meeks

update

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 23:46:12 GMT

I managed to assemble an .epub file that I think will display properly in iBooks, and I'm fiddling with my .mobi file to see if I can use the Kindle Fire's region magnification feature. The Nook version is proving to be even more difficult than I anticipated because B&N apparently won't even let me download a sample Nook Kids book if I don't have anything to read it on >.< Why do they even put a download button on the website if it doesn't work? The annoying thing is that I don't even need to read the book...I just want to take a look at the files in a text editor so I know what special markup they've added to the .epub file. Grr.

Meanwhile, I've sent the big PDF file to ego_sideways to be given to the printer, and I'm trying very hard to stop worrying about it. This may be a good time to take a break and work on some art stuff...

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A publishing related teal deer

Sat, 18 Feb 2012 05:49:41 GMT

Okay, now that I've typed that, I think that someone totally needs to make "Teal Deer" into a book imprint. XD

Anyway, I've been trying to write a post for about three days now, but I woke up horribly congested on Wednesday and ended up spending most of it curled in a blanket watching cartoons and drinking tea. Yesterday was spent recovering and trying to get rehydrated, though I did manage to get an icon done!

I've been pretty busy with publishing tasks over the past week; mostly working on book formatting, but also refreshing my knowledge of ISBNs, reading about EAN barcodes, comparing puppet prices and the like. A Kindle Fire edition is out for testing, I should have an iBooks version in a few days, and then I have to see if I can put together a file that will work on a nook color. B&N seems to have restricted access to their nook kids formatting info, so that last one will be a challenge. The printer file just needs a barcode for the back cover before I send it out.

I worked in a print shop for a couple of years, and I've spent a lot of time around designers (and one very picky designer in particular), so this is far from the first file that I've sent to press, but I admit that I'm a bit nervous. I know I'm not entirely clueless, but it also means that I'm aware that there are a lot of tiny things I might have missed, and it is the first time I've had to format an entire book (not to mention the first one with my name on the cover!) so I guess it's understandable. I keep wanting to fiddle with the kerning, and am fighting the urge to rework the illustrations. And I pray to Titivillus that no typos have made it through.

We don't have the budget for a hardbound first edition, and the book apparently doesn't have enough pages for a secure perfect binding, so we're going to try a saddle stitch with 18 sheets of somewhat heavy paper. There should be enough of a bleed around each page to compensate for the creep, and this type of binding does have the advantage of being able to open flat without breaking the spine. I'm worried that it will disappear on bookstore and library shelves, but there isn't much we can do about that. Hopefully a few places will face it out, so potential readers will be able to see it.

In...I was going to type "other news", but it's actually kind of related :P — I upgraded to OS X Lion about a week ago so I could play around with iBooks Author, thinking it would save me the trouble of hand-coding that version of the book. The app is everything it's advertised to be...it's well designed, easy to use...and won't let me make a square book. The page size is locked to the size of the iPad screen, and there's no way to change it. A small part of my brain thinks I should find this frustrating, but it just makes so much sense that I felt like I ought to have predicted it, and couldn't help but laugh. The app will also not export body copy in anything but a dozen or so appealing and very readable typefaces. I don't know if it's because I'm so used to taking orders from a designer, or if it's because I've seen so many eye-searingly horrible results of clueless people with too many options, but I actually appreciate Apple's efforts to prevent ordinary people from unintentionally making unreadably ugly books. (The Lion upgrade, btw, was worth it, with or without iBA. I love the new Mail.app and the MailTags upgrade that the folks at Indev made to go with it, and a display glitch in ArtRage's canvas settings has now been fixed! Yay!)

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status: back up!

Wed, 11 Jan 2012 19:29:08 GMT

Yesterday's outage was apparently caused by a major drive failure, and my host informs me that the problem should now be resolved. :) They did say that some recent data was lost, since they had to restore from a backup, but I hadn't made any changes since then. Please let me know if you encounter any further problems.

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status: offline

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 19:39:23 GMT

If anyone else is having problems loading mikaspace.net, or viewing any of my images, I am aware of the problem, but I'm not sure what to do about it. I've been unable to access anything on the server, including my e-mail, and the website of my host (qualserv.net) since I got back online after my flight.

My image links all use a forwarding url that I set up to point to my off-site storage space, so if the issue isn't resolved soon, I can change them so the pictures will display here, at least. In the meantime, my latest batch of paintings can all be viewed at my Sketch Fest artist page.

Sorry for the downtime!

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Sun, 10 Apr 2011 06:22:36 GMT

Livejournal was only giving me intermittent access this afternoon, so I didn't really have a chance to play around with the styles there. I did figure out how to get the posts from an RSS feed to display on my website, though, so it wasn't a complete loss. I'm going to call it a night and start thinking about the actual project introduction/call for prompts post tomorrow.

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moving in

Sat, 09 Apr 2011 06:42:46 GMT

Well, it's taken several hours of research and experimenting, but I finally got my new Dreamwidth journal styled to match my website. There are still a few oddities, like the numbers looking oversized next to the links in small-caps, but I at least managed to get the letters evenly sized, thanks to the text-transform CSS property :) I'm rather pleased with the results, so I'm going to see how much of what I've learned will carry over to LJ. If there's any time left, I'll also try to set my website up to mirror the latest art-related entries, since there will (hopefully!) be more of them once my new project gets started. I'll be importing my old entries from LJ once they've recovered from their technical problems, and all future posts should appear both here and there.

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