Otto, the Intro

September 25, 2011 | Posted in Miscellany, Movies, Own Stuff | Tagged with: , | 42 Comments ↓

Just so y’all can have a little bit better idea of what Scott and I have been discussing, here are the introductory pages, kind of the preface, to OTTO, which I seem to have written somewhere around 1993-4.  Tech-wise, it almost might have been somewhere around 1100:  I was using a hand-scanner to get images I cut from a German book published ca. 1930, then editing them probably in MS Word, unless it was in some cave-person image program from those very dark times when people were, for instance, still paying hourly for the privilege of live-chatting on AOL.

I probably still have the book and the original images somewhere, meaning they ought to be re-scannable if I decide to do what I’m thinking about doing:  Produce it!

Also wanted to test the display of PDF files.  The “embedded reader” method seems to be the most practical way to present a heavily formatted text that one may not be inclined to sherpa pixel by pixel through the intergorge.

[gview file=”https://ckmacleod.com/otto/Otto_2012_intro.pdf”]

UPDATE: Below are two test “embeds” (for bob or anyone else having trouble viewing the first PDF file): Do you see an over-enlarged/pixellated image file, within a document viewer, somewhere below? How about at the bottom? Should be a directly embedded PDF file. (There may be some viewer fratricide between the embeds… you can ignore that for now.)

[gview file=”https://ckmacleod.com/otto/ottosym.tif”]

42 comments on “Otto, the Intro”

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  4. “a pot of beans’?

    maybe some detail to solidify the low-rentedness of ’em and a nice shot into the pot to go with the radiograph?

    I’m on safari through a mac and have a missing plug-in on the screen (as well as all my usual deficiencies.)

    Reply

    • radiograph? plug-in?

      maybe some detail to solidify the low-rentedness of ‘em

      We may spring for some very high-rent beans, but, as for a shot into the bowl, I’m all in favor of that. Wouldn’t want to waste good beans!

      Remember it’s just the first seven, effectively six, pages of a ca. 100-page screenplay. And maybe, even and especially as a piece of closet cinema, it ought to leave scenic detail to the imagination of the reader-as-art director.

      Reply

        • Is “radiograph” a common East Coast or health professional or East Coast health professional usage? Don’t oft encounter that term out here in the wilds.

          If you mean the beans ought to be compu-radio-graphically visualized along with the Ottobrain… absolutely. Since we’re meant to visualize the brain (get that brain in our brains), and the brain is in the zonality of beans… or the zone of beanality… has beans on the bean… maybe that was already happening in my CK-brain: The beans are the outward manifestation of the garbagey brown inwardness, and vice versa.

          If I’m getting you wrong, feel free to write out the actual indications as you envision they should be written.

          Reply

  6. Yea, I don’t think I ever saw the visuals. Just the ones I made with the socks.
    On a related subject, the Angels lost today in particularly tragic form. If their closer hadn’t choked a double play throw to second they’d be right in it especially if the Yanks win the second game of the dh. Boy Boston sucks right now. The kid catching Wakeman was so bad at catching knuckleballs I’ve never seen anything like it and apparently it was better than the last game they were together. Putting him back out there in that case was just cruel.

    Reply

    • Could be that the heaviest work I did on the graphics occurred in the late pre-Katerina period when you and I were already falling somewhat out of touch – if that’s how that all happened. There may be many readerly thrills and chills in store for you when you confront what I did to the thing. Could be the Angels problem.

      Reply

  7. I think that’s right. And Boston and the Yanks are still playing. I wonder if the Phrog has the patience to watch that much baseball in one day, when there’s nothing at stake for the Yanks.

    Reply

    • Proctor just served up a 3-run bomb with 2 out in the top of the 14th.

      If, as I half-expect, the Yankees tie it up in the bottom of the inning, I’m sticking with the game, but no later than Tuesday.

      I barely watched the 1:00 game as it was Giants-Eagles time.

      Reply

  8. I was actually glad for the Angels that Boston won that second game so they wouldn’t feel so bad. I still think Boston will pull it out. In any case, I don’t envy the Yanks and Ranger pitching staffs having to go up against such great hitters in two such hitter-friendly parks. None of the pitchers involved have what I call play-off heaters. In the playoffs, hitters adjust to everything but great, well located fastballs with big movement. Even Lee eventually couldn’t get by without having enough speed, while Holliday and Lincecum were more reliable in the late playoffs than during the season. Of course, Rivera is the most perfect example of what works in the playoffs.

    Reply

    • Don’t care (that is, sniff, a lot!) about you guys hijacking this ought-to-be-all-about-the-glories-of-Otto-thread with your baseball chud, but I think y’all oughta get in the habit of putting up “Aside” posts (easily created by format or category selection, you don’t even need to create an excerpt, title, or image) for stray observations, speculations, etc. – or properly formatted and categorized “real” posts (“Standard” format, the default) for serious delvings into the autistical depths of baseballology. Such aside posts can also serve as “open threads,” obviating the need for a “wall” or “shoutbox.” Common blog practice would be to say something like: “How about them Yankees? This is an open thread, and here’s a Youtube I liked, too.”

      Reply

  9. I’m confused about the wall. Sometimes it’s there and sometimes it’s not. I did try to keep most baseball stuff there. I’ll try the Aside thing but it seems less organic than when Fuster and I (and you CK even though you don’t want to acknowledge it) just suddenly go autistically baseball. The Aside feels cut-off more than the wall did, but I’ll try it out and see.

    Reply

    • I’ve been experimenting with diverse Wall-like plug-ins, but they all have defects – functionality problems, conflicts with other plug-ins, tendency to vacuum up spam from the interwastes, aesthetic problems that imply extra work formatting them adequately beautifully. Then there’s the overall negative of sucking/deflecting conversation away from the “main” blog into an even more disposable format that’s hard to keep track of. The blog itself should be the repository of this, that, and the other thing, should be a “wall.” At the same time, the main posts are searchable, categorizable, taggable, illustratable. They organize, whether or not they seem organic. The differentiation of “serious” content from “aside” content can be reinforced and extended in various ways – eventually, depending on how things go with the blog – the main content can be presented in magazine format and the “wall”-like content advanced in a bloggier mode..

      Reply

      • Really, how often does a discussion not veer from the post pretty quickly. Certainly, sometimes there are sustained discussions on point, but just as much, none of the discussion is.

        Structure, smucture…it’s the cast of characters.

        Reply

        • I disagree with your estimate, and the sustained discussions on point should in my view be encouraged.

          When there are only several characters, talking to each other almost exclusively, the whole thing is not too hard to keep track of, but, even then, it can get chaotic. Might as well have a simple bulletin board or Facebook “Wall” or e-mail list. I think the blog should at least retain the potential or option of opening toward a wider usership.

          Reply

    • So what I’m saying is that baseball commentary would lead to a more coherent, progressive conversation about baseball if localized in a series of posts with threads. Would require only slightly more discipline than just putting up a Wall thing, and would leave the thousands of other blog regulars free to move on to things they find more interesting, like photos of birds about to seized by snakes:

      Reply

  10. Below the Update, there is a fairly large blank space, then Ottosity in a box too big for the space,

    As far a Otto goes, it’s not really grabbing me so far.

    Reply

    • I don’t understand what you mean by a “box too big for the space.” Do you mean it functions OK as an embedded file, but it overflows the margins?

      Are you using IE 9? Have you turned on “Compatibility View” on purpose or by mistake?

      Reply

        • Compatibility View is there somewhere in the IE menus, but you can also switch it on and off more easily by clicking on the broken-page looking icon in the address bar.

          It could be that there are things I could do to default to a more presentable embed, but you should be able to hover over the embedded box, the one you say is mis-sized, and bring up the graphic Adobe Reader menu. You can futz with doc-size using the plus or minus thingies, or hit the graphic symbol and bring up more options, most of them merely distracting, but the first one under the little drop-down arrow on the menu bar will enable “fit to single page width” which might look better, though the whole rigamarole is too user-unfriendly to make this approach a preferred option at this time.

          Would be easier-friendlier, I think, just to include a link for the IE-impaired to view whatever file in a separate dedicated reader window, as previously ( https://ckmacleod.com/otto/Otto_2012_intro.pdf ).

          Reply
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