Towards the Singularity: Help with digital thrillpower

[TordelBack]

Thanks IP and everyone, Comicat installed, last 2 progs purchased, and it's a marked improvement. The syncable bookshelf works great for sorting my PDFs books. Still seems to have trouble recognising double-page spreads on the prog/Casefiles (maybe not its fault) but it is smoooth and zooming and swiping very natural.

Have been using it for work PDFs most of the afternoon too, but it's going to take me some time to adapt to comics on the small screen, everything seems bitty and unimpressive...

[IndigoPrime]

Mm. 7in is quite small for comics reading. The iPad Pro (11in) is about right for me, although the smaller standard iPad is also OK. I didn't spot you mentioned you have a Mac to hand as well. If you fancy reading on that, Simple Comic is pretty good: http://dancingtortoise.com/simplecomic/

[Funt Solo]

Being in the US, digital is the most cost-effective option for me. I still have hundreds of progs in boxes - and I loves 'em - but it's so much easier to browse my digital collection, store it, take screenshots for articles and such.

Reading them: well, it's a mixed bag. When a lot of artists went digital I started noticing that the printed version seemed dull compared. It's like back-lit content vs front-lit content. Light beams vs. pigment. Woah! Spliff-convo-fodder segue alert!

Anyway - I'm like Windows XP - I just read them as PDFs and tell the viewer to go two abreast and have a blank first page (so that the cover's in the right place).

Preaching to the converted: but keep buying yer Toofs!

[broodblik]

For me the only option is digital. Getting magazines/comics trough the postal service is a disaster. I am not prepared to wait 3 plus months for the latest prog.

[Magnetica]

Chunky, absolutely.

While I would enjoy skipping those dastardly kiddie issues every so often, subscriptions are so cost-effective it's a no-brainer. But REAL comics hopefully last a bit longer. Will the collection's value (Tharg and non-Tharg) increase in the coming years? Could go either way, as the kids don't see the point in tree-based comics...?

Mumbling aside, I DO miss the Wednesday stroll to Smith's to pick up the prog. Took a wrench to kick that lovely habit..... (eek - 3 years ago now).

I have just downloaded Chunky on my iPad to try it. I have also tried other apps and none of them seem to handle the double page spreads properly. Apart from Rebellion's own app.

Maybe I'm just not using them correctly.

Any advice?

[IndigoPrime]

Chunky usually shows the DPS if you flip it to landscape. Depends on settings though.

[TordelBack]

7in is quite small for comics reading.

But a perfectly adequate size in other arenas.

[sheridan]

So much to comment on in this thread, so I'll try to keep it short!

Vinyl - still have mine and a record player to listen to it on (though I must admit it has been a few months since I listened to anything - I'll remedy that this weekend).  Of all the music formats they provide the best canvas for the package (sleeve art, gatefolds, posters, transparent, marbled, metallic, glittery, pictured, glow-in-the-dark, shaped discs)*.

MC tapes - they hiss, they stretch, you can hear the backwards music from the other side, I could go on, you can probably tell I'm not a fan.

CDs - fairly convenient, I'll still buy them if I'm seeing a band live, though sound-wise I rip them and listen to the mp3s - I have plenty of CDs I've never listened to, directly.  As they're digital there's nothing you can't hear on a CD you wouldn't also get by a downloaded format.

Streamed or from a website - I'm old enough to have listened to a lot of the music on mp3.com before it was bought and closed down by vivendi.  I'm also old enough to remember when myspace was a good place to go to discover music you hadn't heard, which you could then download (because if you tried to stream it it'd be bitty and stop-starty as it buffered over a slow modem).  p.s. myspace lost 50,000,000 mp3s five years ago, they didn't have a  back-up!

Between hard drive crashes on a local level and company bankruptcies and takeovers the only sure way to keep what you pay for is to buy a physical copy.  You're still vulnerable to loss through flooding or fire, but if that happens then media formats are going to be the least of your worries.

Tying this back to the original post - my local comic shop is closed for the time being but fulfling existing orders though as Diamond have suspended distribution then that means my prog and meg consumption is going on haitus.  I'm not going to desert my FLCS and I also can't afford to buy digital from Rebellion as well as physical from FLCS.  I have my prog slog to get me through the spring and summer though, and I'm only on prog 246.  If I get to prog 2100 without any new progs, then I'll start to worry!  Avoiding spoilers for however months may be challenging though!

* I have examples of all the above in my collection - not all in one disc!

[sintec]

Recently grabbed Comicat based on Indgio Prime's earlier recommendation in this thread - it is a marked improvement on Astonishing which I'd been using before.

A bit disappointed to find a lack of support for metadata though My digital music library is tagged with Artists/Album/Labels/Release date/Genre and I was hoping to apply a similar organisation to my comics. After a quick google it seems there isn't really a defacto standard way to do this. CBZ doesn't natively support metadata which has led to 3 different "standards" emerging with varying support across different apps. Meh.

Seems the best option with Comicat is just to use the filepaths to organise stuff - which is comparatively limiting. Is this really the best option or has my google-fu failed me?

[TordelBack]

I'd be keen to hear this too. Thanks to IP I've been using Comicat for many weeks now,  and I'm a big fan of everything about it except the cataloguing. I can't be doing with folders, that's for work.

[AlexF]

I am a deeply unimaginative digital comics reader. I have an ipad, and use the default Apps for 2000AD, Comixology, and on occasion Marvel Unlimited. They all work pretty well, and certainly the screen (11in I think) is big enough to read OK, even the double-page spreads. It's also small enough that I appreciate getting physical copies of comics that much more, especially Rebellion's trade collections.

I've already bought and downloaded slightly more comics than I can easily read each month, so my digital bookshelf is much like my real bookshelves...

[IndigoPrime]

AlexF: if you've an 11in iPad, do check out Chunky. It's really great, and the creator is a one-man indie.

[broodblik]

I assume that Chunky can be used to read the prog on ?

[AlexF]

I've downloaded Chunky but have no clue what to actually do to make comics appear within it - I assume there's some way to link this app to my 2000AD app? It might also be useful for reading stuff I've bought off Panel Syndicate, which I'm otherwise reading through the ipad's book reader app.

Like I said, I am an unimaginative guy when it comes to digital stuff. If it's not super obvious what to do, I'm unlikely to try very hard!
(Although I have tried making sense of Kek-W comics more than is advised)

[IndigoPrime]

I assume that Chunky can be used to read the prog on ?

Yes. You can load — from various sources — basically any DRM-free comic into the thing. (Which means PDF, CBZ, CBR, etc.)

I've downloaded Chunky but have no clue what to actually do to make comics appear within it - I assume there's some way to link this app to my 2000AD app? It might also be useful for reading stuff I've bought off Panel Syndicate, which I'm otherwise reading through the ipad's book reader app. Like I said, I am an unimaginative guy when it comes to digital stuff. If it's not super obvious what to do, I'm unlikely to try very hard!

With 2000 AD, you can download your comics from the 2000 AD shop, which I would advise doing anyway, so you always have a copy somewhere, whatever happens. With Chunky, you can use its browser to grab stuff directly from any website, or upload files to it from whichever source you like.

If you're very much not tech-savvy, that might be a step too far. But if you store comics in Google Drive and can sign in, that's all that's needed. Or if you buy the IAP, you can grab comics from local PCs/Macs/servers. (I have a USB drive plugged into my router, and that's used as a cheapo sort-of NAS.)

Might be worth a look for your Panel stuff, mind. I can't really imagine reading too much comics stuff in the Books app.