Andrew (R.S Admin) @ajroach42@retro.social

Anyone have any leads on a version of SSH2DOS that supports modern encryption methods?

Or tips for any other way to make a secure internet connection from my #zinestation to home server? (I guess I could run a Tor proxy hotspot on my phone...)

I've noticed that I tend to take a lot of pictures and make a lot of posts during the early exploratory phases of a project, and not as many during the final implementation.

This is largely unintentional. It's just the way my brain works.

I haven't, for example, talked about the #ZineStation in a while (although I use it just about every day, it's what I write on at the coffee shop, and I print pamphlets and newsletters with it regularly.)

1 - Expedition Sasquatch: is going well. I have several episodes, a hat, t-shirts, and stickers for the show. Feedback has been largely positive.

2 - #ZineStation: is done? I have a good workflow. I can do wireless file transfer from Windows 3.1 and DOS to windows 98 or Linux. I can write a lay things out on my AA battery powered HP Omnibook, or I can do layout on Windows 98, or even on my modern linux rigs.

Alright, I'm getting ready to release some zines from the #zinestation and I have some thoughts that I want to explore:

Specifically:

- Newsletters
- Brochures
- Legal sized paper

I've done a few dozen individual issues of multi page zines on this setup, and it works pretty well. the results look good. It's not a *huge* amount of effort, and my error rate for misfed sheets is low enough that this is still the cheapest way I've ever printed anything.

(in other news, the #ZineStation has reached what will likely be its final form and workflow. Expect a few zines a month starting next week.)

I got one more omnibook (an 800CT)

This will be my last omnibook for a while, I imagine.

This one was cheap, and damaged, but repair was really simple and now it boots to a clean install of Windows 98.

It has a pentium MMX at 166MHz. It can play Opus files without any issue, and it appears that the included battery even has some life left in it.

This one is going to serve as part of my #zinestation, and has served as a good demonstration that #floppycast works on a pentium MMX.

#ZineStation - I'm writing three days a week, I'm learning how to use word perfect, the windows 98 box is serving as my layout and print hub for now. I should have several print zines up online this month.
#StarDrift - ahhh! This appears to actually be hapenning. I have to collect my notes, make sure they are coherent, and send them off.
#podcasting - I have an episode of #SquatchSquad written. I found an editor and a studio. Other podcasts in progress.

I finally got around to installing wordperfect on my omnibook.

And I have wordperfect drivers for my printer, which are hopefully fully featured (supporting graphics and multiple columns well.)

If they are, Great! Wordperfect will be my primary editor on the #ZineStation (386 and 486 edition, at least. The Pentium and later versions will probably get word 97, and I'll keep using multiprint on the 286s and below.)

Oh right, #ZineStation #RetroComputing

Today I worked on my #DOS \ #Wim31 powered #ZineStation for a few hours.

I printed sample text blocks from 6 programs. I was satisfied with the output of two of them, I have four more to test.

I also installed publisher and started playing with clip art and designing covers.

Publisher runs like ass on this machine though, and the functionality is pretty limited in version two.

So I might keep it's clipart, but use a DOS based program instead (I just have to get laplink remote working first.)

Alright, I am doing some test prints and formatting stuff today on the #ZineStation.

So far, results are pretty mixed! That's better than I expected, I figured results would be uniformly bad.

The program I was planning to use as my booklet formatter defaults to 80 columns (which at 5.5" wide is entirely too small!!) It also throws an "unregistered" heading at the top of every page, which I think I'm going to leave becuase it's cute.

Time to grab some headphones, my Walkman, and an omnibook, head to the nearest free seating at any of the four coffee shops I can walk to, and write pretentiously for an hour or two.

#success

#zinestation

It's happening.

#ZineStation

(This is one of the driving forces behind my #ZineStation project.

Not that I expect my little magazines to actually have an impact directly, but I plan to. use them to highlight independent media made outside of existing power structures, and public domain media that can be consumed outside existing power structures and therefore help point people at things that will rob attention from the companies that are hurting us.)

I know have over 1000 pages of documentation on Ventura publisher, so I'll be ...

I don't think I be reading that straight through, but I'll be reading the first few sections and then referencing it, at least.

I think that the other tools will be much faster, and probably more pragmatic, but Ventura should do everything a #ZineStation could want.

If I can move reasonably quickly with Ventura, it seems like a powerful tool.

Time for SE #ZineStation posting.

I copied some files from the v1.1 ROM that came.with my omnibook 425, and now I am able to boot up without the double-space driver (which I wasn't using) and straight in to DOS mode, freeing up enough conventional memory that I can run Ventura Publisher for GEM.

This appears to be a fully featured desktop publishing tool, that can handle flowing text between boxes (and therefore manual booklet imposition.)

Anyway, I still have this romantic notion in my head of journalism as a force for good, of someone like Spider Jerusalem starting riots and taking down despots with a laxative gun and a laptop.

I don't kid myself that the little weird crap that I'll be publishing from my #ZineStation is in any way going to influence the world, but I always feel better when I'm publishing.

I found a couple of programs that do booklet imposition and output to Epson dot matrix printers for ASCII.

I also have the various greeting card makers for doing cover art.

Neither can handle graphics or formatting or charts, so I'm still going to be pursuing an actual desktop publishing solution (I have four to try, if I can free up enough RAM)

But, for now, I think I have reached a functional software setup for the #ZineStation.

Alright!

Now that I'm not getting paged for work emergencies followed by pages for mastodon emergencies followed by breaking everything on my mastodon instance for like 4 hours, I'm back to researching DOS software and configuring my #zinestation

A lot of the old DOS application archives are still being updated (surprisingly!) and of the ones that aren't, several have been entirely archived by the internet archive.

I still have a lot for workflow decisions to make for the #zinestation, and some of that is going to be down to research.

For example, I dunno if there's a good PDF viewer for Windows 3.1, and if there is, I don't know if it supports modern PDFs. (Or PostScript, I guess? Or latex?)

Part of me wants to manage the zines entirely in markdown files, and then write some linker scripts to format that markdown and turn it in to a PDF or whatever for printing.

But can I?