KiwiArcader

PC Format issue 32 is now available at Kiwis.World.

Nintendo Dream issue 86 is now available thanks to Cuckooguy

I do have a forum. I just chose to deactivate it

Nintendo Dream issue 92 is now available thanks to Cuckooguy

Yeah, I left a reply to your comment over on the site. Unfortunately, every time they upgrade Joomla versions they seem to break the SMTP mail by reintroducing some bug that's been around for years. If you PM me your details I'll manually create an account for you but truth be told there's no real need to have an account as there's no hidden content. I make everything available to everyone. About the only real benefit at this point is you don't need to submit an email address when posting comments. I did run a forum off the back of the site but no-one posts comments on the site let alone partaking in the forum so I took it down again. I guess that's because of the lack of restrictions on downloading. Here you have to post a certain amount to get additional downloading access for example but I found that just generates spam posts and I'd rather spend time scanning mags than moderating the forums.

Nintendo Dream issue 84 is now available thanks to Cuckooguy

Nintendo Dream issue 91 is now available thanks to Cuckooguy

Nintendo Dream issue 88 is now available thanks once again to Cuckooguy

Another of J.Cameron's donated Computer Games magazines gets scanned, this time issue 123.

Also available today is PC Gamer (UK) issue 31

Nintendo Dream issue 85 is now available thanks to Cuckooguy

Another of Cuckooguy's lovely mags gets a scan, this time issue 87 of Nintendo Dream

Thanks to a HUGE donation from Cuckooguy check out this little beauty over at Kiwis.World

I hear you re faster internet. A year ago I was on VDSL and only getting 35mbit down/7mbit up as I was more than 1 mile from the local exchange. Now I am on gigabit fiber with speeds showing 955mbit down/470mbit up. It makes a huge difference for streaming 4K content off Netflix. I have my daughter connecting to PLEX across town and my brother connecting from the UK half way around the world and they have no problems streaming movies off my setup. I could probably stream 10 HD 720p streams with no impact on my internet but I'd need to upgrade the PLEX servers to handle transcoding so many streams.

I have two NAS splitting TV and movie archives. Connecting to this are two Intel NUC's which run separate PLEX servers (both identical to each other) and which can do transcoding of a single HD stream no problem. In the living room I have an Apple TV and a Xbox One and a 4K TV, all of which have Plex clients although I almost exclusively use the Apple TV which requires the PLEX server to transcode. The Xbox One doesn't need to transcode due to the codec support so should be the best option but I find it jerky on panning scenes in widescreen movies and which I have yet to figure out why it is occurring. I am planning on upgrading to an Apple TV 4K which should support HEVC out of the box so have been converting my H.264 TV series to H.265 based mp4's with AAC 5.1 audio. They may not require transcoding on the newer Apple device. Wait and see.......

As far as Aussie mags go.... Hyper is still running as a quarterly title nowadays and is still being released (at least digitally) PC PowerPlay is still being released, monthly I believe, although it's been so long since I have seen it on the newstands I may be wrong regarding the frequency Atomic: Maximum Power Computing was discontinued in 2012 as it was merged into PC & Tech Authority, a mainstream PC publication similar to Maximum PC but the Atomic coverage is there in name only really. PC & Tech Authority - This is up to issue 242 which with a monthly release schedule would indicate it runs back into the 1990's. Originally titled PC Authority APC - ex Australian Personal Computer is still in publication and dates back to 1980

As far as I am aware the state of "Legal" scanning of mainstream titles sits something like: ANTIC - permission given for scanning/preservation by publisher/Editor James Capparell himself via other Atari websites as long as no financial gain occured ANALOG Computing/ST-Log - same from publisher Lee Pappas Newsfield titles - Zzap!64, Crash etc - permission received from Roger Kean however there is some disagreement doing the rounds I believe regarding another company acquiring rights to some of their works To my knowledge that's about it although there are possibly more for esoteric systems of the early 1980's like Amstrad User magazine given Alan Sugar released the BIOS Roms into the public domain for this old range of computers and Amstrad published the title themselves. What I do know is that Future PLC are very aware of their magazines being scanned as I believe Meppi sounded them out about legitimizing it but was told that while they turned a blind eye to it they would not give permission either. I guess once you do that you lose a certain amount of control of your IP, even if you put conditions on such an agreement. marktrade made a comment about scanning for a database being transformative and therefore perfectly legal but I believe that simply means putting information from a magazine into a database. Scanning a magazine 100% and compiling back into a 100% complete digital version of the print copy wouldn't meet that criteria but hey, I'm no lawyer so happy to be proved wrong on that score.

My Japanese Spitz cannot jump onto our bed so I just put an unused foot stool from one of our lounge chairs by the bed. Voila!!! No problem getting on and off now. Mind you, I move it away from the bed in a hurry when she's found something smelly to roll around in down in the backyard.

Ahh. if it was only a plastic cover I understand now why it wasn't scanned. I thought, wrongly, that it might be enclosed in a cardboard sleeve. Part of the reason why I stopped scanning GamePro was due to the fact Retromags members seem to be doing those along with EGM so I thought I'd simply step away from anything that has a remote chance of being scanned here. I have truckloads of UK and AUS/NZ content still to scan anyway. Agreed re the database and displaying other sites content here if someone wants to input the information. I'm too busy keeping my site up to date to want to spend much time here doing it myself but if someone else wants to do so then go for it. The only problem I see here is that it might stop someone scanning their own copy of a magazine if they see it marked as "scanned" yet the original scan might have pages missing/damaged etc and could do with a rescan. There needs to be someway to note those sorts of issues/problems but that means someone looking at every page etc?

I adjust your scans but they are purely for my benefit. For example, in the case of the wonderful Tech Gian .... I remove the retromags credit page as I think it detracts somewhat (That's why none of my websites scans have a page at the rear either) I shift the CD-Rom image to page 3 where applicable and put a reverse/buffer page in as per the actual magazine so the the following pages sit side by side correctly I remove your double pages as the PDF side by side view shows the original pages anyway (but I love how good you are at getting them lined up. Amazing work there!!!) Convert to PDF I think the resulting file mirrors the physical print version but I might be wrong. However I don't release them on my website in that format as I know your views on altering your files. I just personally like my own files that way. If I could make a suggestion though, and it's only that, a suggestion, scan the CD and backing cardboard at the same resolution as the other pages and place them so that they sit in the CBR file just like the do in the physical magazine. That way page 5 is actually page 5 in the digital version. It's not like a small subscription insert which I don't bother with. It's an important aspect of the magazine so it should be exactly where it is sited in the print copy. But that's just me. As I said .... just a suggestion. I had thought about making PDF versions of Retromags content and hosting them at my site so people had a choice of preferred file type but I'm already running 810GB of my 1TB mediafire account so I didn't have enough space and I also would want to edit the files so fold-out pages display as they do in the print copy (my PC Gamer's and Computer Games:Strategy Plus files show you what I mean) so I decided against it. Plus there's the fact I like differences/variety between sites to encourage people visiting ALL sites and not just one. As far as my files are concerned, I have no problems with Retromags using them. Everyone else like Archive.org apparently is anyway. Feel free to convert them to .CBR format for the site. Just ensure that credit is given to the scanner, e.g, Kiwi@Kiwis.World or Jason@Kiwis.World etc or just Kiwis.World when uploading them here. As long as the quality aspect isn't interfered with I don't have a problem if people want to alter the files either (most likely related to fold-out pages as above as peoples preferences for those tend to vary)

American healthcare is just about the worst in the world if you can't pay or your job doesn't include it. Okay, third world countries are possibly worse, but then again some are probably better. Glad to hear you are finding your feet again Phillyman. Having been made redundant ... twice ... I know all too well what that's like. And when you are my age (55 yrs) I've found it doesn't matter what time of year you are looking for a job. Companies tend to want younger staff. I think they are prepared to trade age and work experience/wisdom for youth and the ability to make them work for peanuts.

I admire your candor and respect your willingness to say how you see things from your perspective. It's obvious that the last year has had an impact upon you and no-one really understands what a person is going through if they haven't been in a similar situation themselves. You make an interesting point about legitimacy yet the fact is that we, you and I, and anyone else scanning magazines are committing copyright offences under current law. Unless we receive permission from the rights holders to do so we can be held accountable under said law if they decide to prosecute. I'm guessing you know that or else you would have been happy to use your real name. Jason gets away with that as he isn't running or doesn't own Archive.org and there exists some sort of Library of Congress umbrella protection for that particular site. There have been many cases of sites being prosecuted for making music files, ROMs, video available via 3rd party links where the owners of the sites have been handed down hefty fines and ordered to pay rights holders for theoretical losses. Most people use nicknames because of these and internet privacy issues. I know I do but anyone who has posted magazine donations knows my real name just as I know the real names of many of the scanning members of my site with whom I converse on a semi-regular basis and they know mine. There are very few people doing what we do in the pursuit of magazine preservation. Forgetting about the sites that simply rip other sites content off and make them available and produce no original content themselves you would think at the very least that the people spending significant effort scanning content themselves would have the basic decency to acknowledge where the scans originated from when using other peoples scans. It's just pure decency and politeness. I could use scans from Retromags on my site and I have systems in place to identify where they came from should I choose to do so. Any scans of yours I make available I acknowledge you as the scanning person. I cannot stop people like Jason doing what they are doing using scans from my site elsewhere but I don't believe I should be happy that they choose to show no respect towards the scanning members of my site. In all fairness to Jason, others like David Haynes over at Bombjack.org do exactly the same thing and when asked won't let you host any of their scans either. Same goes for Meppi over at OoPA. We are indeed a fractured group, much like estranged family members...... Lastly, I have no issues whatsoever with how you choose to move your magazine collection on. They are your property and if you decided to burn them I'd happily say go for it. I've done that myself although they didn't burn well unless ripped apart first. My questions were purely around Philly's mags sent to you. I agree with you. He isn't the best communicator so my query was around whether there were any you hadn't scanned that could be returned IF required. That was all.

Hiya mate. Great to hear from you!! I saw your posts on Patreon and understood your issues so it didn't worry me unduly that you were taking time out. It was just the last one that got me worried you may have still had some of Philly's mags yet to be scanned (only he could tell if that was the case) but I have to admit to a pretty bad attitude towards Jason Scott thanks to his tireless efforts at ripping off my sites mags and not acknowledging that at all when re-uploading them to Archive.org that I was miffed that he might have acquired Philly's mags sent to you. I hope your health is or gets better really soon!! Life is short and sometimes the surprises it throws at you can leave a bitter taste in your mouth. I've lived and am living that dream too. Ironically it the website and the magazines I leave behind when I pass that I hope will remind people that there was a scanning kiwi once upon a time who made a small mark on the magazine preservation world.

Hahaha!! Yeah .... no worries although as you have provided scans you'd be on the list of people that could access the closed site anyway if I went down that path. That's a last resort. I'm hoping I get a few donations to assist with scanner consumable costs and that the scanner keeps going. Any donations of mags from people will get scanned one way or the other. I don't believe in cutting and running while having outstanding copies of magazines someone has paid postage costs to get them to me. Currently that amounts to approx 13 issues of Computer Games: Strategy Plus, 15 or so of Computer Pilot, and 25 issues or so of PC Gamer (USA) from a Retromags member sent after such a long time that I lost track of who it was that sent them to my brother in MD who then forwarded them on to me (I paid the shipping costs of that lot ($150.00US)) with another box still to come. Those are my absolute priority at the present time as you can probably tell from the recent releases of PC Gamer on my site. Expect to see releases of these titles almost exclusively from me until I have them all finished and online. Of course, any other magazines donated and sent to me while be added to that list as well. Hopefully, variety on the site will come from scans from the other guys.

Like I said, this year might be the one that breaks the camels back for Kiwis.World. Donations are negligible and if my scanner bellies up I have no financial means to replace it so it will be game over at that point as the idea of going back to a flatbed scanner sends shivers down my spine!! I agree with you, doing this stuff is not a walk in the park. It's also expensive when equipment is factored in (just replacing pick/brake roller consumables on the scanner is nearly $200) and it's getting to the point now where I'm struggling to justify the costs to my wife when we have a mortgage to pay and not enough donations to cover expenses.