This sounds insufferably irritating. Grocery stores already have blinking LEDs to attract your attention to bright automatic coupon dispensers, giant ads plastered to the floor to direct you to Pepsi and Doritos, "Got Milk?" stickers on the bananas, ads plastered to the front of carts, video screens to infotain you while you wait in line, and ads on the receipt. Just let me shop in peace.
Dave Ahl, who was publisher. retains the copyright to Creative Computing stuff. I plan to put Basic Computer Games, and More Basic Computer Games online eventually. In the mean time these downloadable versions work with with Microsoft basic, but converting them to other languages would be cooler.
I have scanned several books (in my case, Atari and other classic computing books) for atariarchives.org. The process takes time, but is worth it.
A scanner with a reliable sheet feeder is essential. This doesn't necessarily mean expensive -- I've seen a lot of reasonable-looking scanners with ADFs on ebay for less than $100.
I cut the pages off the books using a single-edge razor blade -- non-ragged cuts are essential. Then I scan then into TIFF format at 300 DPI, greyscale. If I want searchable PDFs, I use OmniPage X on a Mac to create image-over-text PDF, it's quick and easy.
But most of the time, I these books are for Web viewing. So I use a graphics conversion program with batch capability (GraphicConverter on the Mac) to a) increase the contrast dramatically -- near 100%; b) trim the whitespace from the edge of the images; c) scale the pages as necessary. d) scale them more to create thumbnail versions.
There are no hard-and-fast rules for choosing the final file type. Just got to balance file size and readability, and this varies from book to book. Sometimes I go with JPEG, sometimes 8-bit GIF, and sometimes 4-bit GIF. Sometimes I'll convert every page to GIF and also to JPG, then use a little script to select the smallest one for each page.
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Dave Ahl himself is selling a ton of old Creative Computing books here.
Do you know how he became a millionaire? By sending $5 in cash to each of the five names below. I didn't believe it at first, but it works!
This sounds insufferably irritating. Grocery stores already have blinking LEDs to attract your attention to bright automatic coupon dispensers, giant ads plastered to the floor to direct you to Pepsi and Doritos, "Got Milk?" stickers on the bananas, ads plastered to the front of carts, video screens to infotain you while you wait in line, and ads on the receipt. Just let me shop in peace.
K ref="http://www.atarimagazines.com/ads/">Antic Magazine Ad Gallery, Vintage Computer Ads, and especially the Obsolete Technology web page.
A guy named George Beker did those great illustrations. That's all I know.
Then check out the A.N.A.L.O.G. Preservation Project.
Dave Ahl, who was publisher. retains the copyright to Creative Computing stuff. I plan to put Basic Computer Games, and More Basic Computer Games online eventually. In the mean time these downloadable versions work with with Microsoft basic, but converting them to other languages would be cooler.
I have scanned several books (in my case, Atari and other classic computing books) for atariarchives.org. The process takes time, but is worth it.
A scanner with a reliable sheet feeder is essential. This doesn't necessarily mean expensive -- I've seen a lot of reasonable-looking scanners with ADFs on ebay for less than $100.
I cut the pages off the books using a single-edge razor blade -- non-ragged cuts are essential. Then I scan then into TIFF format at 300 DPI, greyscale. If I want searchable PDFs, I use OmniPage X on a Mac to create image-over-text PDF, it's quick and easy.
But most of the time, I these books are for Web viewing. So I use a graphics conversion program with batch capability (GraphicConverter on the Mac) to a) increase the contrast dramatically -- near 100%; b) trim the whitespace from the edge of the images; c) scale the pages as necessary. d) scale them more to create thumbnail versions.
There are no hard-and-fast rules for choosing the final file type. Just got to balance file size and readability, and this varies from book to book. Sometimes I go with JPEG, sometimes 8-bit GIF, and sometimes 4-bit GIF. Sometimes I'll convert every page to GIF and also to JPG, then use a little script to select the smallest one for each page.