corillon posted:

This one is for the ladies :https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/teddy-love

I didn't see this posted in the last couple of pages. Your Teddy Bear is all grown up and ready to sex you up.

corillon posted:

This one is for the ladies :https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/teddy-love

I didn't see this posted in the last couple of pages. Your Teddy Bear is all grown up and ready to sex you up.

tlarn posted:

Fauxtool posted:

short of saran wrapping the whole thing how are you going to keep it clean and dry?

feedmyleg posted:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2068927442/maasaivatar



I've never seen so, so many ill-constructed, half-nonsense sentences strung together to mean "3d head models you can put makeup on." At least, I think that's what it means? At first I thought it was just a language barrier issue, but that doesn't seem to be a problem in the video.

They seem like nice people, and it's great to see a dad trying something like this with his daughter, but wow




One of us probably won't lose a leg during the project, but if we do it'll just disrupt the project for a bit.

feedmyleg posted:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2068927442/maasaivatar



I've never seen so, so many ill-constructed, half-nonsense sentences strung together to mean "3d head models you can put makeup on." At least, I think that's what it means? At first I thought it was just a language barrier issue, but that doesn't seem to be a problem in the video.

They seem like nice people, and it's great to see a dad trying something like this with his daughter, but wow




One of us probably won't lose a leg during the project, but if we do it'll just disrupt the project for a bit.

Meatwave posted:

drat, this kickstarter has some tables and outlines.

Excels posted:

Who would make a contingency plan on their Kickstarter for the unlikely event one of them develops late-blooming mental illnesses?

Crust First posted:

If they've been keeping up with successful kickstarters at all I'd say sudden mental illness in the project creator is probably the third greatest threat to project completion behind "outright scam" and "impossible technology".

Crust First posted:

If they've been keeping up with successful kickstarters at all I'd say sudden mental illness in the project creator is probably the third greatest threat to project completion behind "outright scam" and "impossible technology".

PHIZ KALIFA posted:

As compared to what, exactly? Twisting things to serve our needs is what humanity does best. Have you ever seen what corn looks like in the wild? We've got the Midas touch of lazy work-arounds, have you not seen the OSHA.jpg thread?

Zaphod42 posted:

Awful Kickstarters: A mental disability besets a Team Member.

Update #55 - Proofing copy posted:

This is a long and weird update, but I'll try to cover everything. The short version is the book won't be printed until July at the earliest.

Anyway...

I've had a reply from CreateSpace's tech support team. And they completely ignored the problem about strange text outside the margins. The answer I received focused only a secondary issue, that of images not bleeding beyond the trim line:

Received 19 June:
---
We received feedback from your Technical Service team regarding the issued you had.

Technical service team had a look into your title. They have made some example of pages where the image doesn't extend through the bleed area include, but are not limited to PDF pages 176, 200, 214, 226, 238, 250, 262, 285, etc.

If images extend to the trim line, then they need to also include 0.125" of bleed. If images are not intended to bleed, they should have a 0.25" white border in order for them to appear best when manufactured.
---

That's it. Not one word regarding the alleged text outside the margins, which I described in the last update. Which is weird, because the image I posted in the last update, is the same image I uploaded along with my technical error (though with the ID still visible). I don't know why they've not addressed my primary problem. The images which bleed but stop prior to the trim are all on pages unrelated to the invisible text. I don't know. Maybe if I remove the images they'll ignore the text issue and put it through.

Anyway, I found a strange work around - quite by accident. When I first uploaded my first PDF, there was an error message saying the page width was wrong. Instead of being 7.44 it was 7.43##### with recurring numbers. They offered to auto-resize it, which I selected, to see how it looked. What this automatic correction did was resize every page, the criteria seemingly being whether images were outside the margin or not. Most looked OK, but any with massive images were shrunk down by as much, I would guess, 30%. Obviously this wouldn't do. It doesn't actually change the layout, it simply takes the entire page and proportionally squishes it all down. But it looks ugly.

So I went back to the Word document and found that one of the chapters was accidentally not quite 7.44. It was easy to correct. When correcting this, I also decided to expand the page size, and select the "bleed over the trim line" option, since it allowed me to use bigger images than before. I uploaded the new PDF, the size was spot on, exactly as CS wanted it, and that went through. But then the hundreds of margin errors showed up. Obviously the auto-resizing inadvertently corrected any other problems during the shrink down. (For the record, I also uploaded a version with the corrected 7.44 width, but without the bleed over the trim option, and the same problems occurred in all the same places - I've yet to work out what causes them)

I modified and uploaded a few more versions to try correcting the problem, which brings us all up to the last update I made. My original plan had been to upload it Sunday, have it approved by the end of Monday (they promise approval or rejection within 24 hours), and order a physical copy to check.

Here's where things get tricky...

I've been invited to be a keynote speaker at a symposium abroad, to discuss the history of Japanese games and the book, and so in a couple of days I will be leaving and not returning to the UK until 2 July. I had hoped to have the printed proof to read while on the long haul flight and during down time. I've bought an A-Z address book to make notes of keywords for the index while proofing every page.But with the glitches I can't order a proof.

Time is short, so I created a second CS project page on my account, and re-uploaded the glitched version. As before, CS said there were zero errors, apart from needing to auto-resize it. I submitted it and it's going through. Once approved I will order the printed proof and have it sent to my destination for the speech. I'll make notes on this shrunken version, since it won't alter page layout.

When I return, with notes for corrections, I will have several options.

1) Contact CS again and hope they fix the glitches in their system so my latest PDF can go through despite the "text errors" for non-existent text.

2) I take the glitched Word file and go through all 526 pages, manually shrinking down the images to be within the margins. Then jam it through their uploads screen, using the auto-resize to wash away the problems noted in option (1) above. Hopefully by manually resizing the images (keeping in mind the auto-resize seems to function based on the edges of images it can detect), the shrinkage per page will not be so severe as to make the text unreadable.

If you think this sounds crazy, you'd be right - I will literally be glitching my way through CreateSpace's stupid, obfuscated approvals process.

The negative side effect of this is that all photographs will be smaller than intended. Game images are quite small anyway, so it *should* only affect photos. This also means the images cannot "bleed over the trim line". For example the scan of the Telenet office layout, from a few updates back - I had filled half a page with that, and the edges of the image bled over the page's trim line. Which is an option that CS gives you. Now I'll have to crop the edges, and force the whole thing inside the books margins (roughly 0.3 on the outside with a 0.9 gutter, if you choose not to bleed images over the trim).

3) I go back to my individual pre-designed chapters, from before I stitched them all together, and try redesigning the hotspots where the text errors crop up, in the hope of somehow fixing the problem.

We should all hope for Option 1, since it's the quickest, easiest and most efficient for maintaining a good design. Failing that, depending on what the technicians say, I'm going to try option 2, in order to see if I can end up with a printed copy which resembles my original designs and is large enough to be readable.

As for when the book will be in everyone's hands, I have no idea. I think I'm beyond the point of being able to give reasonable deadlines.

I hope no one feels that I'm using this an excuse for delays. You cannot imagine how eagerly I want this book out - more so than every backer combined, I would say. Every word and image is accounted for, edited and designed, some double page spreads I spent an hour or more on, recolouring the game images so that when converted to monochrome they would still look nice (videogame "dark blues" in 8-bit games tend to be converted to black in monochrome, meaning you can lose the entire image, so I first converted the blue by itself to a lighter shade of grey). Several backers will be at the symposium, I will show them the proof I forcibly glitched through CS' system, and I'll put a video up when I've returned to show you - it is finished, and it's beautiful. But the damned bloody system won't let me pass!

For those who have used CreateSpace, perhaps you've had similar difficulties? This is a quote from one of my backers in the previous update:

---
As a graphic designer that has had to put up with their requirements, it can be extremely frustrating. On one book I had to exaggerate their directions and it made the cover look completely wrong. My publisher actually had a yelling argument with them to actually let the book go through with corrections at my behest.
---

In all honesty, I never for a moment anticipated such difficulty with CreateSpace. I chose them because the Adventure and Sega books by HG101 went through so smoothly.

quote:

You're writing the book with Microsoft Word!?? That's your problem. It is not a DTP application suitable for publishing, it's barely capable of writing letters.

quote:

You are either the biggest poo poo magnet on the Internet, or your inexperience magnified the foibles of self-publishing. Next time you want to take on something like this, let someone else handle interacting with the public. At this point I have trouble imagining that the book itself will be in any way more interesting than the drama log associated with its production. You got jerked around by crazy Japanese women for months, and now you're griping about your printer's online apparatus, and calling it out by name?

It's as though you've never interacted with an Internet-facing customer service rep before. First tier is likely to have screwed something up. Ask for an escalation.

I didn't back your project because of your professionalism, and now I doubt I'd want to go into business with you. Be less of a martyr for your craft on your next project, OK?

tatopom posted:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1123712033/smash-the-game-changing-tennis-wearable?ref=nav_search

A kickstarter for a gadget that claims to measure your tennis racquet speed and trajectory. I have my doubts about this one - can some technically minded goons shed some light? There's barely any technical info on the actual hardware.

I assume its based on a chip accelerometer and gyroscope (like something on a smartphone) , but how accurate can it be at working out the velocity of your racquet from the acceleration?

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/laviesak/shot-stats-challenger-make-your-tennis-racket-smar?ref=nav_search
- HA! second kickstarter for the same thing. Its got more details on the hardware - looks like it uses sensors similar to what you would find on a RC quadcopter controller

Either way it looks like a gadget for tennis nerds with too much money

quote:

it looks like a gadget for tennis nerds with too much money

Kaiju15 posted:

If that doesn't tickle your fancy, have a neoprene privacy cover for Kinect so that the NSA can't see your bathing suit area while you play your Xbone in the buff.

Kaiju15 posted:

This looks like bulletball on a grander scale, and as a bonus, almost all of the English comments appear to be company shills.

Kaiju15 posted:

This looks like bulletball on a grander scale, and as a bonus, almost all of the English comments appear to be company shills.

Veotax posted:

Good job, that thing only covers one of the cameras. It misses the (arguably more scary, if you're the paranoid type) infra-red camrea.

tlarn posted:

The future of sports is here.

tlarn posted:

The future of sports is here.

GigaPeon posted:

I thought the New Kinect only has one.

Kaiju15 posted:

This looks like bulletball on a grander scale, and as a bonus, almost all of the English comments appear to be company shills.

tlarn posted:

Have you ever wanted a sensor that tracks all sorts of useless information about your fishing trip, like how many times you cast your line or how far down your lure went before getting a bite? Well here's your Fisherman's iFriend! Why yes, it does collate that information through an iPhone or Android device and creates a profile with this information on a website to share with others.

There's also this kid who wants to start a gaming blog for £5,000. I made the guess that the person's a kid because this is the project's header image.



However, it's stated on the project page that they already have the blog up on Wordpress The money they ask for is to "fund a much needed new computer for video editing and video capturing." Well, why not take a look at an excerpt from their blog?


Far Cry 3: You're more likely to die if you run out of ammo. Then there's the Risks and Challenges.


Leaflets and stickers.

BloodWulfe posted:

I think you guys are being pretty unfair to Teqball. It looks like fun.

BattleMaster posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obS6TUVSZds

BloodWulfe posted:

I think you guys are being pretty unfair to Teqball. It looks like fun.