On Printing A5s on A4 Landscape...

I've been busy recently, having taken on the voluntary working task of doing the Hull Unitarian Magazine, and learning just how constraining is A5 as a format. It is half the size of A4, retaining the width to height square root of 2 dimensions. Text has to be readable, but the problem with a big screen and A5 is the text turns out to be tiny. I've been using games software (crossword maker, maze), image software (for layers of image and text), Desk Top Publishing (to fit texts in shapes and flow the text through different shapes and pages), text processing (for throwing text around, forcing line endings), and Word Processing (for columns, emphases).

Each of these are saved to A5 .PDFs. Some are single pages, some double pages. I've been working on the principle of odd pages have superiority and the double paged spread. I'm at 20 pages, and no filler like jokes. The result evolving in page order can be viewed but I should say as I wait for the article of the Chair of the congregation, I am making parts easier to read. This includes the picture on page 2, the inside front cover. That's on its side, to turn the booklet to view the picture. I may use instead a Unitarian poster picture of Stonehenge in which one adds poster text - I may add feature article text, if it fits. There are ways and means. It is already at the correct dimensions for a .PDF (if at A4). I could convert it and text to an image and have text relaid over the top a second time for clarity if needed and involve a fade out of the image under the text.

All these .PDFs at A5 each get merged into one document of 20 pages.

The printer business receives the .PDF in page order and makes the A5 booklet up. So it runs in multiples of 4, and they do the donkey work. Otherwise, for 20 pages, the arrangement would have to be:

Outer: 20, 01; 18, 03; 16, 05; 14, 07; 12, 09. Inner: 02, 19; 04,17; 06, 15; 08, 13; 10, 11.

So 10 and 11 are the centre-pages. The commercial printer business used insists on A5 with a 10mm margin all round so it is not possible to have 10 and 11 as a landscape A4. I haven't asked, however. I'm sure it is possible, but likely to be out of automatic arrangements.

If you want an early read, and a read before it is finished, it is here:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/28120070/pluralist/learning/relthink/DecJanMagazineFull.pdf
but it will change. The finished version will go on the Hull Unitarian website.

Well, what about some home testing with printing out? One would not believe how difficult this is. Apparently Adobe Reader does have a facility for a booklet print, where A5 doubles up to landscape A4 on a print out, but many (like iPrint) simply shrink the A5 further.

I don't want to have Adobe Reader. It is large, cumbersome and domineering. It's like Real Player - get rid of it. But one needs to have the software that somehow recognises the problem.

A solution is to make at A4 and then shrink. Print that to .PDF when shrunk. It is not the answer, as everything will be too small having used A4 and of course it is no good for the commercial printer. Another solution is to use MS Word and print with its facility. Guess what? I don't have MS Word on my main computer. Nor do I want to be constrained to a Word Processor. Another solution is using a Desk Top Publisher - after all, they are designed for posters, booklets and leaflets. I have a Serif DTP but this would mean doing everything via DTP. Well, it is possible but not by first choice: games software I use with image software together but using DTP would be just one further stage. Serif irritates me too, having to shove things out of the way to bring from the back to the front (and so on).

It's a .PDF issue. Look around the Internet forums and you see the only answer is Adobe Reader.

Well, not so, because I have a similar solution based on Nitro Reader. You do choose A4 size to print, but use its facilities for a side by side printout.

So whatever printer is used (including to .PDFs!) one selects A4 paper. This is the Epson irritating printer dialog (American spelling) box that forever tries to trick the user into buying Epson ink or freezing the printer. Be careful what is pressed when the ink goes in. Then comes the main Nitro dialog box, the one from this software and differs from other .PDF readers/ semi-editors.

It says All in the dialog box because the .PDF used has two pages, the minimum. In a larger .PDF document, the pages to print must be selected. Multiple pages (to show) is selected. Look at the view - it may be unnecessary to select Auto-rotate and centre. By the way, the OK is just visible because I doggedly use 800 by 600 screen.

That does the job. Nitro Reader is free. Its extra pay-for facilities are provided by other free software. This is rather like Foxit Reader sticking an evaluation mark on. I still use it because PDF-XChange will take it off. And I prefer the older version of PDF-XChange as it isn't trying to flog a pay-for version and does all I want.

So there we are. I'm already building up material for the February-March issue, but it is not certain I'll be doing it. If it doesn't work I'll lose the task.

Drunken GDP Expansion: Hull's Prostitutes

My friend insists I should. No, he is wrong. This is bad self-advice and advice to me. What is said in the car should stay in the car.

Ideally he wants his talented artistic son to videotape his pub rantings on the world and everything, and this can include the car journeys back from the pub - back because that is when the alcohol is doing its narrating. I worry about him because a real tension-busting outpouring happens every week no matter what the topic; I hope it is tension-busting, but it could also be dam wall breaking and I once knew someone called Buster Bloodvessel. No I didn't, but making that claim is the kind of dodgy historical recall that might be wrapped up in one of these rants.

My friend likes cheese and this would be an alternative to booze. To paraphrase that "cunt", the Chancellor of the Exchequer, he should, 'Cheese life. Cheese a job. Cheese his shop. Cheese his fucking Sky Television, cheese the late night disaster meal, cheese the bog for the necessities, pissing your last in an extended home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the talented offspring brats you've spawned to replace yourself.'

What happened tonight is five of us met up. Usually it is four, but a baby sitter was found so it was the three plus two this time. The two had 'preloaded' and were merry from the off. I stay alcohol free.

This leads to a dilemma when the doctor told me to lose weight by drinking less alcohol. Seeing as hardly any ever touches my lips, I'm not sure what I should do - throw up alcohol?

I normally leave that to others, but constitutions are well-built by now. 20 years since the couple of the five first met, and my friend in the car worked out that it's been 35 years since who became his wife and another woman had him covered in shaving foam with a picture taken by the bloke there and then. More years have passed of consistent and persistent alcoholic consumption, paying towards the NHS via taxes on beer. By the way, 35 years must be wrong. The events are likely to be not later than 1982 and cannot be earlier than 1980. I wasn't there when the naked shaving foam incident happened as the relationship building was semi-independent of the historical friends. Scarborough, apparently. The persistent alcohol, though, goes back to 1977.

I can drive home with all others dropped off, and the other local friend having taken an earlier bus to get up for early part time work, and so my friend can twitter away like a self-powered bird as the car powers us home. All I need say is, "I see, I see," just to keep things rolling. So the other night I discovered the price list of prostitutes.

The full fuck is £77, and £40 for a blow job, and a hand job is less... Still, I said, if traffic is low. Oh no. He recalled when up a ladder painting the shop and the lass below appeared and disappeared eight times within the early hour. How does he know the price, when he never visits these? Ah, the shop is the in and out of information. And the prostitutes - as we saw this week and last on our travels - gather close to the shop. Indeed the rubber throaways have to be removed from the barbed wire at the back of the shop, dribbling on his neck (he says) as he reaches up to get them.

This price information ought to be recorded by the Office of National Statistics because in the desperate bid to expand the economy the Gross Domestic Product (and boy is it gross) now includes prostitution and illegal drug dealing. When I commented today on the reasonable appearance of two prostitutes stood together, near the shop, my friend said "never, ever go to them" because it is always a disappointment. So, I said, well, last week it was a price list and now we're having a survey of the quality of the product.

This is why our fucking cunt the Chancellor stole Irvine Welsh's word-use, because as Chancellor he now includes the drugged up and the semen

extracted as part of the economy's supply and demand.

That MP, who sent pictures of his knob to some reporter in a sting. Suppose it had been a genuine woman? What's that worth when added to the Gross Domestic Product?

And why re-introduce the unemployment version of the truck system, so that not only is the dole measly and desperately inadequate, especially with the Tory/ Lib Dem Bedroom Tax and 20% Council Tax [don't forget that one, Mr. Miliband], but will by Tory intent come in prepayment card form so you can only buy food and transport. I mean, if you can't pay the occasional prostitute, what will that do for the GDP? What a vicious fucking cunt is the Work and Pensions Secretary as well as the Chancellor. Talk about the Nasty Party. It's all coming out now, like barren semen mixed with blood.

Apparently back in 1977 my two friends, the same ones, paid £12.50 for me to receive the experience of a prostitute but I "ran away" and missed my chance. I would prefer to wait for such experience, and did a long long time. Although he varies as to the precise price, one can pass this inflation information to the ONS as well.

I am not going to turn this blog into a record of trips home. I have a diary to do that, and often the conversation doesn't even feature. It is but a piss into the wind. Otherwise it is dodgy memoirs of girls when at school, sexual encounters long gone, and more up to date comments that really ought to go no further than their echoes. Tonight, for example, was in part about arses and blood, and coughing up blood, and that really isn't a topic for the public.