Vector vs. Rastor.
CSS for Vision Impaired Basterds.
C-H-E-S-S Spelled Backwards is Fun.
Pixels for the Masses.

I would like to see content that evolves with the times; more dynamic or fluid, as oppossed to editions and revisions.

I know all of us can kick out a hell of a lot of content that covers a *very* wide field. Rather than try to gather it together for one book, or chapters of a book, do it in installments as it strikes our fancy.

wj: Like Jestah's idea here??:
www.ozoneasylum.com/Forum15/HTML/000053.html

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Emps

FAQs: Emperor

Yeah, but in print. Not that I have anything against an e-zine, but I like the comfort of hardcopy with out having to print it with my home printer.

One thing that is really racking my brain, magazine/e-zine or book, is the focus: how specialized or broad? We are an ultra multi-disciplinary community covering damn near every aspect of the web - and then some. How realistic is it to have Slime talking about recursion and DL-44 talking about Custom Shapes? We could literally come up with something for everyone, but too much could be bad.

I have a few more things to say, but I can't quite articulate. I've got some more mauling over to do.

Anyone remembers that collectors magazines from DeAgostini? Everything about airplanes and you got a nice part of wing with the first edition.When you have all the editions you have like the complete history from airplanes.
Maybe that is what we are looking for. A magazine which covers all the aspects of webdesign but then make series about photoshop and another one about html and one about server side scripting. So you could use them as reference book. A bit like the Computer-Arts specials (i don't know if they are sold in more than Great-Britain and Europe but i am very fond on mine...).
Ok i have to go to work now....but i am realy excited about this whole thread, i hope doc has some spare minute to jump in....

"Freedom of speech is by no means freedom to insult others" from the Razorart goodbye letter.

what great ideas people!!! i love all of them!! i want in!! i don't know what i could do or how i could contribute...but i wanna help!! any way i can! so just lemme know

and i have an 11 year old son you could experiment on *evil grin*.......with the kids book

Submitted for consideration, "jamiosity." =)

The idea is quite interresting. But I'm wondering if their won't be a copyright or intellectual property problem.

I read again the Want to register? section, and there's a gap regarding the copyrights or property of the messages. In this section it is stated several times that the admins are not responsible for the content of the messages which can be slightly different since some recent trials in France an NewZealand where some forum administrators had been sued because of some defamatory messages.

Whatever, I wonder who owns the property of the messages posted here. Since there's nothing stated in the Want to register? section, I suppose, each user owns the property of his/her message so it might be a hell of a job to get all the authorizations.

I'm neither a lawyer nor an expert in right, but those questions should be taken into account.

To stick back to the publishing idea, a collection of small books each one dedicated a specified thread is a great idea and sounds similar to O'REILLY's "pocket reference".

Mathieu "POÏ" HENRI

Some great ideas - finally a part work that is actually useful (as opposed tominitaure teapots of the world).

poi: I'm unsure what the site's ToS has to do with the ideas thrown out here - I don't think anyone has suggested just reproducing the posts here (although I wonder if I have missed the point).

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Emps

FAQs: Emperor

Ok here is a plan (it's the first so shoot it...)
I will put it here step by step:

1) Shifting info.
Some brave people dive into the archive's, and start shifting the info.
And they should get all info what is
-a not too much time related /not specific about an (old) program version
-b what could be used by others,
-c what could be an intresting read.
-d what is not only fun and jokes.
This does not mean ripping the archivers apart so, just lifting the good info out of it.
I think this will be a continuous job since the archives will be growing all the time.
The same thing goes for the guru's network and the faq. The faq will be the easiest since this is already indexed very well.

2) Editing and writing Articles
The sorted info could be linked or placed a "work-pool" where al authors can put from. And write their articles ofcourse the authors are not limited to the pool but should be able search for more (background) related info in the net. This also will be time consuming and a lot of work. The authors will write in plain text or very simple html so it can be made up for print easily.

3) DTP.... The written articles should be made up so they can be printed, also related articles should be grouped to books. All books should be not more than one or .pdf files so the costs are kept low.( Each file could bring start up costs). The print ready files should have included fonts so it will not be tacky when the printshop has not a matching font-type The articles also could be made in XML so they can be adapted easily. Maybe making .pdf's from the .xml files? Al the articles should have the same look and feel.

4) Print
I personally do feel the most for a collectible magazine about different specialities we know (or want to know ) about. And i think it should look like this.: A4/A5, max +- 100 pages on 90 grams/m2 (square meter) white paper, full colour thin laminated cover and four 100/120 grams/m2 full colour pages with nice pics. All pages will be printed on both sides. This way we get an realy classy magazine/book that could easily be read in the train or next to your machine. And thanks to the laminated cover it will look nice for a long time.
To keep the costs as low as possible i think we could best use different printshops on different continents.
Sending two books across the ocean is extremly expensive or the travel time is very long.

5a) Sell
I think the best way to do this is by and database driven website, which is able to auto send emails to the different
Printshops. Also a publishing deal would be very helpful... and some people who want to advertize it...

5b) Pay
Anyone....??? Should also possible for people without credit-card.

This is my plan untill now it's probably a bad one so shoot it or even better improve it.
My boss has told me she liked the idea, but when the company has to do the dtp work we will pay for it, which will raise the price to unacceptable heights. But since there are so many skilled people arround here that should not be a problem. My company will be a publisher for us, but since we are very little company we cannot stock many bookstores yet. But hey it's at least a start.

I still think a foundation which could operate for all the authors and artists and could manage the intelectual rights, legal stuff publishing deals and the money flow, will be a good thing in future.

Personally i think the books should not be very expensive, since all the people with low budget should also can have acces to them.

And for anyone who wanted to be in, there is a hell of o lot to do and don't count on getting rich or even money out off it. If you want in it will cost you a lot of time, a lot of blood, sweat and tears but in the end you will have something to be realy proud on. If this project is going to take off it will be the biggest joined effort we all pulled off.

Pfffff that's it i think.




"Freedom of speech is by no means freedom to insult others" from the Razorart goodbye letter.

[This message has been edited by Rinswind 2th (edited 02-17-2003).]

<edit-on> Double post due to proxy problems...<edit-off>

[This message has been edited by Rinswind 2th (edited 02-17-2003).]

OK I'm going to have to put my hand up to not knowing what we are discussing any more as so many ideas have been put forward in this thread (books, coffee table books, magazines, part works, etc.) and we are really going to have to split things up as, though I'm not sure about anyone else, I'm going to need that to keep track of things.

Are people cool with this?

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Emps

FAQs: Emperor

I really like to find a way to combine all these wonderfull idea's in to one, because if we have to write all those different books and magazines, no work will get done and some good idea's will lay on the shelves getting dusty...
So i think choices should be made..
And i like to so more members joining this discusion...

"Freedom of speech is by no means freedom to insult others" from the Razorart goodbye letter.

And I'm probably of the opinion that combining them all into one would be:

1. Difficult to do as they are really of different 'flavours' - in cookery terms we would end up with a grey mush rather than tasty separate dishes.

2. Biting off too much - we really need to prove we can pull this off before really going for it. Anything else would IMHO be far too ambitious.

I see something like the Guru Guides as being doable (we could probably organise 3 or 4 examples as an initial offering to test the water) and if it takes off it would allow us to parley this into support for other projects. I also really love the idea of a 'part work' magazine but it would also have to be done right.

Of course that is just my opinion it is up to everyone.

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Emps

FAQs: Emperor

Emps: You are probably right about that food analogy

For All: I put together a page to clear out what i think off, look at the fake bookstore

O and be warned it's ugly....

"Freedom of speech is by no means freedom to insult others" from the Razorart goodbye letter.

Rinswind 2th: Thanks for that - I think for now we need to concentrate on things like scope, aims (short and long term), other ideas, etc. for now anyway

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Emps

FAQs: Emperor

I would be happy to edit/proof read

Sorry it took me that long but i needed to take some distance, it's easier for me to get things done, when i can think it over.

Emps: Last time you talked about an time schedule. What about this:

First period a couple of weeks:
-Everyone who wants to help can start digging in the archives.
-To get some useful amount off information we should search one section at the time
-Then we need a central place for the collection of links. This could be done in the "Print Graphics" section.

Second period
When there is enough info gathered we can take off writing the articles, editing and revise them.
All the articles at this stage should be plain text(or any editable and transportable document format) so different people can work on them at different machines.
I'am not shure if this should happen here, at the guru's or or outside both.
This should also be done in a couple off weeks but not more than say 5 weeks.

Third period
After about ten weeks from now this whole thing should have enough momentum to proceed with the next step.
Now after the complete texts are written pictures can be added and the layout can be made. So the first .pdf files can be made. At this time it would be nice to have some webspace for storing the pdf files.
After the finishing the first pdf's i will print some samples for anyone who want's to have one.
But since i will not be able to pay for the printing and the shipping i will ask a little amount of money to cover the costs.

Fourth period
About 3 or 4 months from now we will try to sell the first book via internet. At this time we should also send some samples to (small) publishers to get them intrested in publishing the book. But we can discuss this at that time.
In about six months from now there should be an evaluation about the whole thing.
And some questions should be answerded: How did it go? Can we make some money with it? So yes what to do with the money? Should we start on another book? Which one? Which problems did we encounter? Who do we solved them? What next?
We should have some positive answers here. If we are not able to reach the third or the fourth period i think this project will not be possible to do. Maybe the time table is not good but we have to reach the fourth period to get this thing off the ground.

I will open another thread in the Print Graphics session where the found information can be linked from.
The first theme, just for trying things out, can be the history from the asylum/guru's network /handson sites.

<edit-on>Info pool is here http://www.ozoneasylum.com/Forum18/HTML/000148.html<edit-off>

"Freedom of speech is by no means freedom to insult others" from the Razorart goodbye letter.

[This message has been edited by Rinswind 2th (edited 02-24-2003).]

Rinswind 2th: I probably wasn't clear before but I'm not sure that dredging the threads is the way to go about putting a book together. I'd imagine it would be simpler/better for people to just write the hundred pages and if they want to they could refer to old threads for examples if they need to. Anything else could easily result in a bit of a mess (a copy and paste job really). I may be wrong about this but that is the way I envisioned things (hence my confusion over talk about going through the threads and copyright).

I think we need some volunteers to write a hundred odd pages on a subject but I'd imagine we need to clear up the issue of approach. I would suggest that people picking a specific subject and writing a piece from scratch on it would mean it would remain tight and focused on the subject at hand.

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Emps

FAQs: Emperor

Ah good place to sell a book about the Asylum would be Borders, or Barns & Noballs (whoops) Nobles.

I look in there for computer stuff all the time, (um...or at least I did until I found the Asylum)

Emps: you are probably right (as usual ) but my point was to give people acces to all that good info in which is laying there on the shelves getting dusty. But i agree i t would be a messy thing to get the info outh of the treats, edit, reform, revise, another edit, another revise, restyle etc. Probably writing from scratch, will be less work and the results might be a lot better. But still there is a lot of info in these old threads and i realy like to use this knowledge when possible.
So maybe the form should be this, writing articles from scratch and use the knowledge stored in these threads for background and not using the threads themselves. This also should provide us with better tools to search the threads.
Maybe we should not even look at them, and just write those articles. But my point was to find an better use for those hidden gems.

Anyway i still think we should work on a printed version within 6 months from now. I am realy afraid when it takes too long before we have a first edition the project will die and all made efforts will be useless.

Maskk:
A deal with Barnes&Nobles would be very cool since they have bookstores all over the US but not that realistic i think at least not as this stage.

Anyone has a clue what the first book should be about? Regardless from using the threads or not.
I thought of the history from the both those sisters sites we love so much, but i amnot shure if we could make this interesting.


"Freedom of speech is by no means freedom to insult others" from the Razorart goodbye letter.

Rinswind 2th: I completely agree with you that there is a vast quantity of unmined information in the archived threads and this is what the FAQ was designed to help with. Although the FAQs themselves can be quite broad in scope they do link to various permutations on the problem at hand (I'm thinking of the JavaScript preloader FAQ for example).

In some ways we can use the FAQ to create an easily accessible front to the rich seams of information (like mineshafts) in the archives and it should give us some good insight into what people are really interested in and it could help us target things.

Soooo we can attack this on various fronts:

1. More people going through the old threads and creating FAQs (we have a FAQ where you can post requests for threads to be archived so we don't suffer too much link rot).

2. People can tell us what they'd like to see - give the people what they want.

3. People could let us know if they were interested in writing stuff. Everyone is busy but I kind of hope that going for something along the lines of 100 pages makes it long enough to cover a specific topic in depth but not too long to be unreasonable.

Authors should also bear in mind that there are plenty of us up for lending reading advice, tips, thoughts, etc. so they aren't on there own. They are also welcome to contact my via email/ICQ if they don't want to post.

-----------
I am also intrigued by the mention of a book by the Doc in some old threads.

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Emps

FAQs: Emperor

if people would take my damn suggestion and Link the Thread Subject instead of the url, we wouldn't be in this.... just post the thread name even if it's not a link... and a quick search could find it later..

or- when archieving- stick a little "Original URL: http://www.OzoneAsylum.com/Forum1/HTML/006693.html" in it...

..then all you would need is to sort out the 6 or 7 threads and find which one you need..

-A Temporary Fix-
How about posting the URL in all the threads that the FAQ points to so maybe at least we have *something* to hang on to?


Code - CGI - links - DHTML - Javascript - Perl - programming - Magic - http://www.twistedport.com
ICQ: 67751342

[This message has been edited by Petskull (edited 02-24-2003).]

PS: That will all be sorted soon(ish?) anyway so I'm not overly concerned about that issue except as a way for people to help get threads archived.

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Emps

FAQs: Emperor