Monday, November 23

This morning was cold and frosty, and the bus was late and full.

I began the day at Arcada by answering a bunch of emails, and by writing some more. I wrote one to someone I had met at Westerhals in Oslo to see if he would be interested in joining the team I am putting together.

I then made a pdf of Culture & Democracy, the manifesto for the 1986 Another Standard conference in Sheffield. I expected this to take an hour and a half and it ended up taking most of the day. Firstly I had to tear up one of the two physical copies I have, and I had to do this accurately. I located a Stanley knife and started, only to find out that this was likely to be a slow and inaccurate process. I then tried to find a guillotine to discover that they all seemed to have disappeared.

I asked Monica because Monica knows everything. She took me to a secret guillotine locked away on the fifth floor, and I cut the book into single pages. I then went to A4 to scan in the pages to make the e-book. This took an hour because the process was slow. At the end the printer processed all the files and sent the pdf to me in an email. I went downstairs to check it.

The email said “Your file could not be sent. It was 13mB and the limit is 12mB”. I went to see Dane to ask what could be done and he showed me a secret setting that would enable me to save files as large as I wanted onto the intra server for one hour. I went back to the printer to start again. I did a test of eight pages, sent it to myself and went down to look at it. It was printed on A4 paper, with each page occupying half of the digital paper. I went back up and checked the settings and the secret method uses much older software which does not allow me to change the page size.

I stopped for lunch and Jutta, Andrej and I walked to the mall where they bought salads and I bought Greek yogurt. Jutta suggested printing it in parts and merging them later. I agreed.

In the early afternoon I made two separate pdf files, went downstairs, found an online pdf merging service, and created the book. I looked though it and it worked. The pages have rip marks down one side and the page numbers are not aligned, but it is presentable. I sent a copy to Jake, thinking that if we go ahead with a 30th Anniversary Event next summer I will take the time to retouch the pages in Photoshop to make a pristine e-book.

I received a mail from Ivar from Oslo saying that he was very interested in the idea I am proposing and asking for a Skype meeting.

Now I am on my way home in the dark, wondering whether it might be possible to cycle again next week if the weather warms up as promised. I will get home first because Irma is having her first session in a neurosonic chair at Kellumo. She will return very enthused about the chair, the experience and Kellumo itself.

When she returns I will be on a ladder in the dark, checking the drains for leaves before everything it too frozen. I will remove the few leaves I find, and rip my trousers on the ladder.