So there was this gun.

[5MadFarmers]

The cadets had 1896 cartouches. Of that there is no doubt as the one Gunderson had retained enough of it to be clear in his pictures.

Bob noticed that gun. Somebody either bought it or Gunderson realized the significance. Either way it disappeared. I snagged the photos before he removed them. I've never been a claim jumper - Bob noticed it first and had the right of passing from what I believe for myself. So it's in a location unknown but I have the bright glossy of it.

I'm aware of the opinions on the serials the cadets "should have." That's from one vector. I don't travel that vector. I hit it from an entirely new vector. Which, IMHO, is much clearer on what those guns were. You'll see that. The confusion should be removed.

Everybody is expecting Mallory Version 2 or Brophy Version 2. That it decidedly will not be. I really like their books but I also like the new Ford Mustang. I don't own one. That's simply a path I'm not going to travel. So, like it or hate it, it will not be Brophy/Mallory Version 2.

Bill could be entertaining. "I wonder where it was made." His other was "it has nice pictures." That gun was made in Massachusetts. The format you see was assembled in Wisconsin. In addition to not being Brophy/Mallory Version 2 the book will not be dismissed as having nice pictures. It won't. Will it suffer over that? Frankly that doesn't concern me overly much. That might bug some people but it doesn't bug me.

Dick, I'm not dismissing the value of nice pictures. I'm value engineering the book. It's a choice I made early on. In fact I made that choice right out of the gate. I walked away from color also. I'm going to walk away from many things. It simply won't be the book anyone expects. I'm ok with that. It'll be Farmer Version 1. There will be no Farmer Version 2. After the book is out the door I'm culling the Krags down to what I'm keeping and moving back to the CW carbines. I'll be liquidating the excess guns which were necessary for the book. I don't need the money - I need the room.

You may like it or you may hate it. It will not be dismissed over the pictures.

[madsenshooter]

But color is so cheap in the digital age! When it comes time to print, check with Courier Corporation. I'm no longer there to watch for typos or monitor quality for you, but they have gone to digital presses since I left. Never take credit for solving a major problem that makes middle managers look like dummies, they'll get you sooner or later. I've never seen Brophy or Mallory, but I'm certain your work will be an improvement on Poyer's.

[Dick Hosmer]

I will - as you know - purchase a copy of whatever you produce (you are self-publishing, right?) but, after all of the magnificent effort you have put into researching the text, with the chance to truly do great things, it would be a needless shame to put out such low-grade pics. The full-length shot, once reduced and processed for printing, will likely show up as no more than a silhouette with annoying backscatter. The band spring, a crucial point, will likely be invisible (it almost is now).

But, my conscience is now clear - you have been made aware. I cannot, and will not attempt to, do more.

[madsenshooter]

Hmm, I do see something in 5's pic that might help tell if the 17-18K Krags were cadets or not. Note the side plate, 1896 style, not 1892. My 22018, made in late 1895 has the 1896 style sideplate. I'm sure the 17-18K rifles still had 92 sideplates. Gunderson's 17724 appears to have had the original 92 plate, though I can't see it well enough to say for certain. Still it proves nothing as the plates could have been changed over the years. However, I would think that if they had pulled rifles that were made as early as mid-1895 out of storage to use to make cadets, the sideplates would have been updated, as it was already ordered that yet to be issued 1892 rifles were to be updated to 96 standards. Which sideplate does yours have Kragrifle?

[5MadFarmers]

Dick, you are a dinosaur. Takes one to know one right? I too am a dinosaur. I don't have a cell phone. I don't have an iPod or iPad. Given my career field that really cracks people up. One of the reasons those CoO and DRM books are available is dead tree is truly dead.

Google started scanning libraries. Out went the books. Today it's "Kindle" and such. Electronic books. Print media is a dead duck. The thing is that books are going the way of music. Albums? It's $.99 a song. Which they very well know you'll lose after a while and need to buy again as you don't retain a non-soluble edition. Google is an 800lb monkey.

Publishers sold their souls. Google rounds up books and digitizes them. Then sells them in electronic format. What if you don't want that? Tough. Publishers were sold down the river over that. They sold themselves.

I started a web site once. I was going to take it places. Web sites are modular. Errata sheet? No need. Update the page. Then I decided I didn't like the model. There are better ways.

Tie them all together. If I wanted nice pictures and dynamic content I'd do a web site behind a pay wall.
If I wanted the book to exist electronically I'd get a publisher to print it. Then Google could nab it on their terms.

It'll be the last of the dead tree. Nice pictures won't matter as the customer base is all old and blind. So says me wearing cheaters right now. I'll retain copyright and won't release it for electronic publishing. No publishing organization can sell me down the river.

Want more vectors? I have X amount of room. I have Y amount of time to ensure that room is available. The living room is stuffed with guns. I'd use the spare master bedroom but that's where they're coming from. I'd use the other spare bedroom but it's stuffed with boxes of gunk. The family room is my cave and stuffed with safes and stacks. It's incredibly hard to take photographs in the bathroom. So I've taken over the living room for the amount of time it takes. The wife is too tolerant.

I have access to a professional photographer. Am I supposed to haul it all over to his place? Some other place? Have him come here? If I want him to come here it'll be a full living room for months. Not going to happen.

Frankly I'm pushing this thing out the door as fast as it will go. That'll make it somewhat haphazard. I could wait until I retire but then we're dealing with different dynamics. Maybe I'll just walk away from it all at that point and focus on building a restaurant. So it's now or never for this one.

The other ones are different. Different information. Different presentation. Those I won't rush. This one I want done and gone.

So I decide to turn it into an exercise in speed. Wrote the text part, 200 pages, in about two weeks. Pictures are taking longer. Some will be dark and some will be light. Depends on if it's rainy or a workday. Need sun. Thus weekend pictures are light with the rest not so much.

If I did it the way you're thinking it'd be two volumes. Hard cover and in color. I'd get Chris to take the photos. It'd be slick. It'd be expensive. It'd take me a couple of years.

It'll be cheap and fast. The one concession to myself is it will have a hard cover. Thus it won't be dismissed as "it has nice pictures" as "it had solid covers" is available.

It won't be what you expect. Be prepared.

[Dick Hosmer]

It's your choice - I ALSO remember your saying that you might get pissed and just print ONE copy and put it on your bookshelf. I think - on more than one level - you'd probably be OK with that.

I was NOT humping for two volumes, or color, or a professional button-pusher, you are expelling chaff against a non-existant missile launch. All I suggested was better lighting and a featureless background, without shadows.

You have saved so much time on the writing you could afford to do more than lay things on a (rumpled) sheet, apparently lit from one direction only.

At least smooth out the sheet!!!!!!!!!!!

[5MadFarmers]

It's your choice - I ALSO remember your saying that you might get pissed and just print ONE copy and put it on your bookshelf. I think - on more than one level - you'd probably be OK with that.

It'd save paper and bookshelf space just to render it as a PDF and leave it at that. Which, handily, I already have a copy of as PH was reading it as I revised it. I generated PDFs for her use. Not all the pictures were embedded but the rest was done. I don't need the pictures embedded as I have memory pictures on demand. I don't think this is for me. I don't need it.

I was NOT humping for two volumes, or color, or a professional button-pusher, you are expelling chaff against a non-existant missile launch. All I suggested was better lighting and a featureless background, without shadows.

You have saved so much time on the writing you could afford to do more than lay things on a (rumpled) sheet, apparently lit from one direction only.

At least smooth out the sheet!!!!!!!!!!!

It's plastic. The carpet is new. While none of the guns have cartridges in them they're still dangerous. The carpet is pretty new. I already spilled some oil on it in one location doing what I shouldn't in that room. I'd rather not be known as "the last known person killed with a Krag." Beaten to death with my own unloaded gun.

The cave was set up for pictures and has the correct lighting. It's no longer usable for that as it's full of stacks and safes. I could pawn the lighting from there but I've broken my toe twice in the last year in walking into door frames with no lights on. I'd rather not go for three times.

Dick, I can come up with all kinds of silly reasons to keep doing what I'm doing. The real reason is I don't really care about that. I'll include a picture of Bogart in the front and call it "Krag noir."

Granted those are the darkest of the lot. It was raining. The ones from the weekend before were done on the driveway. When I spill onto the driveway with a bunch of guns I wonder what the neighbors think. Best to go with noir.

If you're going to get hung up on the pictures I'll do a book with drawings instead.





Put it to a vote. Only two candidates. One has a nice clear background and no lighting issues. The other one is noir. I'm going with noir.

Please note that both have the curved toe, lugged rifle sight, and barrel shaped rod.

[5MadFarmers]

Bah, this might be long.

Dick, I respect your knowledge and you're a saint. I'm fully aware that you want the book to succeed and are giving advice in that direction. I'm purposely ignoring it. I'm not saying I'm wrong or you are wrong. It's not "right and wrong." It's focus and belief. You have a belief as do I. You are taking what you know of publishing and applying it. I'm taking what I know of publishing and ignoring it. Not out of ignorance or malice or anything along those lines. I'm ignoring it as I don't care about that.

I used to do work in a knitting mill. I'm very aware of Pantone color. I used to support graphics artists in their rendering of nice glossy and slick printed material. I'm aware of dye sublimation printers and all that entails. I'm very aware of what "RGB" and "CMYK" are and the problems of converting from one to the other. I'm aware of ICC color profiles. I'm very aware of alpha channels and all the other gunk that goes into computers and printing. I spent a fair amount of my life in that arena. If you want a real education in the history and aspects of RGB I'm your man. Bits per pixel and all that gunk. I grok it. My pay check was generated by that. The first three nice pictures I took for the book were in CMYK format with the correct ICC profile. Calibrating color? Been there, done that, got the T-shirt.

I'm choosing to ignore it. Why? Because that's my choice. If I wanted this to be work I could easily drive down to my place of employment and log in. In this job we don't do glossy printing. We don't do color in fact. We do black and white and H.264 compression with b frames and all that other wonderfully technical compression stuff. Want me to detail what that entails? That's work. 30 frames per second is about right for television video. That takes room. Chop the frame rates. That doesn't do what people think. You see there is a side effect of chopping frames as inter-frame compression suffers greatly. If you're only doing intra-frame it doesn't matter but if you're doing inter-frame it does. Oh, that's today's job.

RGB is light. In CRTs there were three guns. You could control those three. In the wonderful days of VGA it was really 16 bit color. 16 gives 4 bits total for R, G, and B. That leaves 4 bits which can be used for alpha channels. Of course if you wish to ignore the alpha channel you can dial up the R, G, or B. Then we get into the methods. That was followed by 24 bit and then 32 bit color. 8 bits per color for R, G, and B = 24. Add the alpha and it's 32. That's 256 intensities for each color. Total color possibilities in 32 bits is 4 billion of course. The problem is that's light. Color printers aren't light - they're ink or wax or die or whatever. That reflects light. The opposite really. So turn off all three guns and you get absence of light. Black. Whereas absence of ink is white. Nothing. Mixing all the inks together is black. So how to map color light to color reflection? ICC profiles.

Dick, I'm not unaware of the field. I have simply chosen to not care. If that bugs people they're welcome to take nice color pictures and paste them over the ones in the book.

What will those images render as? That's easy to know. I have a laser printer. They're gray scale. I can print the PDF and check. If they're too dark I'll reshoot those that are. If they're at a level that doesn't bug me I'll leave them be. Because they're not important to me.

I also use an interesting set of font choices.

Which is fine as that's what is what I want.

Benefit number 4 of doing the work myself and not going through a publisher: they don't get to write my book for me. Is there a benefit to that? Yes. Is there a downside? Certainly. It'd be their book.

Call me artsy and realize I control my own output. So if it makes you unhappy you'll just have to skip it. I'm aware you're trying to help. Call me hard headed. It's a binary thing. I can either go full boat or simply jump into the canoe. I've elected to use the canoe. It's intentional.

[Dick Hosmer]

[jon_norstog]

Aaah,

does this mean the book is coming out soon?

jn