i had a post here, but i lost it when the internet went out and i had to reboot. this chromebook won't let you save a file, believe it or not. yeah.

remember: i'm pretty sure the guy upstairs is a cop, and i'm pretty sure he has some reason to want to stop me from posting to the internet. which i don't really understand...

but, i've been dealing with freezes on this machine all day. there's nothing on the device, so it's just an annoyance. but, it is annoying..

so, the post that was lost was thinking out loud about what to do next, after realizing that the time lag didn't fix the formatting issues at smashwords.

at first, i decided that it wasn't worth it, but then i thought to myself that i could probably fix it, if it's just empty white space, which is what i think it actually is.

i had some fruit this morning, but i didn't have an actual meal. i wanted to get this done before i ate, did dishes and ultimately went to sleep. well, when there's nothing to do, i'd rather sleep in the evening. i'm a night owl...

i may be back at this a little later, but i'm probably done for the night and will probably need to wait to get back to it in the morning.

i have a better concept of what i want to do, at least. and, i think the end point will be positive...

wait.

what is biden's voting record on racialized police violence, though?

no.

the site (smashwords) is breaking the formatting. ugh.

again: why is this so hard? it's daft, truly.

no, get your head around this.

first, it insists that i upload a doc file instead of a pdf file, and then insists on converting it to pdf (you can't download it in word format). then, it breaks the pdf in conversion. but, i converted it to pdf for them.

so, i can upload a working format, which it won't let anybody download. and, i can give them a working conversion of the file format they want to use, which they won't let me upload. instead, they demand i upload a format they won't let anyone download, convert it badly and then only offer the broken conversion.

i don't want to ask people to pay for broken files (especially considering that i have to boost the price to pay the taxes), and if i'm going to put them up for free, you'd might as well just go to a drive share, where they're not broken.

so, is this middle point worthwhile to have available archived?

there's just one thing, and it's a hunch that they may be on to it. the file hasn't been published to my page, yet. are they actually reading through every single file? is that why there's a delay? if they are, they should catch the error.

should i give it a bit, then?

but, this is absurd. why not just let the user upload their own converted pdf file?

yeah, i'm just going to throw it all up to smashwords for free.

fine.

what i'm looking for is a site that allows pdf previewing. payhip is not that site.

however, it seems to have a 5 gb file maximum, meaning i can upload 4.7 gb isos. 

i have these aleph-discs up that are basically torrents, but i've been forced to try to sell them as physical media due to their size, which i recognize that few people want. i've been waiting for a site that i can essentially upload an iso to. this might be it.

one thing at a time, but let's not forget that.

my income is $14,000/yr.

cdn.

i don't pay taxes...

smashwords wants me to file a tax sheet and take 30% of any "royalties", like i'm some kind of corporation selling a product, rather than a peasant selling art on the digital street. i don't even have tax information to conduct commerce in the united states.

(it's not like i'm going to sell a lot of these things, anyways.)

so, it's looking more and more like it's not worth it.

let me see if i can find a better site, and let me think it through a bit more.

as i don't have a tin number and don't really want to get one, and i'd have to double the price in order to make it worthwhile (in order to pay taxes), i'd might as well just put it up for free, if i do this.

but, i'm leaning more towards just sending you to bandcamp for the monthly entries. the big files are available at the google drive site, so there's no access issues.

that's a shame. this is the kind of thing that shouldn't be taxed. we're talking about $5 transactions at most a few times a year, going to a disabled person.

if the basic point being made here is that the soviets deserve the real credit for defeating the nazis, then that is very much correct. even with the importance of the lend-lease program acknowledged, the soviets remain the force that did the heavy lifting, with no help from the ukrainians or balts.

but, what an article like this is truly obscuring is the reality that the germans had already realized they'd lost, and had made a secret pact with the west to try to stop stalin before he got to madrid.

i remember the way they tried to teach this in the eighth grade as being this baffling, confusing thing that nobody understood. why didn't the germans fight back? why did they just let us walk in?

it's really the economic realities that clarify the incomprehensible, more than anything else; it was really american capital that stepped in, in it's refusal to lose germany to communism.

i cite world war two as almost the only war i've ever supported. the only threat the world has seen since that is comparable to nazism is fundamentalist islam, which is why i point to eradicating isis as being the only military operation that we can legitimately compare to eradicating the nazi state, even if there's a difference of scale.

but, we don't understand wwII very well at all.

justified or not, today's a special day. this was a war worth winning, and this is the day we celebrate it.

don't forget about it.

https://www.timescolonist.com/opinion/op-ed/comment-operation-bagration-was-the-real-d-day-1.1127733

here's the first link:
https://www.lulu.com/en/ca/shop/jessica-murray/full-first-reconstruction-phase-dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja-blog/ebook/product-qg9g54.html

but, as mentioned, i'm eating first.

ok.

so, when i started publishing chronological versions of these blogs at noise trade, i only had a few files to deal with, and i wasn't sure how this thing would turn out. it seemed like the best option at the time because it allowed for a free download with a suggested price; if the site had ads, i don't remember it...

i don't actually know what paste did to my account, but i kind of don't really care. the site has so many ads on it nowadays that i kind of don't want to direct any traffic there anymore, anyways. i mean, i've gone to such great lengths to keep ads off of my pages; why would i then direct people to a site with ads that somebody else profits from? i don't know if the site will come back or not, but if it does i'll delete it, and they can write that down in their ledger - it simply has too many ads to maintain artistic credibility.

further, i now have a series of large files instead of a couple of small ones, and the initial logic of periodic, sequential release periods has largely collapsed. i almost deleted half of the files the other day, and then decided not to. if i'm redoing this...

so, i'm going to be moving to a combination of lulu & smashwords instead, but i'm also going to be reevaluating how i'm presenting the information.

i initially decided that presenting the downloads in a monthly journal format, a trimesterly format and a series of other compilations would provide for maximum consumer choice. ok, i didn't say it like that, exactly - those are crude words, in truth. but, i made an attempt to present the downloads in as many ways as possible, so that people could decide what they wanted to download.

i'm no longer seeing the value in this. there's too many options, too much overlap, and a lot of it seems pointless, like i'm sticking to a formula for the sake of it.

i have monthly music journals up at bandcamp and have tried to avoid posting compilations there in order to avoid overlap, and also because there isn't a lot of conceptual meaning in posting a yearly or a semesterly music journal if i'm presenting the information by month. rather, it makes more sense to arrange the information by phases, of which there is currently only one, the first reconstruction phase. but, that won't come up to bandcamp until i get it up in the iso, which doesn't even have an aleph-number, and i'm still apprehensive about overlap, in the form of added costs to the full discography download (which nobody has bought yet, but will ultimately be the right way to donate funds to me, once the discography is truly done). so, i don't want to do it like that...

rather, we're going to use lulu for large files, as it seems like the best way to do it. it doesn't allow for previewing, which is a defect, so i've got the files up here, and they will stay there: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1NI_sEi1t9NxTeOB9Es3A2Ge8ji4iTXit

however, i'm going to avoid lulu for small files in order to minimize the clutter and instead use smashwords, but i'm going to be strategic about it when i do by trying to squeeze the files between the 15 mb upload limit and the $0.99 minimum price tag. that functionally means that the files are going to need to be more than 100 pages and probably less than 500 pages, although that will depend on the nature of the data in the file. so, instead of having strict monthly journals at smashwords, it's going to be a mix of monthly (music, politics) and semesterly (deathtokoalas), and for the travel blog will only have one entry in the end - for now. these files will also be fluid, rather than static, changing based on what actually makes sense.

if you want the monthly journal, go to bandcamp; if you want the full phase document, go to lulu. if for some reason you want something in between, go to smashwords.

and, after thinking that through and working that out all morning, its what i expect to do for the afternoon - as soon as i get something to eat, first.

this is going to probably take all day to switch over, as i'm going to need to update all of the links across four blogs and two facebook pages. but, i'm done with noise trade. so long.

i'm looking into different e-book hosting sites and everybody wants to convert the file.

i spent a lot of time formatting this. i don't want you to convert it, and i don't want to follow your rules - i just want you to host the file. i'm the creator, not you - i want to be in control. i don't want your convenience. i don't want your advice. i don't want your convention. i just want a server to upload the data to, and a transaction wall attached to it.

also, i want to avoid amazon, which looks like it's going to be hard. i don't see any use in smashing it up, but it would be nice if they could be prevented from buying anything else out. i don't want a baby-amazon, i want an independent service, like bandcamp.

strangely, these services seem to promote putting your book up on amazon as a benefit. what? no...i'd rather not have anything to do with the major labels...

i'm taking a closer look at paste magazine, and the site is clearly supported by intrusive ads. it wasn't like that when i signed up for noise trade, or at least it didn't seem like it was. i don't know what they've done, but i think i'd really rather find somewhere else. it's caught up to me by stealth, but it's actually the kind of site that i usually try to strenuously avoid.

what else is there?

i could upload directly to amazon, but i don't want to.

smashwords has a size limit, amongst other things. i don't mind uploading in doc format, but my files are too big for them, apparently - and they're only going to get bigger. they insist on converting to pdf themselves, and it's doing weird things to the formatting that i don't like. further, they're going to distribute it to the major sites, too. if i could find something that's very much like this, but more hands-off....

kobo wants to convert to epub explicitly, and while i don't mind if you try to convert to these weird formats for your own use (at your own risk), i don't use them myself and don't officially support them. i support .doc and .pdf. it's just going to create a broken output file...

scribd charges a monthly fee, which is a nonstarter.

lulu is...

maybe what i want.

hrmmn.

my dad had just awful taste in women...

it may have been psychological....

but, i could have sworn i felt my eyes refocus as i was eating the first red pepper, as though my body was saying thank you for getting me the nutrients you've been denying me. i'm sorry, ocular system; i'm sorry, brain. i didn't realize it. really.

your eyes are really a window into your brain, literally. it's like your brain burrowed out into the world through your skull and tried to eat the light...

i understand that it won't fix my broader vision problems, which are....this is a very sad story, actually....

i had surgery for a "lazy eye" when i was a kid, which was something my parents got into a heated argument about. basically, my mother decided that i should get the surgery because she had the surgery. that was the extent of her logic - she had it, so therefore i must have it. i don't know if this is a result of how alcoholics anonymous destroys your brain or if she was a genetic determinist to begin with, but she has little concept of the stochasticism and randomness that defines modern science, including modern genetics - she seems to think, essentially, that dna is some kind of god, and we have almost no ability to overturn it. in her estimation, we are entirely predetermined at birth, and that's all there is to it.

she had a lazy eye, therefore i have a lazy eye. qed.

as mentioned, i think the root cause of this weirdness is not some kind of calvinism, or at least not explicitly, but the 12-step program, which has brainwashed her into thinking that she has a genetic disease called alcoholism that she has no free will over. she has extrapolated that exceedingly widely, in absolutely absurd ways, and this is really just one example of it, however extreme it is.

my dad insisted on some kind of evidence and this is the crushingly sad part of it - he took me to doctor after doctor and they all actually told me that i don't have an eye condition. that's right - i saw roughly ten doctors, and they all told me my vision was great.

she finally found a doctor that would do it, and the result is that my eyesight has been relatively poor ever since.

i was too young to really put up much of a fight. and, the court gave my mom custody, despite her history of substance dependence and mental illness, because a child should be with their mother - my dad had no legal ability to stop it.

so, the vitmain a won't undo a surgery that should have never been done or fix my eyesight that was ruined at the end of a knife blade.

but, i swear that i felt it sharpen in focus. for a minute.

it was getting pretty bad for a bit. really. i can handle being near-sighted, but i'd like the distance before it clicks in to be more than a foot. if it helps even a little, that's welcome.