PixelBoy

We did it! There's an issue of Finnish Super Power magazine available now. Thanks to kitsunebi and MigJmz without whom this would have been quite literally impossible to do. And everyone else who helped somehow. Also thanks to people who did nice things like pulling magazines off auctions and selling them for a friendly price (they presumably will never see this, but thanks anyway). The first reactions that I have heard are positive, so at least some people are happy to see this happening. Ironically, I'm not sure if that's the case with the OP... As many magazines as he listed, he didn't mention what was finally uploaded, but I guess you can't make everyone happy. Anyway, going forward, there will be more magazines coming. And here's the thing now, if you are planning to do any work with any Finnish magazines, I would appreciate if you could contact me first. For now, I'm probably the only one working on anything, but if anyone out there is planning to do something, it would be good if we could coordinate our efforts, and most importantly avoid doing the same things simultaneously. I think the risk of that is small, but it's better to be sure.

Retromags Presents! Super Power Issue 66 (January 2000) Database Record Download Directly! Scanned By: PixelBoy Edited By: PixelBoy Donated By: PixelBoy Follow us on...

It's a bit confusing when FAQ is referring to a guide which doesn't exist, but thanks to you both, those are very clear and good instructions on how to do it. Good info. I hope others will find this thread in the future and use it as a guide.

I am about to try to upload stuff, as apparently some options which weren't working for me in the past appear to be working now. Thanks to the person(s) who pushed some right buttons . But I'm not able to find all information that I presumably need. About uploading covers: FAQ says: "If you notice that we are missing a magazine cover in our Gallery, please feel free to upload it and link it to the correct database record. Members are also encouraged to upload higher quality images of existing covers if they can. Check out or guide on how to Upload and Link images." I can't find that or any other guide that would tell how to link images, or how to name them properly, or what would be the required pixel size. Am I missing something obvious here? When I tried as far as I could without actually uploading anything, there were no instructions, or any menu option that would link an image to any particular magazine. About uploading magazines: Scanning guide says: "An admin will create a New Release post for your issue if you do not have permission to do so yet" I tried a practice run of that, and I seem to be able to upload magazines that I am working on currently, and it would also appear that I am able to start a new topic in the new releases area. But there's no guide that tells how the post is linked to any uploaded magazine. Is it somehow automatic based on some magazine database code, or is there some template that I need to manually copy-paste and edit in the message window?

I use PaintShop Pro to most of my image editing, but I know something about GIMP. What exactly is "rough" with it? If you want to find an easy way to make your scans a little bit better (should work in most cases), try this: Colors - Auto - White Balance It should make white whiter and colours a bit brighter with a single click, and you don't need to use any brightness/contrast sliders. And if colours looking faded is the problem, maybe there's something that you can do with the scanner to fix that. In my scanner using the Photo mode to scan makes colours look a bit more vibrant than the normal setting (as can be expected), so hitting that one button before scanning will save a lot of editing work later on. But obviously that depends on what kind of scanner you are using, and whether you are having issues with moiré patterns or not, etc.

Yes, I will do that, thanks for the advice. After doing everything else but this magazine project for the past few months, I was a bit unsure if there was something happening, with some (but not all) Finnish magazines being listed, and apparently one new member here whose screen name might suggest that person doing some work on Finnish magazines. Presumably that isn't the case though, so I guess I should be the active party here. And in case someone wants to have a status report: the first magazine, which is more or less a test project, is about 99.5% complete. All that is needed is some fin(n)ishing touches and a place to upload it to. It looks far better than some previous scans which have been done with inferior scanners, heavy auto-cropping and no editing by some other folks in the past (kudos to them for doing that anyway).

Those spiders aren't too bright though. All those fruit flies around them, and none of them is even attempting to eat them!

Guide to learning Klingon language is priceless. Thanks for this magazine.

Thanks, Star Trek magazines are always nice. Patrick Stewart's Christmas Carol ad is alone worth downloading this! LOL.

Other things have kept me busy during last few months, but now that I come back, I notice that there is a category "Finland" in the magazine database. Whoever did that, thank you for that. I didn't contact mods in the spring, so either someone else did, or they read this thread and did that. Now, I still don't know what to do next. I don't seem to be able to edit or add any information in those categories, I probably can't upload any images or magazines either, even though Finland is listed as a category on the webpage, it doesn't show as a menu option with the "Create" button. So apparently there's still something missing, maybe my account can't edit anything (still newbie rank, it seems)?

I guess by now we can assume that mods don't read this thread, or are too shy to announce themselves... I really wouldn't want to randomly contact people who are listed as moderators, but if none of them is going to respond, maybe that's what I have to do anyway? I don't think I can create anything, at least I haven't been able to find such buttons in the interface. What makes the whole thing even more confusing is that there's conflicting information about this. The FAQ page says this: But the scanning guide says this: So am I to believe the FAQ page or scanning guide about whether I can add information or not? And what does "member" on the FAQ page mean? Anyone who has an account (a "member"), or someone who has reached the forum status "Member" with a capital M? I don't mind entering the data myself, after all, like you imply, I probably know the details about the magazines, but it's very likely that (not counting this thread) the mods have never even heard about those magazines. Helping with some magazine scans at some point is not out of the question. But for the time being the Finnish magazines should be the priority, especially to be fair to all who have contributed to get this thing rolling at all. There is certain irony in the fact that I actually happen to have some British magazines which are even listed in the database but not yet scanned, so I could upload those anytime I want, I guess. But uploading the "real stuff" seems to be impossible.

1) Try to mark Retromags as an allowed site in your firewall/virus scanner/browser/adblocker/whatever, and maybe that will fix it. 2) Sometimes downloads don't start when you click on them normally, so try right-clicking and then "Save as..." which should clear it in those cases. 3) Not an ideal solution, but you can find the torrent file on some torrent search engines. Obviously it's safer to download it from here, but it shouldn't matter where you downloaded it from if it allows you to access the swarm, after that it's normal torrent file exchange.

I don't know how some specific magazine did this or that (or at least magazines you are talking about, I know how some non-English language magazines did it), but using a little bit of creativity can go a long way. For instance as already briefly mentioned, you could use a Y-split cable and have whatever goes to the TV also going to a good quality VHS recorder. Then you can simply run the tape forward and backwards to find a good screenshot, pause the image, take a screenshot or snap a photo with your camera, and you have a very good screenshot. And games which had internal pause, or platforms that had some cheat cartridges available with pause functions, certainly helped too. And before Internet was a common thing, magazines in different countries could publish same screenshots, and very few people noticed that they were recycled. So, magazines which had some international connections, such as having a foreign language version, simply could use the same screenshots as the original magazine did. No need to take several screenshots in many places.

I use Samsung Galaxy tablet, and I can recommend such a device. Works nicely with comics, and can be used to browse Internet, run games and apps. The downside is that it's only a tablet, so it's not specifically designed as a book reader.

Here's an update about the Finnish magazines. My plan was to do only some background research and maybe forward some magazines to people with scanners, but there have been some unexpected developments, so the short version of the story is that I will be scanning magazines myself. I have received some magazines for free, for instance, someone was moving and was about to throw magazines away, unless someone wanted them, and I took them. I have found some magazines in auctions relatively cheap, and the best part is that many times the sellers have given some free bonus magazines, in one case the free bonus magazines were actually rarer than the magazines I was actually paying for! There have been strange happenings, like when I was bidding for a pile of magazines, but the price got a bit too high for me. A while later I unexpectedly happened to cross paths with the guy who actually won the pile, and he only wanted a couple of magazines from what he had bought, and he sold me most of them cheaper than the auction price was. And as I wrote earlier, I was not going to do any scanning, as I didn't have a good enough scanner. I happened to find a professional A3 size scanner that was on sale much cheaper than the actual price is. I thought it was a pricing error, but I decided to order it anyway. Soon after I made the purchase, the price was raised, not once, but twice, and you can't currently buy the scanner at all, which is a strong indication that it was a pricing error of some kind. Whatever the case there may be, I actually did get my scanner for a cheap price, and it's a very good scanner! So now, unexpectedly, I have a few piles of magazines and a scanner, it's almost like some kind of destiny was putting all these pieces together. I am probably able to upload something soon, but first someone would need to create those database entries for new magazines and a new country. So, who's the person to send information and details about these magazines to?

I have no idea what's going on there, but you can try a few things to rule out possible causes, some more likely than others. 1) Power down the scanner completely, unplug it, and reset it to factory settings. This will rule out internal firmware issues etc. 2) Install a different driver. Either try some generic driver, or use some newer or older version of the driver you are currently using. This will rule out driver issues, obviously. 3) Try scanning using different resolutions and output in different file formats. This will rule out the possibility that the problem would somehow occur only using the scan settings you are using. 4) If you happen to have another copy of the same magazine, try scanning it for comparison. This will rule out the possibility that there is something wrong with the first copy that is somehow messing the scan results. This doesn't usually happen with magazines, but is a common problem with postcards etc. 5) As ridiculous as it may sound, if possible, have someone else scan that page with your scanner. This will rule out the highly unlikely possibility that you are doing something wrong and don't notice it. If after all these steps those lines are still there... well, you have a broken scanner most likely. Try to have it fixed under warranty. I had once a digital camera that somehow sucked dust inside the lens, which appeared in all pictures. I got it fixed for free. Maybe something similar is going on here.

I can't speak for any site, but CBZ/CBR is basically a ZIP file with a weird file extension. You can create it without any additional programs, assuming you have a relatively recent operating system that has some "zipping features" in it. It also works in reverse, you can use those files as if they are just ordinary ZIP files. You can extract images from them, and browse them with an image browser, if that's the most convenient way for you to read them. With PDFs all that would be much more difficult. Of course, PDFs do have certain advantages that CBZ/CBR files don't have. Especially PDFs with OCR'd text are extremely useful. Back when Starlog Magazines were still available on Archive.org, that was actually my favourite file format. You can read articles from the magazine, and if you see something quotable, just select the part you want and copy-paste it. But as nice as that is, CBZ/CBR format offers more possibilities for custom-made reading. For instance, if you want to create a special magazine of your own, let's say you want to have all contents pages of some magazine in the same place, you can simply copy those scanned pages and make a new file that has only those pages. It's not impossible to do the same with PDFs, but again, more difficult.

Magazines and reviews have evolved, perhaps matured. Back in the day there were four game reviews on one page, these days one game review can take four full pages. So today's reviews are more thorough and try to cover some background, whereas the early reviews were more like "it's a nice game with nice graphics, four stars". I suppose I was fortune enough to read magazines which had good writers, so I can even today quote some things they said about the games they reviewed. That's not to say that screenshots weren't important. Some magazines had some black and white pages to keep their printing costs lower, and those pages were always disappointing to read, because it was very difficult to see what the game really looked like. Yeah, you can find everything online. Magazines still have their purpose, if you are looking for something beyond latest game reviews. They have articles that are well researched and unique, such as covering gaming culture in some specific country, or visiting some interesting museums/shows, or finding connections between entertainment simulators and real life training simulators, and so on. And all kinds of histories of some companies or people who made an impact in the business. Even game reviews are interesting. Not so much to read about some game specifically, there are plenty of YouTube channels which review all kinds of games, but to see which games some magazine has chosen to be reviewed, and from what point of view they are covering it. I am probably in the minority, but I think it's always interesting to go through a magazine, page after page, and see what they have chosen to use their limited space on in that specific issue. (I am also often disappointed to see that they don't cover almost any traditional adventure games.)

I happened to find an excellent article about Swedish gaming magazines. Here's the link: https://martinlindell.com/2024/01/07/svenska-speltidningar/ It's quite recent too, written just over a month ago, and it covers presumably all Swedish gaming magazines at least by name. An excellent read for anyone who is interested or who wants to keep track of magazines that would be nice additions to preservation projects like Retromags. The article is in Swedish, but those who can't read it in the original language can use Google translate or something else, the article seems to translate without bigger issues.

I don't know about guidebooks you are looking for, but I know something about Japanese language and machine translations, so I can guess what's happening there. Japanese language doesn't have "V" or "C" and all words are composed of syllables. This is what creates something called "katakana English". When you transliterate "vulcan" to Japanese, it becomes "barukan". If you do the same with "balkan", as it happens, it also becomes "barukan". Japanese readers would know which is meant from the context. Now, when some machine is trying to translate katakana words into English, it really doesn't know if the word should be "vulcan" or "balkan", it could also be "Barkan" which is a product name for many different products. Balkan is probably the best guess the machine can make. If and when AI systems become more intelligent, they can make more educated guesses in the future.

That will get nice whole separate pages, yes. But it is also possible to pull the staples out and leave the magazine intact. Obviously it would be much harder to scan those big sheets, but the plus side is that you can put the staples back through the same holes again. And if you were careful enough when removing staples, you can even use the same staples. That way you can reconstruct a magazine that had 100% health bar to begin with to have a magazine that has maybe 90% health bar. And this has of course nothing to do with the OP question, to which I have no real answer.