marktrade's work in progress

[marktrade]

Let me know what issues you have of CG:SP you have so I don't have to get them shipped to NZ. No point wasting money if I don't need to. Or destroying someone's collection

I think you've already scanned all the ones I have, but I'll keep you apprised.

[KiwiArcader]

I have two further issues of CG:SP yet to scan. Those are issues 98 & 99. Cameron is getting a postage cost to ship another big bundle of issues to me so if you haven't purchased any issues as yet it might pay to hold off a bit. I can always get issues numbers off him if you want to keep an eye out for M.I.A issues ( I believe he has most but not all issues of this title)

[marktrade]

Apologies for being very silent lately. Had a lot of stuff I had to figure out, some personal, some actually related to scanning. I never stop challenging myself. I've lost over 120 lbs. since Pokémon Go came out last July and have about 50 more pounds to go. It really seems like those are the hardest.

I scanned an issue of Game Player's PC Strategy Guide and have an issue of Game Player's MS-DOS Strategy Guide coming in the mail. Little by little we'll conquer this magazine. Today is an issue of Dimension-3.

https://archive.org/details/@marktrade

https://www.patreon.com/marktrade

[kitsunebi]

That's awesome news about the Game Player's MS-DOS Strategy Guide - I've never even seen a pic of one online (although I have a suspicion that I may have owned one or two back in the day).  Never heard of Dimenion-3 but I see it covers PC games (and Mac!) - SOLD!

I'm guessing that we aren't allowed to host your newer scans at Retromags anymore since they violate the "no profit" policy, but I've definitely got your archive.org page bookmarked.

[marktrade]

I suppose technically it's called "The Game Player's Guide to MS-DOS Computer Games." That's Volume 1 Issue 2.

I'll still focus on scanning content that falls within Retromags guidelines and have never been halfway to making a profit.

[kitsunebi]

Well, perhaps "profit" is the wrong word.  Compensation?  I'm not really sure how Patreon falls under the rules.  I guess it isn't any different from the donations Retromags receives to pay our server bills, or more specifically, like the excess money that goes into the slush fund after the server bills are already paid.  Still, no matter how fast you scan, I imagine at some point the money coming in will outweigh the money being spent.  Last year I spent a little over $1000 for the purposes of scanning for this website.  That included a nice Fujitsu scanner, a heat gun, and at least a couple hundred magazines (not sure of the exact number) - only 25 of which I actually had time to scan and edit.  Without the equipment to buy, and with a surplus of unscanned mags, I expect to have much lower costs this year.  Your patreon currently pulls in over $2000 per year, so I would imagine that you probably couldn't put 100% of that into acquisitions/scanning efforts unless maybe you replace your scanner every year as well. 

Mind you, I'm not criticizing.  I think what you've got going is awesome, and if it ever reached 50 grand per year so you could quit your job and just scan magazines for us all day, I sure as hell wouldn't complain about it.  I just wasn't sure how patreon fit into our rules.  But assuming Philly's cool with it - ahem....I'd like to take this opportunity that I will graciously accept donations of cash, old pc game mags, and craft beer.

[marktrade]

My scanner alone was over $4000. The software to use the scanner was $600 (it's a production scanner meant for corporate use). I've spent about $3000 just on magazines. Plenty other supplies and costs go into everything. If I am super lucky and don't lose any patrons, maybe I break even in five years. After only two months, I'm not exactly counting on that to happen.

[KiwiArcader]

I hear you loud and clear. It's hard enough getting donations to help with postage for magazines let alone trying to cover hardware costs.

If my Fujitsu dies there's no way I can afford to replace it so it will be back to a flatbed scanner and likely one magazine scanned a week. And I can't really get away with using an A4 document scanner due to the volume of oversize magazines in my collection. It's a quandry we face when trying to justify such costs on what is only a hobby. 

[kitsunebi]

Yeah, I guess if you need an A3 or larger scanner you might be SOL.  I'm content with A4 since almost all of my stuff is that size.  You can get a top of the line A4 scanner with free included software for $400.  Kind of ridiculous that there's nothing more affordable in-between.  But good lord - $3000 on magazines alone?  Are these those $20 a pop mags I usually ignore lol?  I think my average cost per mag including shipping is somewhere around $2.  $3000 would buy me more mags than my apartment could hold.

[Depressor]

Does anybody use document cameras? I don't know how it really names, but i think you understand me - it's a camera on a support with top-down view...

 

[kitsunebi]

I suppose that could be useful if you wanted to scan a really old/fragile/valuable document that you couldn't risk scanning in some other way, but it would probably be a terrible way to scan magazines.  For one, the image quality would depend a great deal on how the ambient light in the room hits the page, and any curling or unevenness of the paper would be evident in the scan/photo.

[marktrade]

On 2/1/2017 at 4:25 AM, Depressor said:

Does anybody use document cameras? I don't know how it really names, but i think you understand me - it's a camera on a support with top-down view...

 

I've been experimenting with using my iPhone camera on a stand to "scan" some pages. I was thinking it might be useful for pages that are printed in some special way, like holograms or reflective coloring, or with posters that don't go through my scanner well. It's actually possible to use the panorama feature on the iPhone to get a picture of a long poster by keeping the camera stationary and just moving the poster underneath the camera. It takes some practice and I'm still working on it.

However, I'm definitely going to start using my camera more often to document the appearance of magazines still sealed in their original bags. @Sean697 recently sent me some he wanted scanned and I've been procrastinating on them, but I know for sure that before any scanning I want to get good pictures of them before taking them out of their bags. What sort of standard should I be shooting for, though? Natural lighting? Midday or dusk? Black or white background? I don't know, there's definitely an art to it with room for differing perspectives.

Edited February 10, 2017 by marktrade

[kitsunebi]

I think the next logical step (aside from ditching the iPhone and buying a $1000 SLR to photograph these things) is to buy mint-condition/sealed copies of every other mag released that month and arranging them all on muli-tiered bookshelves so you can document what it looked like when the magazine was on sale at Barnes & Noble.  A separate series of photos should document what the mag looked like rolled up inside your mailbox if you were a subscriber, with a subset of high resolution photos documenting the address labels.  Anything less is unacceptable.

 

[marktrade]

I like the way you think!

Continuing to upload magazines to ADO, including some obscure ones not in our database like PC Ace, PC Simulations, and CD-ROM Power. Some more issues of Electronic Entertainment. Today will be another one along with an issue of Computer Player. I'll upload Retromags versions and make the corresponding missing mag threads eventually but still sort of waiting for the site changes to stabalize.

Edited February 10, 2017 by marktrade

[marktrade]

Finally decided to use Twitter to post updates.

https://twitter.com/marktrade_scans

[Areala]

Just noticed you put up an issue of Tokyo Pop...do you have others, or was this a one-off? And if it was a one-off, are you interested in acquiring more...?

*huggles*
Areala

[KiwiArcader]

Yeah, some really eclectic ones are appearing on your Archive.org page. 

If they are going to take time to get put online here I'm keen on getting PDF versions online over at OGM. Will help break up all the CG:SP and PC Gamer stuff over there. 

[kitsunebi]

4 hours ago, Areala said:

Just noticed you put up an issue of Tokyo Pop...do you have others, or was this a one-off? And if it was a one-off, are you interested in acquiring more...?

*huggles*
Areala

Oh man.  I own every issue of Tokyopop and Mixxzine before it.  It's funny how Marktrade's description makes it sound like a gaming mag.  I forgot they even covered games.  I'm pretty sure Mixxzine was just manga, and Tokyopop was their short-lived attempt to be a jack-of-all-trades mag, before Tokyopop finally found success by publishing Japanese-format manga collections and marketing them to bookstores (until that market collapsed and their publishing branch went out of business.)  It reminds me of the times when I bought pretty much every manga that was published in English.  Ironically, I more or less stopped reading manga cold turkey when I moved to Japan and stick to western comics now. 

 

[kitsunebi]

4 hours ago, KiwiArcader said:

If they are going to take time to get put online here I'm keen on getting PDF versions online over at OGM.

Actually, the download section here is the one section that works as it should and isn't waiting on any fixes.

[marktrade]

16 hours ago, Areala said:

Just noticed you put up an issue of Tokyo Pop...do you have others, or was this a one-off? And if it was a one-off, are you interested in acquiring more...?

*huggles*
Areala

It's the only one I have. I'm not looking for more right now, but maybe someday?

[marktrade]

Something else I wanted to mention about archive.org and large files. The BookReader web app from the Open Library, which archive.org uses in its fullscreen reading interface, is a dynamic application that re-renders each page from the source file to whatever size your browser window is set at or to whatever zoom level you're in. So you can access all the benefits of 600 DPI without having to download the entire file.

[Areala]

On 2/14/2017 at 3:37 AM, kitsunebi77 said:

Oh man.  I own every issue of Tokyopop and Mixxzine before it.  It's funny how Marktrade's description makes it sound like a gaming mag.  I forgot they even covered games.  I'm pretty sure Mixxzine was just manga, and Tokyopop was their short-lived attempt to be a jack-of-all-trades mag, before Tokyopop finally found success by publishing Japanese-format manga collections and marketing them to bookstores (until that market collapsed and their publishing branch went out of business.)  It reminds me of the times when I bought pretty much every manga that was published in English.  Ironically, I more or less stopped reading manga cold turkey when I moved to Japan and stick to western comics now. 

 

Kind of along the same lines, but did you ever buy 'Pulp'? It was a sister publication of Mixxzine, put out by Viz, but with the subtitle "The Manga Magazine for Mature Readers". Had some really great stories in it, like "Dance Til Tomorrow".

*huggles*
Areala

[kitsunebi]

4 hours ago, Areala said:

Kind of along the same lines, but did you ever buy 'Pulp'? It was a sister publication of Mixxzine, put out by Viz, but with the subtitle "The Manga Magazine for Mature Readers". Had some really great stories in it, like "Dance Til Tomorrow".

*huggles*
Areala

I have every issue of that as well.  Viz in general released better comics than Tokyopop.  Not necessarily due to the quality of the original manga, but rather because the translators/adaptors at Viz were much better at their jobs, so their English adaptations just read better.  The other Viz anthology, Animerica Extra (which I have every issue of -see a theme?) was kind of hit and miss with me.

[marktrade]

Nearing a complete collection of Game On! USA. The first six issues have been uploaded. The seventh and final issue will be uploaded tonight.

https://archive.org/details/GameOnUSA

On 2/14/2017 at 1:40 AM, kitsunebi77 said:

Actually, the download section here is the one section that works as it should and isn't waiting on any fixes.

Even still, since the DB is what I value most about Retromags, I'm holding off until its status quo. I don't want to mess anything up.

[kitsunebi]

1 minute ago, marktrade said:

Even still, since the DB is what I value most about Retromags, I'm holding off until its status quo. I don't want to mess anything up.

I'll shamefully admit I don't actually contribute anything useful to the magazine database.  I mean sure, I add the basic stuff like country, editor, page count and price whenever I add a cover or link a download to the mag DB, but I never take the time to add anything useful by typing up the magazine contents.  It's not something I look for myself (if the mag is available to download, I download it and find out the contents for myself; if it isn't available, knowing the contents does me no immediate good).  Still, I'm amazed by some of the detailed contents descriptions some people type up, and agree that doing so is an invaluable addition to the site.  Unfortunately, I'm too lazy (or too busy adding other content to the site, usually).