marktrade

There have been zero complaints. All the feedback has been positive. Half the time people have just been reassuring me that I don't need to update every day and I shouldn't burn myself out. I am very lucky to have such support, but also very happy to provide my best work. And I think my best work right now is in 600dpi.

All six of my issues of InterActivity have been uploaded to ADO. Today I finished editing and uploading an issue of Mead Publishing's Electronic Entertainment (not IDG's). It's the first time I've scanned an entire issue with a flatbed and without separating any of the pages. It's only 44 pages, so it's of a manageable download size as well! https://archive.org/details/ElectronicEntertainment198309 Next I'll be uploading some various data discs from the 90s.

Okay, I'll scan it, then! I'll PM you my address.

Calvin and Hobbes, no question.

I'm a little confused. Are you just talking about a cover piece or an entire issue?

Currently editing and uploading issues of InterActivity to ADO.

Also thank you to aloram for donating.

Or you can just upload it to archive.org and it will automatically create a text searchable PDF in the download options alongside your original upload.

Maybe it's an OS thing. On the Mac it's very simple to search within PDFs through the OS itself. You don't have to open any programs or any of the files themselves. You just to go to whatever directory level of your collection you want to search in and then type in the search window. It'll give you not only results with matching filenames but matching content. Of course the files themselves have to be "text searchable PDFs," a specific kind of PDF that not even Kiwiarcader cares about, and he cares about PDFs!

It's more about being able to search multiple magazines. Last year during the Shenmue kickstarter I very much wanted to research past coverage on Shenmue to learn more about the original vision of the game and where a new game might lead. With OCR I could very easily search "Shenmue" and related words like "Virtua Fighter RPG" and "Yu Suzuki" and jump right the pages I need without having to dig through any files. I realize I'm the only person on this site who cares about OCR, but haven't any of you ever looked at the magazines on your shelves and just wished you could type in a search query and instantly find what you're looking for?

The PDF files that are automatically created do look pretty bad, but they're searchable and great for looking things up quickly. I believe that's their intended purpose.

Ah! So that explains it. The CBR files that are downloadable there are identical to the files that I upload. I ran an MD5 check on a couple now just to be sure. It's just that they use the file to derive a number of other compressed file formats as well. To download the original unaltered file that I uploaded, go to the "download options" panel on the right and click "COMIC BOOK RAR."

Retromags Presents! Electronic Entertainment 12 December 1994 Retromags Database Entry Download from Retromags Download from The Internet Archive

Which ones have been edited? I didn't notice. I scanned two copies of the same issue without realizing it. I uploaded them both just in case there was an error with one of them. The "u" just means "unedited."

It's possible I marked about half of those as "scanning." That's because they actually did go through the scanning phase, but not the editing phase. I wanted to see if there was anyone interested in helping to edit, so I uploaded them unedited to an external site. Also the original donor, aloram, really wanted to at least have them scanned, so I quickly obliged. https://archive.org/details/UneditedGPScans So far no one has expressed interest in editing them, which is a shame because it's a good way to get patron or team member status here at Retromags. People sometimes complain about being asked to donate to get patron status. Well no one has to! They can help edit scans. Now, the mystery is that I only scanned and uploaded issues past #80. Everything that's marked "scanning" that's before issue #80, I really have no clue what's going on there.

Retromags Presents! Electronic Entertainment 17 May 1995 Retromags Database Entry Download from Retromags Download from The Internet Archive

I'll definitely still upload stuff here in accordance with Retromags rules. But I'm pretty certain Jason knows the ramifications. The purpose of a large 600 DPI file isn't to pad user collections, but to be a master file from which user files are derived, be they searchable PDFs or raw text files or some other kind of file.

Happy Thanksgiving! As some of you may know by now, my Patreon page received a big boost from the attention given to it by Jason Scott, who wrote about my work a few days ago. I'm very thankful to everyone who has come out and shown their support, making this a great holiday for me. Until now I've been saving the 600 DPI versions of scans offline for when they'd be more technologically feasible to share, but Jason encouraged me to go ahead and start uploading them. I gave it some thought and realized there's no reason to keep waiting, so that's what I'll be doing from now on. The files will be huge and many of you will think it's overkill, but I believe they're worth it for the smoother text, better OCR, and well the overkill! I am a fan of overkill (probably from playing too much FFX). Really though 600 DPI is the suggested minimum to scanning Asian text and I'll be uploading a lot of Japanese mags. It's only overkill for Western text reference magazines like Tips & Tricks where you may not be reading long form for aesthetics or pleasure, or older EGMs that already have larger-than-average text. I'll be working hard in the coming days to impress my new patrons so they know they made the right choice. Thanks again! https://www.patreon.com/marktrade http://archive.org/details/@marktrade

Another issue up. I'm pretty sure this is the only other one I have. http://archive.org/details/DreamcastFan199904 Like all my ADO uploads now going forward, this is full 600 DPI.

Retromags Presents! Electronic Entertainment 15 March 1995 Retromags Database Entry Download from Retromags Download from The Internet Archive