44 lines
3.5 KiB
TeX
44 lines
3.5 KiB
TeX
\chapter{Coda}
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\section{What I Learned About \LaTeX{} While Creating This Issue}
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\subsection{Easy Ways with \textsf{tikz}}
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I included some illustrations of card layouts back on page \pageref{cards}. Since these are just rectangles, I knew I could create them pretty easily using the \textsf{tikz} package. All I needed were the coordinates where the three rectangles would begin and end, and the coordinates of the nodes where I would put the letters.
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As it turns out, this was difficult to figure out using my mind alone—I have a lot going on, I am easily distracted, there was too much guesswork. I'm a big fan of having the right tools to do a job and then using those tools. I see no point in being a martyr. So I pulled out the best tool I had for this: graph paper and a pencil. No guess work, just straight lines and a bit of counting. I felt like I was in my eighth grade geometry class again, and I actually enjoyed it.
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\textbf{Protip:} draw it on paper first.
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\setlength{\fboxsep}{0pt}
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\setlength{\fboxrule}{0.5pt}
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\begin{center}
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\fbox{\includegraphics[scale=0.28]{tikz-on-paper}}
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\end{center}
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\section{What I Learned About Other Things While Creating This Issue}
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%\newpage % Use only to keep the afterword together if we end up with orphans
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\section{Afterword}
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\begin{multicols}{2}
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\begin{small}
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\noindent{}The past year has been a difficult one for me, for a lot of reasons, and it's taken a while to get this issue put together.
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\paragraph{Good writing takes time.}I actually knew this, but I was curious as to how much time it actually takes to write an issue of this zine. So for issue \#6 I grabbed a timer and kept track. (If you look at the git repo, there is a \texttt{.csv} file in there where I kept track of this.) I had a total of 3,429 minutes, which works out to 57.2 hours. Of course, when I was finished, I had more material than I could fit, so I moved an entire chapter (on flash cards in \LaTeX{}) to this chapter. That chapter required 871 minutes (14.5 hours) to research, write, and edit, which means that the total time spent on what would eventually become the finished product was 2,558 minutes or 42.6 hours. That's over a week's worth of work.
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I'm okay with that number. After all, I have to justify the price as well. I wish I could spend all those forty hours in a single week though, because I could just take a week off work and write all day. But writing doesn't work like that—things need time to fully form in my mind.
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\paragraph{New cover design!} For a while now, I've used the same cover design (originally done in LibreOffice because I had no idea how to do it in \LaTeX{}), printed on color paper. Going forward, I've updated the cover design to use color printing on white paper. This is partly because colored paper is expensive, and I have to buy a 250 or 500 sheet package to get a new color. Because the print runs of this zine are fairly limited, that means I have a lot of paper sitting around that I can't do much with. Going forward, I'll use this new cover design with the issue number in large print in color on the front (to help distinguish one issue from the other in your collection), and some bars in the same color on the spine that correspond to the issue number.
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I also found out about the \texttt{tikzpingus} package recently, so I can add a cute little penguin to the front cover as well. If you look closely, you'll see that his tie matches the color theme of the rest of the cover.
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\medskip
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\begin{flushright}
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\noindent{}Thanks,\\—Ken
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\end{flushright}
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\end{small}
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\end{multicols} |