You probably have to be a geek to laugh at the title of this blog entry; that’s all right, because I had to be a geek to think it was clever.

As of last night, the PDF (Portable Document Format) files for the new books, Game Ideas Unlimited Volume 1 and Faith and Gaming, were completed and uploaded to their respective printers.  That means that the first of those is complete, but that we the directors, meeting this weekend, will have to agree on the price.  As to the latter, I’ve agreed on the price, but do not yet have the cover art; this has been promised for early next week, so I might just have these ready for Ubercon, as hoped.

On another front, the Collision concert has been postponed a week.  This was a decision made by the organizers, who apparently had overlooked a conflict with a local high school play.  Fortunately, we’re all good with that date, and pleased to have the extra rehearsal time–we might even be able to do three songs instead of just two.

I’ve much to do tonight, so I’d better move to doing it.

–M. J. Young

I’m still working on those two books, Faith and Gaming and Game Ideas Unlimited Volume 1.  The problem presently is that the new Adobe Acrobat program, while it probably works much better than the one I was using, does not work the same as the one I was using, and I’ve not been able to figure out how to make it do what I want it to do.

It has to do with font embedding and paper size, both of which have to be right, and different for each document.  There are two ways to move a Word document into Portable Document Format–one by opening Word and exporting it, the other by opening Acrobat and importing it.  These have different requirements, different controls, and different default settings.

The printer that will be handling Game Ideas Unlimited requires that the pages be an unusual size–what they call Comic Book Size–and that the files be kept small by embedding all the fonts needed but no others.  If I work from Acrobat, it will import the file exactly as it appears, automatically setting the page size to match the settings in Word–but I cannot get it to embed any fonts at all.  This is particularly frustrating, because it is evident that were I able to get it to embed all the fonts, I could then remove all the fonts I do not wish to have embedded; but with no fonts embedded, I cannot add them.

If, however, I work from Word, it asks me to select a paper size for the target document, from a list of paper sizes that have not dimensions but names–things like A2 and Legal.  I know what those are, but I do not know even a tenth of the document names, and I do not know which one would be right for the “comic book” dimensions I’m using.  Nor have I been able to find a listing anywhere of what size each of those names indicates.  I do have control over font embedding from that end, but I’ve not worked out how to get the right paper size.

So I’m racing against the clock, and the artist, who has already uploaded the cover images (and I’ve not had time to review them, but I trust him on this), needs the PDF completed and uploaded so he can get the spine dimensions and finish that; but the clock keeps me running in other directions, too.  My mother-in-law had to take her social security check to the bank today, which means I had to be there early enough to do that before taking her shopping; I also had to fix dinner, because the man who loves to cook for us is now cooking for someone else for the present.  I don’t mind doing it, but it is time consuming.

So here I am, the night slipping away and no extra time in it, trying to finish today’s work and be ready for tomorrow’s, letting you know that I am trying to have those books ready by the end of the month, but it’s going to be a challenge.

–M. J. Young

I awoke today and looked at the bedside clock, the one with numbers large enough that even I can read it without my glasses, as long as I’m somewhere on the bed.  It told me that there wasn’t much time before my wife would be getting ready for work, so I’d better hurry if I wanted to use the bathroom.  I pulled myself upright, and grabbed my watch–which gave me an entirely different view of the matter, telling me that I had plenty of time to get coffee and get organized before her alarm would ring.

Of course, her alarm is in that other clock, the one with the considerably later time on it.  However, I realized, impressively quickly given how foggy I still was otherwise, that the bedside clock had compensated automatically for the change for Daylight Savings Time which was not to be this weekend, because we did it several weeks back.

I was working on moving both new books toward publication when I hit a snag.  I had both publisher sites open, because I figured I could upload Game Ideas Unlimited:  Volume I to the one site while uploading Faith and Gaming to the other.  The former is with a printer who has done merchandise for us in the past, but never books, so I was fighting my way through there process and very pleased finally to have come to the place where I could upload the text.  I had not to that point done the conversion to portable document format (PDF), but that’s a relatively quick fix.  After all, I’ve had Adobe Acrobat Professional 4.0 on my computer for most of a decade, and never had any serious problems with it.

However, I encountered my first serious problem with it.  It is not Adobe’s fault, but MicroSoft’s.  It seems that when we made the change to the new operating system, it failed to recognize the Acrobat software as printers.  If you have an Acrobat writer on your computer, it shows up as several different types of printer drivers, which permit you rather simply to hit “print” and turn just about anything you can print into the universal portable document format.  However, those options were absent from my system.

Nor does MicroSoft make it easy to move printer drivers around.  Obviously, the drivers are still on my computer, in the printers folder on the old hard drive; however, the printers folder apparently is not called that, and I could not find it.

Mercifully, I had to drive someone home last night a “fur piece”, about eighty miles each way, which put me in the neighborhood of our friend and treasurer Adam Keller, who owns a disused copy of a newer version of the software (he has purchased a yet newer version for his own use, so this was an unused license).  I will be upgrading later this afternoon or early this evening, which hopefully will resolve this problem in plenty of time.

So I have much to do, but hopefully enough time in which to do it.

–M. J. Young

A pre-release version of N^aRCISSIST: Crash Free, a unique roleplaying game, sequel to the C^oNTINUUM time travel RPG, is now available.

N^aRCISSIST v. 0.5 features the basic Dreamcatcher RPG System, with special new modifications, as well as many of the arguments for how and why alternate timelines and universes exist, and how they operate. Fighting for freedom across time is outlined, and the reasons why friendship and trust are the most precious things in the multiverse are explored… in all their dimensions.

The Gaming Outpost has received permission to publish a sneak peak of N^aRCISSIST v. 0.5 for you all to read. The teaser, a glossary of terms and concepts used in the final product, is available for download in PDF format. Those wishing to view the file must have the Adobe Reader software - which is available for free at http://www.adobe.com/.

DOWNLOAD NOW: narcgloss05.pdf [27.6KB]