Funny Lookin' Glasses

So let's talk about vision. About a month ago, a big chunk of the retina in my right eye detached. We don't actually know why.  I subsequently had the surgery to repair it, and healing is proceeding apace. 

After a month of not-very-patiently waiting for things to stabilize, I was told yesterday by my eye surgeon that my vision in that eye probably is not stable enough to get a prescription yet. This was not good news. “See you in 4-6 weeks,” he said.

There was no way I was going that long without being able to read or work. It’s bad for sanity. So I ordered this: 

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B077HRKX9H?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_fed_asin_title

It's a little suitcase full of lenses of different strengths and a test frame to put them in. It arrived this morning.

Modern opticians do this kind of testing with a machine that you haul up to your face like binoculars bolted to the ground at scenic overlooks. But before that, they used kits like this, with a temporary glasses frame and interchangeable, stackable lenses.

With some tweaking, and working from my most recent glasses prescription, I was able to work up settings that allow me to read well. Not as well as before—my right eye will never be the instrument it was—but well enough. Thus, the picture above. I was never one who worried about looking funny. :P

The optics in this set aren’t brilliant, but they don’t need to be. The frame is ridiculously small. But it’s good enough. At this point, for the next 4-6 weeks, that’ll do.

Notes on the Smith-Corona D-200 Dot Matrix Printer

 In my spare time, haha, I'm into retrocomputing. So that my old machines have a printer they can talk to (and to remind myself why laser print is such an improvement over dot matrix) I bought a Smith Corona D-200 Dot Matrix printer on Ebay. Cost: about $50 shipped.

Notes:

Manual

The manual is here: Archive.com

It's not a great manual. There's no troubleshooting. There's no spec for the printer cartridge. Not even a model number. 

Ribbons

Ribbons for the thing seem to be specific to this model and unobtanium. My ribbon is in decent condition given its age, and will probably work well enough with some WD40 or mineral oil. Old trick from long ago. If you find a source for NOS or compatible ribbons, do please reply to this message.

Self Test Weirdness

Self test won't work without paper loaded. If the online led is flashing, it means you're detecting an out of paper event. Unless the dip switches are set to ignore it, this will stop the printer from self-testing.

Self test does not override IBM mode's linefeed settings. If your printer is in IBM mode (SW2 switch 1 on) the meanings of all the SW1 switches are different, and SW1 switch 2 (I think) can block your printer from linefeeding during selftest.

I turned off IBM mode, and my printer now linefeeds like a champ. 

Interfacing this with my XT clone (Micro8088 home built) has been fun. Ultimately I had two unrelated problems: 

1. My XT clone won't boot with this specific printer card connected to the D-200 when the D-200 is on. The video system seems to not initialize, and the system hangs. Solution: will not fix. Turning the printer on after boot seems to workr fine.

2. My dip switches were set badly. Most especially, the flow control system MUST be set for ready/busy (that's all IEE1284 Centronix parallel understands, and bits MUST (I think) be set to eight. This printer's built in intelligence is low enough that settings which are only appropriate for serial connections still effect it in parallel port mode.

I've distilled the DIP switch settings in the manual down to one spreadsheet page. You can find them in the Downloads section of my website (http://www.jamesrstrickland.com) 

I'm only Meta-dead

 I am, in fact, not dead.

The recent disappearance of my Facebook and Instagram accounts are not the result of my death, but of my disgust with Meta. First, they introduced AI profiles, with no way to block them. They withdrew them in the face of customer backlash, but I am certain they will be introduced again. I do not log into social media to talk to robots. 

Then, they quite publicly got out of the business of fact checking. To be fair, I've never seen an article that was fact-checked one way or the other, but to do so now, in the face of political organizations on both sides employing the Big Lie tactic, is irresponsible.

As far as I'm concerned, Meta can go hang. 

I'm fairly well settled on Bluesky, so if you want to media socially with me, look for me there. If you want me as a follower, be aware that you need to post some content, not just repost other people's stuff. Your content needs to sound like there's a human brain behind it, rather than an AI. And there's this: I do not go on social media for news. That's like getting news from the writing on the bathroom wall at Walmart. So if your feed is all about what a shmoo this or that politician is, on either side, I probably won't follow you. I might even block you altogether without discussion. I'm tired, I don't want to listen to how awful this or that is—I know already—and I'm conserving my sanity points for stuff that matters.

Like my next book.

-JRS

Now on Bluesky...

Most social media platforms make me itch, to be honest. I'm grudgingly on Facebook, but I only friend people I actually know there. I'm here, but here doesn't have much traction. And now, for the four of you that *do* read my blog here, I'm on Bluesky.  Look for @jamesrstrickland.bsky.social

Also, if you've noticed Amazon wants you to re-download Bikini Body because there's a new version, it's not a censorship thing. It's a fixing errors that embarrass me thing.

-JRS

Bikini Body is In Print

 It's that time. All the changes are rolled in, Is are dotted, Ts are crossed, KDP is happy, and "Poltergeist! Bikini Body" has shipped. More info on my website at http://www.jamesrstrickland.com.

Bikini Body, the third Poltergeist! novel, is about what happens when Nina Cohen, a poltergeist detective in a human body, goes on vacation to a small vacation town on Lake Superior. Does she lie on the beach with a mai tai? Does she read a book? 

She does not. 

She gets into trouble, and winds up digging into a long-buried mystery involving a missing exotic dancer, a local scandal, and the legendary Lake Superior Mermaid.

I've also updated book 2, "Poltergeist! Dead of Winter" with advertising for "Bikini Body," as well as many fixed typos and so on, documented in the revision history in the very front of the book.

I've also updated the ebooks for "Poltergeist! Dead of Winter" and "Poltergeist! Ask the Dust" with their own CSS, embedded fonts, and all the goodness that the Kindle reader is so unlikely to let you actually see. I have my reasons. Watch this space.

KDP Covers and Affinity Publisher v2

A few things on doing KDP covers in Affinity Publisher:

1. Layer styles are where you style text for anything not text-ish, like leading, kerning, and so on. Layer styling doesn't kill the text into a graphic the way it does in some packages.

2. The document dimensions you give Affinity Publisher at setup are the trimmed dimensions, not the absolute dimensions. KDP is supposed to recognize the metadata in the PDF that tells it this, but surprise, it doesn't. So subtract twice the bleed from both the height and width of the absolute cover size (from KDP Cover Calculator) before feeding this into Affinity Publisher's page size.

3. Use frames to set component sizes. If you still need alignment lines, snap them to the edge of a frame, then move them. The delta value will give you the amounts you want.

4. Almost always, you want Duplicate Layer and not Copy Layer.

Does this suggest that Bikini Body is approaching publication? It does. I have prototypes of the paperback and hardback versions ordered. If they check out, we're good to go.

Toolchain Changes, Addendum

Two significant tool chain changes since my last post. 1. My day to day writing tool has become IA Writer because 2. My day to day writing machine has become a new (to me) M1 Mac mini. I'm pretty much done with Linux.

Also, I finished Bikini Body back in mid-August, and it's back from E.C., so I'm working through the change list. :). I expect to release Bikini Body soon. I'm also tentatively pulling together the plot threads of Nina Cohen 4: tentatively titled Ghost Light.