Insider looked very horrifying.
The dogs and I were walking to the park the other night and we passed a neighbour’s house. This place has an old blue pick-up. I don’t know what vintage it is but it has very rounded lines and faded paint. The back was taken off at some point and replaced with a hand made wooden platform; the kind that has gaps between the boards like a picnic table. All in all a very agricultural looking vehicle for a neighbourhood of close, single family brick homes on narrow lots. We walked back from the park and a large cat climbing tower/ scratching post/ activity tree had just been loaded in the back. I was thoroughly convinced that someone had taken the phrase cat-herding very seriously.
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Which big game should I solo next? (Possibly tonight, unless remote-gamenight happens)
- Paladins of the WK because I have the new expansion?
- Spirit Island b/c that’s always great
- Squaring Circleville because I need to teach myself
- Viticulture b/c I have not played with the 4 seasons map yet
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Paladins or Spirit Island would be self-serving, as they are both games that I would like to play but just haven’t gotten a chance lately (and I can game vicariously through others)
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Only played Spirit Island out of those 4, so being selfish, I’d rule that out, unless you use any Spirits I haven’t seen…
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Well, that’s good because I think I decided on Paladins 
Tonight. Yesterday was spent uhm “testing” the Gloomhaven Steam app possibly until my eyes fell out of my head.
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I started setting up around 4pm … now it is 9pm and I am ready to go to bed—I meant take my first turn. There was grocery shopping and dinner in between but it really took me at least something between 1 and 2 hours to set this up and learn the rules “enough” (I hate the bot in this but NOBODY will play with me)
Maybe I shouldn’t have mixed in the new stuff immediately—my last game was more than a year ago.
PS: one of the worst table hogs I own. This is just a solo game and needs more table space than my playmat covers.
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Does anyone have a decent Google Maps alternative?
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OpenStreetMap all the way.
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So there was this Facebook group called “View from my window”, which collected photos taken during early Covid-19 lockdowns. I was a member, and I posted my photo, and it was nice seeing other peoples’ photos of mostly beautiful countryside and the comments on my uninspiring view.
Then there was a book published, that included a couple of hundred photos out of the million submitted (apparently only a third of which actually followed the rules and made it through moderation.)
More recently, a second volume was published, and this time I actually got contacted for permission to use my photo in the book, in exchange for a free copy. My photo was selected out of ~300,000 photos from around the world. They probably just didn’t have that many from Japan, but still, that was pretty cool. I said OK.
Today I got the link to order a copy. Now, the book itself is 32 EUR (4250 JPY), and that’s free. Unfortunately the shipping isn’t, and that’s 31.25 EUR (4150 JPY). I feel kind of deceived? Is that a reasonable shipping cost from Europe, or has profit just been rolled into the shipping cost?
I’m torn on whether or not to pay for it. On the one hand, it might be an interesting artefact for my children. On the other, I’m not that excited about seeing a couple hundred mobile phone photos from around the world in a book, and that shipping fee seems high.
So, uh, any thoughts, observations, opinions to break me out of my indecision?
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That seems a bit on the high side, depending on the weight of the book. From the UK at least I’d probably be using International Tracked and Signed, which tops out at £25.35 for 2kg printed papers to Japan. Generally we pay more for things in the UK than in Europe. Plus packing materials and I suppose it’s not wildly unreasonable, but…
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Were you wanting to have a book of cell phone pics shipped to you from Europe? If not, I’d recommend you not pay for it.
It’s only a good value if it benefits you more than it costs you 
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Yeah, unless you’re looking to leverage this into a specific profession or the picture is super meaningful to you, I’d skip it.
Just my 2 cents.
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Obviously I didn’t want such a thing, but then the same applies for just about everything I end up buying other than essentials such as shelter, light, heat, food, and water. As Food Chain Magnate teaches us, demand is created by marketing. Now the thing exists and I have been made aware of it, the distribution of the printed matter around the world is a part of the appeal.
We have established that the shipping probably isn’t a total scam, thanks @RogerBW, so my ire at the author has abated. Now it is just a value appraisal, as you also pointed out.
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International shipping is very expensive; prices have gone up substantially in the last few years. It costs about $40 to send a flat rate envelope (up to 4 pounds, will hold a nomal sized book) from the US to japan.
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Personally I’d assume ‘free’ also included the shipping costs.
So, yeah, it’s a now value judgement on a coffee table book.
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Oh no! We don’t have a coffee table. Or, wait, is that a good thing? Hmm.
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I’ve given my permission to use photos I have published under Creative Commons Licences before… I was never offered free product. Just exposure.
a bit about my online photosharing experiences
One was made into an album cover by an indie artist I believe. Some were used by a news site, a couple were used in some museum exhibit. The ones I am most proud of are featured on wikipedia 
These days I do not publish any pictures on my flickr account anymore because it is full–and since I am paying an awful lot of money for Lightroom I am not willing to pay even more money for online photo services. I would have to delete pics from my free flickr account to publish more. Flickr has changed hands and conditions so often, I just don’t trust things enough to pay for them and so no more cc pics from me. Which is a bit sad as there seems to be a certain demand for it and while I briefly considered trying to make money from photography I decided against ist b/c I already ruined 2 of my hobbies making them into jobs (writing code and writing words those 2 would be.
I would skip such a book. It is nice to know you’ve been featured. Printing the book is cheap (though paper is in short supply, too). They should have mentioned shipping was not going to be free. I do think it has got very very expensive.
You could have someone pick it up for you who has to pay less for shipping–family in Europe?–and bring it along or send it with something else when there is an opportunity. But still… I’d skip it or ask for an ebook version.
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If you weren’t already interested in having a photo book, I’d pass it up.
However, if you are looking for an artifact of the occasion, get a print of the photo framed with a placard saying the name of the book in which it was published.
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