How come lab notebooks are ridiculously expensive? Also, I guess most notebooks are slightly bigger than composition notebooks
I'm tempted to make a spreadsheet template or PDF. It's pretty silly to spend a lot of money on a lab notebook when you can print a few grid pages and bind the book yourself
Current status
@cypnk I like very small grids so I printed out in landscape and made some signatures for an initial trial binding to see how it feels.
https://octodon.social/media/woxb1iqEUfHuRhlVMdM
@somethingeloquent @cypnk How did you do the binding?
@lilith @cypnk I did a kind of kettle stitch, no cover yet. And I’ll probably want to do this again with better paper and some more precision.
https://octodon.social/media/a2iL0spDANZo_a8d7mI
@somethingeloquent @lilith @cypnk We used to do this!
I got a long arm stapler (~$20) and used that for the spines of each section. Then I wrapped an uncorrogated cardboard cover around it and glued that in place with hotglue.
We used the hotglue to hold the seconds together too.
Worked pretty well. For smaller notebooks, you can skip the glue and staple the cover straight on.
@ajroach42 @somethingeloquent @lilith I have a sideways tilting stapler (I think I got it on Amazon) and it works well for zines too
Binding like this is great for books, but you can't go wrong with staples for zines
I think we should all be printing zines whenever we can. There are fewer and fewer hard copies of our lives and those are the most likely to survive
@cypnk @somethingeloquent @lilith Such a good point.
I need to print and mail some soon.
@ajroach42 @cypnk @somethingeloquent @lilith I’m loving this conversation, thank-you all :)
@lilith @somethingeloquent @cypnk @ajroach42 durable knowledge storage is essential.
I adore the advantages of electronic information but it’s fragile compared to the printed word.
I need to find a way to distribute knowledge in print more that fits into my workflow.
I’ve been looking for an electronic document template that would print “zine-style”; re-ordering the pages, etc so I could just print & staple :)
@jjg @lilith @somethingeloquent @cypnk
Depending on your printer, it's possible you don't need to do anything special.
If you have a full duplex printer (I favor the entry level brother laser printer which is about $50, I'll explain why later) you just gotta select booklet mode.
If you're using word or whatever, just set your page size to 5.5 x 8.5, and then save it as a PDF.
Adobe has a booklet printing option in Acrobat.
@cypnk @somethingeloquent @lilith @jjg
The brother also has a built in booklet option, if you're using a different stack. And it's full duplex, so it prints both sides automatically.
The really neat part, IMO, is that you can refill the toner by hand.
So one toner cartridge + a handfull of sub $5 refills means you can print thousands of pages in a go. It's crazy cheap.
Like, we had our cost per issue down to something like 6 cents? And most of that was paper costs.
@ajroach42 @cypnk @somethingeloquent @lilith interesting!
I have a Brother laser but it doesn’t duplex (that I know of). I’d be using Linux for this job so LibreOffice or preferably some Markdown-oriented workflow.
@jjg do you know which model printer you have?
Most of their laser printers have built in duplexing, although I'm not sure about driver support on Linux.
@jjg Also, if the printer doesn't support auto-duplexing, most drivers have a manual duplex mode.
(You take the paper out, flip it upside down, and stick it back in.)
I don't like that as much, but it does work.
@ajroach42 that would be good enough as long as I could do it in some kind of batch (as opposed to one sheet at a time).
I’ll have to poke-around in the printer settings and see about booklet mode...thanks for the tip!
@ajroach42 yeah, I have less trouble with my (home made) 3D printer than I do with the 2D ones 🤣
@jjg @ajroach42 The technical term for this is called "interleaving" btw. I know my Brother printer has the brochure option, but I am using a Windows driver.
@lilith @ajroach42 out of curiosity, what Brother would you recommend for duplexing, refillable toner, etc.?
you want wireless?
I have a EHLL2360DW ($80 on amazon rn.)
you want not wireless?
I have a brother 2240D which appears to have been discontinued and replaced with the 2270?
either way, you want with the a D in the name for duplex, and a W if you want wireless.
I order my toner cartridges and drums from monoprice, and then re-fill them myself 6 or 10 times with toner from various sources.
Eventually, they gotta be replaced, still. But they last a good long while.
Granted, when I was doing this regularly enough that I actually followed toner prices, I was printing ~1000 magazines a month, at 30-40 pages (15-20 sheets) per magazine.
We had both printers going, with someone pulling the prints, separating the stacks, and stapling, someone else on hand to refill the toner cartridges and swap them out as needed.
It was fun. I miss that.
@ajroach42 @lilith this is super cool, that you could do that volume at home.
Last time I did a regular ‘zine we would sneak into my friend’s father’s law office at night and run off as many copies as we could before morning...
We ran a little record store/concert venue. The printers were in our office there.
Office is a strong word.
We had a room with computers and printers. We used it for manufacturing.
At the time, I could get paper for $2/ream from microcenter. They won't sell that to me anymore (lifetime limit), so my costs would be doubled if I was doing this now.
@ajroach42 @lilith that sounds like a super-cool place :)
Most of the people I like to spend time with would like the world to be filled with more places like that.
@jjg
We shut down about two years ago, because my business buddy left to hike the Appalachian trail, and my s/o got a job 600 miles away.
We're looking at getting it started again, as more of a maker space kind of thing, late next year or early the next.
s/o wants to go back home. Business buddy just finished the Pacific trail that runs from Canada to Mexico. Home town is offering free rent for a year.
It's kind of a perfect storm.
@ajroach42 sounds like the universe is trying to tell you something
@jjg When we weren't printing magazines, we did cassettes and CDs from local musicians. (CDs were printable top and printed on a cheap cannon inkjet that took third party ink well. We put them in cardstock tacos, and then put those in little thin plastic cases.)
And we printed books and comics.
Public domain stuff, local author stuff.
If we can get the new one started up the way I want... well it'd have the potential to revolutionize that small town.
@ajroach42 if you do it write down the recipe, I’d love to try it here :)
@jjg @ajroach42 Heh. My old faithful Okidata died earlier this year, so I replaced it with the Brother HL-L8360CDW. Love it.
@lilith @ajroach42 awesome, thanks for the recommendations!
Don’t really need wireless, I hang the one I have off a Raspberry Pi print server (easier than dealing with configuring the built-in WiFi 😂).
@jjg You can for sure do it in a batch. I think the setting is for printing Odd Pages vs Even Pages?
I'm not positive, it's been a while since I fiddled with printing on linux. (Printers are one of the few reasons I keep a windows box around.)