The MagPi Magazine www.themagpi.com

[morphy_richards]

Here's to another great edition. Well done everyone for your hard work, its paid off and 100,000 others think so too!

[Burngate]

Had a brief skim through - Have to say Brilliant - again! Thanks to you all.
for lazy folks like me, http://www.themagpi.com/

[meltwater]

Glad you like it! Jaseman and the others were up all hours testing those apps. Hats off to them!

[Jaseman]

Issue 1 started off as being a Microsoft Publisher file, which then became a series of AutoCAD drawings.

By Issue 2, we were still using AutoCAD as well as a number of other packages, including MS Word, and starting to play around with Scribus.

In Issue 3 we did nearly all of the magazine in Scribus. The advantage being that it is free and cross-platform. The Python Pit was still in AutoCAD, and I have no idea what software Darren used to make his In Control Article.

As far as I know, all of the pages in all three issues were created under a Windows OS.

For Issue 4 I'm hoping to go a step further... I'm going to try and produce as much of it as possible... ON A RASPBERRY PI using Debian Squeeze and Scribus. Could be a challenge, but I think it can be done.

[meltwater]

Issue 1 started off as being a Microsoft Publisher file, which then became a series of AutoCAD drawings.

By Issue 2, we were still using AutoCAD as well as a number of other packages, including MS Word, and starting to play around with Scribus.

In Issue 3 we did nearly all of the magazine in Scribus. The advantage being that it is free and cross-platform. The Python Pit was still in AutoCAD, and I have no idea what software Darren used to make his In Control Article.

As far as I know, all of the pages in all three issues were created under a Windows OS.

For Issue 4 I'm hoping to go a step further... I'm going to try and produce as much of it as possible... ON A RASPBERRY PI using Debian Squeeze and Scribus. Could be a challenge, but I think it can be done.

Issue 5 will be Raw binary.

[morphy_richards]

Strangely when Ash sent me the original skutter article back in a zipped scribus file, I extracted it on my virtual pi and it wouldn't open (debian squeeze, scribus) however it would open on the Windows version of scribus .

[Jaseman]

The reason is that your Windows Scribus is the 2012 version. On Debian, you will have the one from 2008. We are re-creating all the templates for the older version, so that this won't be a problem.

[mjtessmer]

Scroll to the top of the page. Copy and paste the URL.

[meltwater]

Just got notification that the dropbox account has been stopped due to traffic.
Here are some new (MagPi official) mirrors, will get the site updated when able:
http://goo.gl/ldBpN
http://goo.gl/ifuYx

Cheers.

[williamhbell]

Just got notification that the dropbox account has been stopped due to traffic.
Here are some new (MagPi official) mirrors, will get the site updated when able:
http://goo.gl/ldBpN

Hi Meltwater, This URL is down this morning due to traffic too. It looks like more mirrors are needed following the blog post. Regards, Will

[meltwater]

Just got notification that the dropbox account has been stopped due to traffic.
Here are some new (MagPi official) mirrors, will get the site updated when able:
http://goo.gl/ldBpN

Hi Meltwater, This URL is down this morning due to traffic too. It looks like more mirrors are needed following the blog post. Regards, Will

Just got it to work for me - tracking says only a few clicks - (they usually ban it for 3 days) but I have feeling that dropbox aren't too keen on the traffic.

I am tempted to pay monthly for a full dropbox account (overall a very useful service), but even then I think they will probably cut the public link each time it gets hot.
Free account is 20Gb/day, pro account is 200Gb/day. Now I estimate, the service was taken down before we hit 15Gb, so they are monitoring the account.

There are three solutions:
1) We take donations and use that to provide links from solid servers on a proper paid service.
2) We find a free service (like Issuu.com) which will host the files for us, with no limits (ok..1Tb bandwidth limit).
3) We find someone willing to host the files somewhere with no limits.

Remember also, that if you sign up on Issuu.com, you can also download the PDF directly from there too.

[antiloquax]

Regarding mirrors, I have a (free) ftp hosting place. It probably won't deal with massive traffic, but I'm happy to use it to mirror the magazine.
mark
I'll put issue 3 on later (it's blocked at school ... )

[domesday]

What is blocked at school, the site ?

[kirbyman62-2]

Haha, my school's internet managed to block anything and everything. My friend and I used a server and RDP'd into it, problem solved

[antiloquax]

No, the MagPi isn't blocked, just my webhosting place.

Okay, I've put issue 3 on
MagPi Issue 3

As I said, I'm not sure how much traffic it can deal with.
You need to use:
User Name: a3804781
P'word: puppi1



mark

[ashleigh.stone@doctors.org.uk]

Hi all.

Time is running out to get your questions to Liz and Eben. Please send all questions to editor@themagpi.com by Monday night ready for our interview on Tuesday!

Thanks

Ash

[nub]

Hey guys,
i must say that i love the MagPi but I hate reading stuff on a computer screen.
Thus I created an Ebook conversion of Issue 3 to read it 'offline'.
I kept the instructing pictures and the ads.
Code is written in monospace.



Uploaded with ImageShack.us



Uploaded with ImageShack.us


Uploaded with ImageShack.us

What do you think of it?
I think it would be great to offer an ebook version alongside with the pdfs which are way to small on my kindle.

If you would like to have a look at it you can download it here:
Epub:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/90512103/The%20 ... 0Team.epub

Mobi (kindle) :
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/90512103/The%20 ... 0Team.mobi

[meltwater]

Hey guys,
i must say that i love the MagPi but I hate reading stuff on a computer screen.
Thus I created an Ebook conversion of Issue 3 to read it 'offline'.
I kept the instructing pictures and the ads.
Code is written in monospace.



Uploaded with ImageShack.us



Uploaded with ImageShack.us


Uploaded with ImageShack.us

What do you think of it?
I think it would be great to offer an ebook version alongside with the pdfs which are way to small on my kindle.

If you would like to have a look at it you can download it here:
Epub:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/90512103/The%20 ... 0Team.epub

Mobi (kindle) :
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/90512103/The%20 ... 0Team.mobi

Excellent work! I'll download and try it out.

[exartemarte]

Hey guys,
i must say that i love the MagPi but I hate reading stuff on a computer screen.
Thus I created an Ebook conversion of Issue 3 to read it 'offline'.
I kept the instructing pictures and the ads.
Code is written in monospace.
[...]

Thank you!

I don't like reading too much on the computer screen either - I've copied your .mobi file across to my Kindle and I can read it in comfort, which is great.

How do you do it (convert pdf to eBook)? Is it a more or less automated process, or does it involve a lot of manual editing?

Keep up the good work!

[nub]

How do you do it (convert pdf to eBook)? Is it a more or less automated process, or does it involve a lot of manual editing?

Just converting with calibre or similar returns a ton of crap. Let me give you an example:

and bot om. You wil need to find the best set ings to suit
files.
your particular screen.
If the picture goes of the edge of the screen. Just use
FIXING GEANY (Python Editor)
positive numbers for the overscan values.
When trying to execute python scripts from Geany you wil
IF AFTER REBOOTING YOU ARE GETTING NO
get an er or.
PICTURE:
To resolve this, go to Edit>Preferences>Tools.
You can reset the set ings back to default by typing blindly:
pi

As you can see there are breaks at some weird points and i guess it doesnt focus on the columns but goes from left to right.

Therefore I had to write the conversion manually by adding the html-ebook code to the text. I guess it would have been a lot easier if I had had the .doc files containing the original articles to convert.

[meltwater]

Well you've done a good job. I'd tried the same method and as you say, it doesn't like layouts and you get one massive mess.

If you are interested in producing versions for the other issues then email us and we can probably give you access to the source files. Issues 1 and 2 were put together using various programs though (publisher/autocad etc), so may not be that easy, but issue 4 should all be generated using scribus files (and hopefully we will use that from now on).

Cheers.

[benzeman]

If you're having bandwidth problems I suggest you try to promote torrents - http://burnbit.com/ is a good service (I'll be using it for the unofficial manual), as it combines torrents and "traditional" mirrors. If you do get torrents out I'll seed - 6Mb/s up now

[williamhbell]

There is currently some interest in translating the MagPi into French,
http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewt ... 65&t=11503

[meltwater]

We seemed to have gained a troll squatter in our irc channel. So for everyone who uses it, please don't take offence by stuff on it (or the user "Ash" - who is not our Ash), it is not us and they do not represent the MagPi.

We shall get a new home/secure it shortly. Could do with a IRC guru to help us set it up better.

[meltwater]

We seemed to have gained a troll squatter in our irc channel. So for everyone who uses it, please don't take offence by stuff on it (or the user "Ash" - who is not our Ash), it is not us and they do not represent the MagPi.

We shall get a new home/secure it shortly. Could do with a IRC guru to help us set it up better.

Thanks to Dave Spice to sorting it out, PM/email one of the team if you need to access the new channel.

For those who are already part of the team, details are in "NOTICE - New IRC Channel.txt" in the shared folder.