h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

... hi! I was wrong to imagine you were someone I knew (you'll have to read the NameAnalysis I left for you to see what I mean), but I'm glad I stopped by! Anything I say after reading your passionate mission statement will sound weak and limp-wristed by contrast -- good for you, it's wonderful to feel the spark of idealism jump the barriers of planetary distance, race and culture to appear intact on one's computer screen! Thank you ...

Hi Magnolia! Thanks a lot for the name reading - I am satisfied that the username I chose is having the effect I intended! I visited your MagnoliaZone website, and I really like it. I wanted to discuss some things with you, and I thought that I had better get the name reading out of the way before you had the chance of finding out anything about me. This stuff is quite intriguing. I think you have very good intuitive skills. I did a subtle psi-check on you! When I posted my analysis request, I first added this bit (more or less):
"Do you perhaps check the userpages of the people you analyse to get info about them? Nahh, of course not - you wouldn't want to miss out on pleasantly surprising yourself, now would you?" Then I erased it, before sending the post through to see if you could pick a bit of it up. And I think you did! You mentioned the userpage business in your next posting even though there's no mention left of it in my posting! How about that?! You passed the psi check to my satisfaction with a glorious "maybe!"

So when are you doing HappyDude's reading?

Anyways more to discuss soon, when I get my computer straightened out!

*smiling* That's astonishing -- about the psi test. I'll tell you why: I really don't look up user sites before a reading and like you say, it IS because it wouldn't be fun for me any more if I knew too much. But in the case of your name, because another friend had very recently written talking about visiting h2g2 and we had JUST exchanged h2g2 addresses, I felt quite confident you were him -- but at the same time, could see that there wasn't any real evidence to prove it. So I DID want to check your site to see if I was right or not (and I wasn't) and it remained a sort of struggle-of-conscience even though I know perfectly well that there's hardly any serious guilt to worry about here. And now I discover that there was, instead, a psi test! That's very cool.

HappyDude's reading has been the victim of my deadlines -- I sometimes get trapped behind media deadlines which must of course be met ahead of everything else but I'm half way through. I'll prolly post it later today (this is Friday morning for me)

Well thanks again, and good luck with your computer! Magnlia

I think your timezone's about two or three hours ahead of ours. I see you did finish HappyDude's reading - I'd like to see what he has to say about it!

My computer is now all straightened out. I just wanted to say, I really like your etchings! I am also an artist, I have done a few etches but really long ago - I was still in school! At the moment I'm trying a new kind of thing - combining traditional art media with computer processing! I draw pictures with pencil and pen, scan them into the computer, and add more colors and other effects using graphics programs. I think this method can work well for producing book illustrations - I would like to write and illustrate my own book one day.

You seem to be quite active as a writer. You also seem to be quite interested in the state of human civilisation. A bunch of us over here who are all also into that kind of thing have lots of conversations going on over at the Utopia Cafébar, run by PurpleJenny. If you're interested, please drop by - I am sure that you can give us a number of unique perspectives and relevant information. Here's the link:

http://www.h2g2.com/A465842

Please drop by. In the meantime, I'm going to look at your site a bit more! I also like those cartoons done in traditional Indian styles.

Hi, Pillow, Thanks for your friendly remarks about my site and for the link to the Utopia Cafebar. It seems like a good place to be.

I write and draw for a living, so it's no surprise that there's a lot of my stuff at my website! I had a comic strip for a while and recently published a collection of the strips. Unfortunately, it's not available outside India. Publishing has some odd quirks -- one of them is that markets are not very fluid. All my work is in English, but particularly with the comic strips, it's difficult finding a market elsewhere. I haven't got around to scanning any of the strips and uploading -- I don't have a scanner in the house. I know I'd like to have one but I want to upgrade my computer first and ... you know how it is with computers? You've got to watch yourself very carefully to avoid upgrading every three months or so. As it is, there are now three functioning 'puters and two non-functioning (maybe there's a Guide Entry about what to do with old 'puters?).

The etchings are recent but now I'm working in litho and enjoying that hugely too.

I used to illustrate children's books -- my favourite medium is black and white line. I can imagine that it must be fun to scan in and manipulate drawings digitally. Personally, I quite enjoy the rather crude drawings I can do electronically. I've found that whereas I'm right-handed most of the time, for the computer, my left-hand has swung into action! I mouse with my left hand and now draw quite competently too, using the mouse(my right hand, meanwhile, detests drawing with the mouse and so does not argue with its partner's activities). Of course the results are not brilliant, by comparison with my right hand's standards using conventional media.

As a writer, I've published three books, one very recently. I'm still wondering whether other writers at h2g2 actually post notices about their stuff at the site. It seems a bit obviously commercial. What d'you think? If you published would you post a link to Amazon?

Though that's not the only issue ... I also like the relative anonymity.

I was, by the way, sincerely impressed by the honesty and passion of your introductory message.

How did you manage to become successful as a writer? Over here in South Africa it is very difficult and I am now thinking of trying to get my stuff published internationally.

I'd like to know what you think of these entries - those pictures were made very simply, drawn in pencil and pen and given a background with a graphics program:

http://www.h2g2.com/A507647 The Nyala
http://www.h2g2.com/A512894 The Mountain Nyala

There is already a link to Amazon, on the front page of h2g2! Therefore I do not think it would be wrong for a successful author to put another link on her/his userpage.

A scanner is an unbelievavly useful thing to have. I got this one about two years ago and I must have scanned hundreds of thousands of things with it since then. I do all kinds of odd jobs for many other people with it, but I use it mostly for my own purposes. On a busy day I'll perform more than a hundred separate scans within a few hours! It worked well with the old computer and it still works well with the new one. My scanner cost me about $125, and it scans in four thousand million colours with a resolution of up to 600 dots per inch (it can go higher but then the quality's not so good). I tell ya it's a marvellous apparatus. I even scan big pictures with it by scanning half or a quarter of it at a time and afterwards patching everything together and smoothing it out with a graphics program so you cannot see the joints at all! You can scan anything - dead bugs, leaves, ornaments, pieces of cloth, paper cutouts - the room for creativity is immense. I think you'll be able to imagine more uses for it than I can.

Thanks for the compliment! I really mean what I say! I am worried about the world, and about humanity. I am going to try very hard to help make the future world a more tolerable place than the present one.

Well ... I'm not a successful author, merely a PUBLISHED author. There's a BIG difference!

The "how" is simple in one sense: persistence and good luck are all. Oh, of course, it helps to have (a) something interesting to say (b) the ability to say it (c) the ambition to share it with others -- but without persistence and luck, even container-loads of a, b and c will result in frustration.

I don't doubt your abilities. When you say it's "very difficult" to publish in SA, what do you mean? Do publishers refuse to meet young would-be authors at all or do you mean that they make it difficult to earn a living from books? The second statement is likely to be true all over the world.

I am not young and I have been working as a writer and artist for a long time -- and I have luck on my side in some ways, just by being part of the so-called elite (if you think of it in the same light as being white in a dark world, you may see the parallels) in an extremely feudal society.

It isn't really difficult to get a book published, if that is your only aim. But you will very quickly find that your aims will change the moment you have a book in print -- you'll want people to read it! And THAT's not easy unless you have a muscular publisher. Getting the attention of one is particularly difficult.

One reason that many authors start their careers as journalists is that it gives them the invaluable experience of being published in a public medium, and making a name for themselves in the process, gaining credibility. One the most important assets a journalist can have -- though thousands don't -- is a passion for telling the truth, for reporting on reality, for changing the world (for the better). Well, you've certainly got all of that!

I don't know if any of this is a help ...