What am I doing up?
I gotta say, though, this homeopathic cold cure I was given at Pi-Con (by a shaman, no less) works goddamned miracles. He gave me a couple pills each of arnica and belladonna which are diluted to the point of having no recognizable, er, well, poison, but which for whatever obscure magical reason retain or obtain a healing quality during the reduction process. The god-awful cold I had that weekend was 90% better the next day. I’ve been taking, through the course of this one, arnica and aspirin, which have together been as effective as any cold medication I’ve ever taken, without any of the loopy-headed side effects. (Arnica, in a gel form, reduces swelling. The other day I smashed a knuckle and exploded the vein in it, so it was all purple and mooshy and very painful, and I happened across the arnica gel, put some on it, forgot about it. Six hours later it was yellow and barely squooshy and not at all painful, and after another application of the gel the next morning it was entirely healed. It’s bloody well magic.) Anyway, yesterday I went and picked up some aconite (which I just discovered is wolfsbane! so cool!) and belladonna and took them along with my arnica, and this morning my cold is about 90% better. I don’t *know* how this stuff works, and I don’t *care*. I’m a believer.
However, I did wake up at 5 to 6 and couldn’t go back to sleep, so here I am, awake, and I suppose I’ll go work on my copy edits until I either get tired enough to nap or it seems late enough to shower and face the day.
Someone in comments inadvertently but intriguingly put the idea of turning my CEs in as PDFs in my mind. I don’t have any idea how I’d do that. What kind of scanner would I need?
Hey, I was up at 6.00 this morning too, after finally admitting that Oscar wasn’t going to settle down.
No copy edits for me, though. Mostly sitting still on the couch trying not cough and wake the slumbering beast.
See now, I read this as “I picked some aconite and belladonna” etc, and I was all “No! No!, take care…!”
But all is well. Phew. The one sure thing about homoeopathy is that they’ve diluted all the poison out of it (and I am so not getting involved in the debate beyond that: water has memory? Hey, I like the idea that water has memory, it’s sfnal…).
Someone in comments inadvertently but intriguingly put the idea of turning my CEs in as PDFs in my mind. I don’t have any idea how I’d do that. What kind of scanner would I need?
Get a copy of Adobe acrobat professional.
Perfectly reasonable :-) For example, I’m a great believer in the placebo effect. That translates roughly to “This may be distilled water, but if it makes me feel better, who am I to complain? Keep it coming!”
That software is so scandalously overpriced it really makes one start thinking seriously about piracy…
(There are also freeware PDF printers that can be installed as drivers, and some office programs include PDF converters. I haven’t tried any of them, though — I’ve had the luck to get an Acrobat license as part of a deal with a client who needed the work done in that format.)
Really? I had no idea – my boss has one which will read even scanned PDFs and turn it into text which he got for a course he is doing – I jsut assumed it was not free rather than exhorbitant… Perhaps a google search would turn up alternatives…
You’re all too far ahead of the game. :) Right now I have a large stack of paper which will need to be scanned in before it comes anywhere near being a PDF. I have to get *that* far first! :)
Apparently – and I’m slightly miffed that I didnt’ follow it at the time to a sensible citation – physicists are now discovering that yes, water *does* change its state subtly in relation to whatever it has been in contact with. It might take another ten or twenty years for that knowledge to filter down – water has just _so many_ properties that are basically unresearched – but it looks as if homeopathy could become a whole lot more scientific than it is right now.
I’m with, though: I don’t care how it works as long as it works for me.
On a Mac, getting a PDF from a document – any document – is as simple as hitting print and choosing ‘PDF’.
Under Windows, I don’t think the ability is built in, but there are free applications that will do it.
I think that the big money making book publishing company should already own the scanner and software that puts it in a pdf for you :)
I’ve also been thinking that instead of busting your ass on copy edits.. you should just write STET in really big letters across the front page, circle it twice, and send it back. That’s what sharpies are for, right?
That’s because Macs rule.
I’m waiting for the day when someone finally goes Eureka… and considers that maybe it isn’t just mind over matter when a placebo works. Its could be just because they had the actual proper medicine right next to their fake sample and the important things passed on.
Memo to self… remember not to follow any of these tips and use aconite. See icon.
I think the big question is getting the hardcopy into the computer first, then figure out the software to edit it.
I’d call around to copy centers (like Kinko’s in the US) and see if they have a something. The big copy machine in my office will scan in hardcopy then email it to me as a .pdf.
There are smaller desk top scanners that will do similar, but the ones I’ve seen scan hardcopy in as a .jpg or someother pic file.
another possibility is that the place you go to photocopy might have a fancy copier that will allow you to scan it in and will create a pdf for you.
seriously, some of the big, fancy copy machines have a scan function that is just as fast as photocopying, and then it allows you to email the scan. if there’s a big photocopying shop (a la Kinko’s) they might just have it set up to allow customers to do it for a smaller fee than what it costs to actually copy pages.
We have scanners at work that I rarely use and highspeed ones (I still have an $8000 one sitting in a box because the project it was purchased for died a horrible death!!)
But the most used piece I have is that I have a faxserver setup. So any faxes that come in automatically are saved electronically. Very useful.
Well its really designed for businesses to pay the fee. Typical of software companies like that.
I have about 10 copies of the Adobe professional sitting in boxes around me.. because we have the tendency to install lots of copies for people around work and then go back and buy the licenses so we at least comply with the licensing issue (even if the particular license isn’t on the machine).
Sure, it’s medicine. But it’s also research for the next Walker book. :)
I have a Brother multi-function with a document feeder. So, I’d just load the sucker into the document feeder and hit the scan button to create PDF copies. (I’m on a Mac).
The only problem that I haven’t figured out yet how to overcome is the software creates one file per page. Not too bad considering that the files are numbered sequentially — and if you open with a single command, Preview creates a multi-page, tabbed (onscreen only) document.
I gather that’s the big difference between the PDF function built into Macs and the “scandously overpriced” Acrobat pro edition — making multi-page documents.
Perhaps someone at the publisher can pull the 350 (?) files together — they probably have a copy of Acrobat Pro.
(I just recently used this to send my hand edits of a short story back to a friend. But the story was short enough that I took the extra step of cutting and pasting the pages into a Word document — not recommended for anything longer than 15 pages, tho.)
The ones I work with put everything you scan in the bundle into one file – but if you scan one page at a time you get one file at a time.
Hmmm… am I using the wrong setting on my printer, perhaps? Is it the Brother software that’s limited, then?
I’ll have to play with it.
Thanks!
Everyone else beat me to it :D They’re right about Acrobat being overpriced. If you just need PDF output, there are free programs for that, and less costly ones than Acrobat for many of the form processing or annotation functions.
My $50 canon will scan to any format, including pdf, and optionally do multipage documents.
To turn a word processor document into a pdf, print it to a file using a postscript format printer. Change the file extension (after printing) from .prn to .ps and read into into ghostview (available free). Ghostview will convert it into a .pdf, and will run under windows or linux. If you want instructions on the process in excruciating detail, let me know–I have it written up as a .pdf . . .
Homeopathy.
-twitch-
I’m glad you feel better. :-)
What do you use to write your book in? If it’s Word, you could always make marginal notes and incorporate them with the source file. Of course, your copy editor would have to have done something similar…
stupid breastfeeding! This sounds like a good strategy otherwise. I’d bet belladonna, homeopathic quantities or not, is not on the approved list. Arnica is terrific for bruises and the like i know but have never tried it internally.
Wow, What! They’d let you pdf for a whole lot less? That I don’t really believe, but could really use. Sending a 500 pg ms (or massive copy edits) to NY overnight from Denver usually cost me $60…. I’ll ask. I know our office machines at the company I used to work for had this capability and I actually used it.
Though I think something personal like this is beyond me, but it would have come in handy for the 4 hour turn-around time that I had on the final edits for Keepers of the Flame — that included downloading the scans and I had to build in about a half hour of scanning time to get the pages back, because my scanner is slow and can be wonky and the wonk factor goes up when I’m nervous. Still missed a choreography problem which irritates me no end since I wouldn’t have missed that if I’d had enough time to actually READ the book instead of looking at selected parts.
May your edits go well today.
Robin
Corel Wordperfect has this option, too. And for other stuff I use Cute PDF writer…
Robin
I have a little hp multifunction that will scan into many formats .jpg .tif even bitmap, including pdf but it is SLOW, and I can only load 20 pages in or so, but then the memory gets too big for either my printer or my ram or something and it crashes (as I know from above copy edits). **sigh** probably time for upgrades again.
Robin
Awww, definitely no aconite near or around you!
Robin