OK, Memory Lane Trodders, remember that Mike kinda triggered this.

I often remember my first staff writing job, at Crain Communications' AutoWeek, where we still pasted up galleys made on the first floor <on hot type machines>. We had an honest-to-God darkroom right in our bullpen, where you entered the inner sanctum through the magick rotating door.

When we needed images outlined, we drove them about 6 blocks down the street to Ross Roy Advertising [sic transit gloria mundi], where their staff rubylith guy did our cutouts for us freelance.

I still have an old photo sizing wheel. I had a pica pole, but my spousal unit sold it in a garage sale. To Ripley's, I think. They couldn't believe I still had it.

One of our key motorsports correspondents, Steve Parker, brought in one Monday the first "laptop" we'd ever seen, one of those suitcase-sized Kaypro "transportables" running WordStar on a CPM OS. I later bought one as my first computer when I was with Pop Mech.

I wrote one of the first-ever car phone stories, about a company in suburban Detroit installing big boxes of electronics into the trunks of execu-cars so you could dial up a call through a radio-telephone operator. He told me then that direct-broadcast satellite radio and even TV was coming. I kinda didn't believe him.

Mike's correct, of course, though I'm not sure it makes any difference to me. When I'm working on a project, I have a mental idea of what the final product will look like -- but there is absolutely no substitute for holding it in your hands, still out-gassing press-shop VOCs and reminding you of editing the high school paper.

Wait. Maybe that was just me.

Oh yeah, none of our test rides had ABS, either.

I much prefer today, in all respects.


On 24 Jun 2010, at 7:58 PM, Michael Brady wrote:

> I just picked up the sample copy of a book I designed. It's 7x10. My first reaction was "Ooh, a little bigger than I figured." But it's okay. I'm not going to reject it.
>
> But it reminded me of a odd disconnect when doing electronic layouts compared to old paste-ups that started out with pencil roughs on tracing paper. Back in the day, everything was 100%, except thumbnails. If you wanted to see details, you just moved closer to the board; if you wanted to see the full spread, you pushed you chair back a bit.
>
> I don't have that same gut sense of the actual size of layouts anymore.
>
> I've found that with the ability to scale up layouts to 3600% or zoom out to 6%, I've lost the sense of what the actual size of the piece really is. And it's exacerbated by the fact that when I move the layout window from my 20" main monitor (1680 x 1050 pixels) to my 19" secondary monitor (1440 x 900), the on-screen size jumps just by switching monitors.
>
> Also, selecting "100%" or "actual size" for the view setting doesn't give you a layout that is accurately 100% (because the display in the program is independent of the dot pitch of the monitor, and so it's rendered on screen at different actual dimensions)
>
> My point: When I use the computer, my basic, tactile, almost visceral connection to the natural size of the layout is virtually nonexistent, almost completely atrophied.
>
> Does this sound familiar?
>
> | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
> Michael Brady
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