Scenarios. What IFs...

I grew up in the 1970s. A period where parents were rough and tough -- strict, on their offspring. I was no different.

They were like this because, they claimed, they "loved us".

Well, my experience was like that too. Specifically, as I have written here about 3 years ago, my babyhood was  cut short in the Spring of 1969 due to my Mom not wanting to look after two babies at once.

Yet, at the time, I had three spirit guides advise me to wet the bed so that I'd be put back in to diapers, something that i wanted. I gave excuses like "I'm scared of the reaction from my Dad and his Dad".

So, decades later, all I'm left with are the "what if's". Scenarios of what could have been, had I listened to my guides.

OK, here we go...

I had these two neighbours who lived across the street from me. Sean and Paul Currie. Sean was my age when I met him, around 5 yrs. old or so. While Paul, his younger brother, was 3 yrs. old.

Sean used to cross Harrow to come to the door to ask if I could spend some time playing together.

If this alternate timeline had happened, it'd go something like this...

It's warm Summer day in June 1971 around 17h30. The sun is shining. I am sitting cross legged in the living room, watching television, when the doorbell rings. I am in my cloth diaper, plastic pants and an undershirt. My diaper is wet.

My Mom was cooking supper but answers the door. It's Sean. She asks that he wait for a few minutes, but doesn't say why.

I hear his voice and immediately go to my room, while Mom asks if I need my diaper to be replaced with a clean one. I say yes.

I climed up on my mattress and pulled off my wet diaper. Then she used a wet washcloth to gently clean my diaper area of urine, so that I don't smell of it.

Next, I lay down while Mom pulled the clean cloth diaper up over the front of my privates, and pinned it together. Finally had my legs lift up so she could put a clean pair of plastic pants on me.

I was almost ready to go to play with Sean and Paul.

I had to choose some summer clothing because it was really hot out.

I picked out a baby blue coloured striped t-shirt and I put on a pair of navy blue shorts.

I was now ready to go outside to play for a bit while Mom made supper. I was not to go away from the yard because supper was almost ready. The Currie family had supper at 5 pm like all the other neighbourhood kids families. We ate at 6 pm for some reason.

I opened the back door and said "Hi Sean and Paul". "Hi Jim".

I can't really remember what we used to talk about when we were playing, but I remember we used to go to the neighbourhood park on Harrow a lot.

My friends stayed in my yard while I had to go back in to eat. I went back out a few minutes later and we walked over to Harrow Park.

Because they had always known me prior to me re-entering babyhood, and because his brother Paul had been wearing diapers even at age 3 yrs, they never ever said anything to me like "why are you still wearing diapers?" I was thankful for this.

We spent some time on the merry go round, the swings and the sandbox.

Back then we were what's called "free range kids", meaning that as long as our parents knew where we were, we could roam the neighbourhood playing with our friends.

After about 1 hour, we had to return home to go to sleep.

I wet my diaper a bit while I was walking back home, but it wasn't enough to require another clean one for the night.

How to setup artwork for print

When setting up a document that requires a bleed, use a bleed minimum of 2 millimeters.

Creating EPS Graphics

When importing a LibreOffice Calc table or Writer table you cannot place it directly into Scribus. You must first convert it into an EPS (Encapsulated PostScript) file.

Here's how.

1. Select the whole or portion of the table you want to place into Scribus. Use the filter function if necessary.
2. Use Edit > Copy to copy the table to the Clipboard.
3. Open up LibreOffice Draw.
4. Use Paste Special and select the one that says 'calc' plus a number.
5. Press OK.
6. Resize the image as necessary.
7. Export to EPS.
8. Name the saved EPS file.

That's it. This file can now be imported into various programs, including Scribus and Adobe InDesign.

cups-calibrate

I found a new Linux utillity programme that will help to calibrate the colours for a printer.

It is cups-calibrate, and it is a piece of CLI software that is part of the CUPS/ suite part of GNU.

It requires a working printer and 2 pages (double sides) to print off small squares where you identify which squares are the darkest.

[lilzebra@nightowl ~] $ cups-calibrate

ESP Printer Calibration Tool v1.0

Copyright 1999-2000 by Easy Software Products, All Rights Reserved.

This program allows you to calibrate the color output of printers

using the Gutenprint CUPS or ESP Print Pro drivers.

Please note that this program ONLY works with the Gutenprint CUPS or

ESP Print Pro drivers. If you are using the Gimp-Print stp driver of

GhostScript or the drivers of the Print plug-in for the GIMP, this

calibration will not work.

These drivers by the text "CUPS+Gutenprint" or "ESP Print Pro" in

the model description displayed by the CUPS web interface, KUPS,

the ESP Print Pro Printer Manager, or printerdrake.

If you are not using the correct driver, press CTRL+C now and

reinstall your printer queue with the appropriate driver first.

To make a calibration profile for all users, run this program as

the "root" user.

Printer name [default]? 

Resolution [default]? 

Media type [default]? 

Press ENTER to print pass #1 or N to skip... 

Sending calibration pass #1 for density/saturation levels...

Calibration pass #1 sent.

Please select the character that corresponds to the black block that

is 100% saturated (dark) while not bleeding through the paper.  If

the saturation point appears to occur between two characters, enter

both characters.

Black density? 50

Now select the character that corresponds to the yellow block that is

100% saturated (dark) while not bleeding through the paper. If the

saturation point appears to occur between two characters, enter both

characters.

Yellow density? 100

Now select the character that corresponds to the red block that is

100% saturated (dark) while not bleeding through the paper. If the

saturation point appears to occur between two characters, enter both

characters.

Red density? Red density? 170

Thank you.  Now insert the page back into the printer and press the

ENTER key to print calibration pass #2.

Press ENTER to print pass #2 or N to skip... Sending calibration pass #2 for gamma levels...

Calibration pass #2 sent.

Please select the character that corresponds to the column of gray

blocks that appear to be 1/2 and 1/4 as dark as the black blocks,

respectively.  If the transition point appears to occur between two

characters, enter both characters.

Gamma? 3 

Thank you.  Now insert the page back into the printer and press the

ENTER key to print calibration pass #3.

Press ENTER to print pass #3 or N to skip... 

Sending calibration pass #3 for red, green, and blue adjustment...

Calibration pass #3 sent.

Please select the character that corresponds to the correct red,

green, and blue colors.  If the transition point appears to occur

between two characters, enter both characters.

Red color? 4 3

Red color? Red color? 3

Green color? 3

Blue color? 3

Thank you.  Now insert the page back into the printer and press the

ENTER key to print the final calibration pass.

Press ENTER to continue... 

Sending calibration pass #4 for visual confirmation...

Calibration pass #4 sent.           

The basic color profile for these values is:

        *cupsColorProfile -/-: "0.375 1.600 1.000 0.000 0.000 -0.400 1.000 0.000 0.127 -0.567 0.733"

You can add this to the PPD file for this printer to make this change

permanent, or use the following option with a printing command:

    -o profile=375,1600,1000,0,0,-400,1000,0,127,-567,733

to use the profile for this job only.

Calibration is complete.

Would you like to save the profile as a personal default (y/n)?  y

Calibration profile successfully saved.

Some documentation/a review of cups-calibrate is here.

Working With Facing Pages in DTP Workflows

When using master pages mode (facing pages) in a DTP application and you want to add or remove a single page, you must really add or delete two pages.

This is because pages are paired together and the software will get confused and spew out errors if you do not go by the rules of desktop publishing.

If this error does occur in Scribus, all that is needed to make the document pass the pre-flight test is to drag 'Normal Left' and 'Normal Right' or to go into .... and select Normal Left for all even pages and Normal Right for all odd pages.

That's it.

DisplayCAL 3.1

In 2009 I purchased a Spyder3 colorimeter from Don's Photo here in Winnipeg. Because I run Linux there was initially no software to run this piece of hardware.

But in 2011 came DispCalGUI, since renamed to DisplayCAL.

I have been running DispCalGUI ver. 2 since 2013-14 on my Lenovo T61 laptop, in Fedora Linux MATE.

Running just fine until ver. 3 came out in 2014-15. That's when I began to have problems even loading the software, as it required a newer version of Python to run at all. I went thru the whole '0install' thing to no avail.

I finally gave up for a bit, frustrated that I may never get this great utility to work again.

So after several months I found the answer.

The newer version of DisplayCAL absolutely requires GTK 3. Not only that, but it will no longer run in MATE, which is based on the older GTK 2.

DisplayCAL 3 would not run the ambient light sensor in MATE. It would not auto-install new profiles. As a workaround for that second problem, I had to use a kluge (workaround) in my Startup list using 'dispwin' and the name of the profile I wanted to load. All of these problems disappear once I used the software from within GNOME 3.

Switch to GNOME 3, and everything is fine.

So to successfully have DisplayCAL run correctly, you need to be running the GNOME 3 desktop environment.

Scribus 1.5svn

I have been a user of Scribus since 2007 when I designed a 3-fold pamphlet for TRUWinnipeg.org.

Played with it for a few years, but not really seriously because it's newer than InDesign and PageMaker before it. Scribus just doesn't (yet) have all of the features that make desktop publishing software a breeze to use.

So recently I've been testing out the new 1.5svn (Beta) version of Scribus and it has some additional features that weren't there years before. I'm using it to create a 10-12 page document making recommendations on improving public transit here.

It does now have support for bullets and numbered lists. It has klunky support for creating Tables of Contents.

Data Tables

Data table (cell-type) feature has been reworked, but needs a lot of TLC before it's usable. For example, it is extremely time consuming to style each and every cell. You cannot just select a whole Row and say "use Header1". No, you must select each one. Same thing with the data cells. InDesign does it better, and has a built-in feature where you can color alternate rows.

TOC (Table of Contents)

To create a Table of Contents page is not as easy as it is in LibreOffice or MS Office. You need to create a frame, create a style for it. When that is done, you also need to right-click on the text frame and select 'Attributes..." from the menu so you can manually enter each TOC entry.

Alas, there is minimal documentation page on the Scribus Wiki on how to create a TOC. It's too short and most likely needs to be rewritten to explain the procedure better. There is but one video on Youtube on how to do it. The guy doing the video spent a whole 2 mins. Besides those two tutorials, you're pretty much on your own with this feature.

I managed to create the first line and then had problems creating subsequent TOC entries. Do I use the same 'Attributes..." screen (item 2, item 3, etc...), or do I create newer ones?

There has been talk of a newer interface and procedures for TOC creation. Other people who use Scribus have recommended just creating them manually for now. Easy for a short document, but a PITA for longer ones.

Scribus would really benefit from a Google Summer of Code program.