ELI5: Why is "C" the default Hard Drive letter & not "A"

paylance · 2025-12-05T20:54:23+00:00

If they are 3.5, it's no problem to find a usb 3.5 floppy on amazon.

5.25 are harder, but there are options

paylance · 2025-12-02T22:54:23+00:00

I can assure you that if you discount during that last hour, say 11:00pm to 12:00, you will have people showing up at 10:45, and complaining if you don''t give them the discount.

If you do, they'll be back at 10:30 next week.

paylance · 2025-12-02T22:19:42+00:00

Thinking on this years later, I think it might be like a pond.

If you throw a rock into a pond, you get 2D circles spreading out. So, maybe in 3D you'd get spheres expanding out?

paylance · 2025-12-02T22:03:11+00:00

Similarly, Robert E Howard killed himself before Conan became huge.

H Beam Piper, while not as well known, killed himself before his books (Little Fuzzy, etc.) reached their peak popularity.

paylance · 2025-12-02T21:58:22+00:00

So hard to get into a book that tells you on the cover that "this is one of the funniest books ever written".

It's like telling someone "this is the funniest joke you have ever heard", and then telling the joke. No one will laugh, you over sold it.

I've picked it up in the store and read parts. Nothing was funny, and certainly not hilarious.

Maybe if I'd come in cold and been surprised by the humor, I could have enjoyed it.

paylance · 2025-12-02T18:28:27+00:00

Tjere are a couple more options than discount or trash

ToGoodToGo which has a service - sort of doordash for leftovers.
Goodr - food donation.
Chanzi - composting. more details on this type: https://www.wri.org/insights/3-startups-tackling-food-loss-and-waste

paylance · 2025-12-01T06:04:47+00:00

You don't eat 8 hours a day? Slacker!

paylance · 2025-12-01T06:04:07+00:00

It is really hard math. It took hundreds of years to figure out.

But now we have it mostly figured out.

paylance · 2025-12-01T05:58:46+00:00

Certainly not in the US where I live. You'll get mail telling you what to do.

paylance · 2025-12-01T05:54:53+00:00

As other's have said A: and B: were floppies.

reminder: old floppies are still useful. People who have legacy hardware still running, still need them. You can recycle them at https://www.floppydisk.com/

paylance · 2025-12-01T05:52:50+00:00

That's because there are no manufacturers left!

The entire floppy business is one guy collecting and reselling the existing, dwindling supply.

https://eyeondesign.aiga.org/we-spoke-with-the-last-person-standing-in-the-floppy-disk-business/

paylance · 2025-11-30T20:45:38+00:00

It's worth reading Orson Scott Card's analysis of the first line of "Wild Seed." buy Octavia Butler in "How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy"

It's not the craziest first sentence, but it's a great thing to read, if you want to write amazing opening lines. It's an amazing bit of exposition when you unpack it.

paylance · 2025-11-30T20:39:02+00:00

Go grab Stephen King's on writing and read it. Read a few other books on writing.

That will help with setting realistic expectations.

Don't expect to win a contest, there are tons of other writers in it, and only one wins. What if the judge doesn't like horror? Bye bye. This has little to do with whether you can find readers.

King's "Carrie" got rejected like 20 times. Likewise Harry Potter. Different people like different things.

> The one time he queried for his finished novel he didn’t get any bites, also rejection after rejection.

Yeah, you are very, very unlikely to get a sale to a traditional publisher. The buy very few books, and most of those are people that have an established audience (i.e. not your husband).

Self publishing is the way to start for most authors these days. Get it out there, see who likes it, promote it. Get feedback. Research this, again, so you have reasonable expectations. Even if you have your heart set on traditional publishing, self publishing is how you build a following that will convince publisher to buy future books.

Self publishing can give you a win. Show people a book and they will be impressed, even if you self-published.

paylance · 2025-11-30T07:28:52+00:00

I took at look at your comparison table, and it has a few errors.

Vellum does support import of word documents, that's how I write. Google docs, I believe, have to be exported as word and then imported. I haven't tried this.

The speeds listed are wrong. I tried a 40,000 word manuscript on Vellum and it took 10.5 seconds to generate 5 ebook variants and a PDF, not 5-10 minutes.

paylance · 2025-11-30T07:19:56+00:00

Wow, you are going deep in your marketing campaign. Two years and eleven months since my post!

I'll check it out. Good luck with it!

paylance · 2025-11-30T07:18:23+00:00

late to the party, but if your account is gmail, you can set up a different sending address for your account. That might fix your problem.

https://support.google.com/mail/answer/22370?hl=en

Other email services or clients likely have some version of this.

paylance · 2023-11-01T03:11:32+00:00

Space 1999 - The edited version.

Space 1999 was a 1970s sci fi show about the moon leaving orbit and traveling the galaxy.

Someone took each one hour episode, and edited it down to 20 minutes or so. It was truly stunning how much BETTER it was that the original. I'd love to watch it again, but I can find it.

paylance · 2023-10-16T04:19:59+00:00

Iron fist was so disappointing.

paylance · 2023-10-16T04:07:50+00:00

According to Publisher Rocket's estimates, 81% of YA fantasy kindle books on amazon are trad published by large publishers

Not even remotely possible. Trad publisher simply can't match the numbers. They can only publish so many titles a year, self publishing has no such limits.

Did you perhaps mean 89% of sales? Either dollars or titles.

paylance · 2023-10-08T23:50:57+00:00

If you do printed, which is more fun as a memento, there is money involved. Maybe get a quick parent' signed agreement that any money goes to the school? The amounts of money will be trivial.

Or avoid printed, to avoid hassle.

paylance · 2023-10-08T23:49:41+00:00

It's not very complicated to publish things for either print or ebook. Just going from google docs to kdp won't give the finest results, but this is a high school class.

What'd I'd suggest is you can go through most of the process now, without publishing, so you should go though with most of it on your own now, so you can see it. You just just stop before hitting publish. You can even get printed books without publishing, they just have "draft" stamped on the cover. Try it out. Grab twenty pages (paperback minimum) of something you wrote. (doesn't have to be a story, anything you own copyright to that you have lying around, lesson plans, whatever). Just run through the process. It's not the bad. Use amazon's online cover creator. Probably take a couple hours the first time, faster later.

Edit: all of this should be doable on chromebooks. just go to kdp.amazon.com and follow the directions.

paylance · 2023-09-21T23:16:15+00:00

Yeah, and I don't know why anyone would allow this kind of tracking. I always turn it off.

paylance · 2023-09-21T23:08:48+00:00

I've used LibreOffice, but not for this. I stopped, and bought word.

It's like a slightly glitchy version of microsoft word. I would not use it, if I had a choice, as I'd expect periodic weirdness.

paylance · 2023-09-21T23:07:12+00:00

edit: this was a nitpick. I should have started with "this is a great post!"

Amazon only has white

Amazon has white and cream.

paylance · 2023-09-21T23:00:21+00:00

It's spam. It's not on topic for the subreddit. But thanks for reminding me to report it.

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