InterAction Issue #2 (Spring 1992) Posted

[Unknown,Unknown]

To all:

I’ve posted the second issue of InterAction magazine at my website, in PDF, for download.

The link is Andy’s Sierra Web Page

The issue is under the Sierra Newsletter web page linked there.

The other sections all have some interesting stuff in them as well and worth a look.

Andy

[Unknown,Unknown]

I’m very excited that these magazines are being scanned and made available by you on the Internet, I just hope you have the bandwidth to handle it 😉 (~50mb files, after all, seem to me quite massive but perhaps you live in a country with the luxury of Internet service of the absolutely most premium kind).

But there is one small problem it seems, the links that have been provided to the magazine PDFs on the website seem slightly incorrect and, for me at least, the problem seems to be that the links capitalise the first letter I in the folder Interaction: so http://www.gracenroark.net/roark/sierra/Interaction/Interaction%2001%20Fall%201991.pdf  (for example) should be http://www.gracenroark.net/roark/sierra/interaction/Interaction%2001%20Fall%201991.pdf  and everything works fine.

I hope you take the time to look into this, but otherwise great work, thank you for it, I hope you keep it up, and I look forward to more of these magazine issues :)!

[Unknown,Unknown]

I think I’ve got that fixed.  I am brand new to web site publication and it worked on my machine but I’m thinking that might have been a  local cache versus external deal.

Try again and let me know if it works.  I’ll keep an eye on the bandwidth and may pull the website down if I am pushing too hard on the limits but so far so good.

[Unknown,Unknown]

I’ve now posted the third issue (Summer 1992), added a pretty front end so you all don’t have to suffer from the HTML and fixed all the links.

I pay for premium web server space for my wife’s photography hobby/obsession/enjoyment and we’ve never hit 1% of the maximum bandwidth allowed.  I’ve been watching it and will pull the site down (temporarily) if the bandwidth gets tight but so far so good.

Be sure to check the other sections of the website while you are there:  I’ve been putting up catalogs, high resolution box cover scans, old Sierra focused articles and ads in addition to the InterAction issues. 

Andy

[Unknown,Unknown]

It works now. Just to point out also: while the link works and the actual file is named correctly, the ‘Sierra News Magazine Volume 2, Number 1 (Spring 1990) Conquest of Camelot ‘ magazine link should actually be named ‘Sierra News Magazine Volume 3, Number 1 (Spring 1990) Conquest of Camelot ‘.

As for the bandwidth, well, how much have you advertised the website? Is this the only place you have mentioned it, on sierragamers.com? If so then I suggest you post information about your effort on other various forums as I am certain that there are masses of people who would be very interested in, and pleased to read, these magazines and other miscellanies (adventuregamers.com, bigbluecup.com forums would be the first few I can think of from the top of my head… posting the information in the appropriate forum sections, of course). This applies even more if you endeavor to complete even more scans… I’m very happy to see such a readily (freely) available online collection of this, and know not of any similar place, other projects like this one seemed to have amounted to nothing (although the last time I truly did a serious search for it was maybe over a year ago, maybe more, and maybe I just don’t know how to search). When you have made the effort, then why not spread it?

And, of course, there is also the possibility (in the case of unmanageable volumes of visitors, but perhaps I am getting ahead of myself and not everybody is so nostalgic and interested in Sierra as I am 🙂 ) of alternative forms of distribution, for example p2p networks (from which your website could provide links to, as is often done for example with certain open source software in order to ease the burden). While dedicated high-capacity upload bandwidth (i.e. proper hosting) comes at a premium, many of us on ordinary, though relatively fast for this ordinary usage, connections are fortunate enough to have unlimited upload bandwidth, and p2p networks are a good way of taking advantage of this by distributing the burden amongst more meagre, but many, nodes. Again perhaps I am getting ahead of myself or preaching to the choir, but I imagine that if eventually you have 30+ magazines, etc, up there with many bordering or greater than 100 MB and many eager downloaders come along and want the whole collection then, well, there could be issues…

[Unknown,Unknown]

Peter,

Thank you very much for the advice.  So far I’ve only mentioned the site here and at Vintage Sierra’s forums.  I wanted to at least respond to the people actively looking for certain issues of InterAction but I’ve still got a lot of work on the site (and with the scanning) before I really feel it will be worth advertising.  In addition I want to watch the bandwidth usage as I go and see if I’m getting myself into trouble with this bright idea.  I’d probably say I’m only through scanning and getting up less than 10% of the stuff I have and I’d really like to at least complete the InterAction scanning before I start trying to justify people spending their time visiting the site.  

Thank you for pointing out the Volume # mistake on the Camelot issue.  I agree, you are right.  I was so obsessed with getting the order right on that issue and the 10th Anniversary issue right after it I must have fat fingered the key and missed that.  I’ll get that cleaned up at some point today.  If you see any other mistakes like that please let me know, either here or by email at alinnenkohl@fusemail.com .

Andy

[Author]

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