For over a year, one of the old TUAK posts that has gotten the most search traffic is this one on chainsaw use and maintenance. Judging from the search terms, it addresses questions that seem to come up a lot out there.
So I’ve made it into a new ebooklet…
…No big thing, there’s nothing new, I just updated and stretched some of the text but most of the crappy photos are the same. And I don’t propose to sell this one, it’s just gonna be available on the sidebar.
Problem is (as problem was with the solar power ebook) the damn thing’s over eight meg huge and I can’t just upload it. The last time I turned the file and the whole problem over to Ian, who did…god knows what with it, but eventually it showed up on its very own TUAK page.
So during yesterday’s brief window of modem operation I emailed Ian to ask, “hey, how did we do that?” And he said I had to FTP the file, which is kinda like saying, “ſirrah, in ſooth thou muſt engage the infernal ſerviceſ of an alchemiſte,” because FTP goes all the way back to DOS and I haven’t looked at a command line since sometime in the ’80’s. As far as I’m concerned, the greatest invention since the internal combustion engine is the graphical user interface. Figure out syntax? Hell, honey, I stopped using that word when I got my first mouse and I’ve never regretted a minute of it. Computers are wonderful tools, but I was never one of those kids who carried a sliderule around in a belt holster, y’know?
But I can’t keep running to Ian for these things. And anyway, eight megs is eight megs and I may need to borrow somebody else’s connection before I can do anything about it at all. Mine is FUBAR.
So I guess what I’m trying to say is that there’s a new (free!) ebook in TUAK’s future. Sometime. Probably not real soon.
This may come as a shock, but there have been non-DOS FTP apps for… decades. If I recall correctly, you’re running some Linux distribution. A lot of people seem to think well of freeware FileZilla. I’ve used, and it was OK, but I’ve been sticking with another app for… maybe 15 years. I’m used to it.
https://filezilla-project.org/
That’s actually a cross platform app, with Win versions as well.
If you want to play with other Win apps, here’s a bunch of freeware options:
http://www.freewarefiles.com/category_5_56.html
I’m on Win, and I’m still using a freeware version of WS_FTP; I don’t think the company offers that one anymore, but if you wanted to try it I could get you a copy.
8 MB for the seems… large, but I suppose you have a lot of pictures. Take another look at your image files and see if you can rescale them smaller without losing too much detail. Save the images at around 80% compression. When you save the PDF, your app probably has an option for JPG compression, too. Use it. If the solar book is honking huge, too, you might want to go through that again the same way. Or not, if people haven’t complained.
Holy Fuck!!!
Did you ever have one of those startling moments when something all of a sudden became clear?
In 1973,when I started college,the Physics dept issued slide rules to all the physics majors,so we would all have the same kind.(It was way better than the one I had used in High School)It came in a leather case,sort of like a knife sheath,and the case had a ‘doubler’stiched onto the back of it,which always seemed unneccesary and out of place.It never dawned on me,(for 40 years now) that it was a belt loop,so you could wear it on your belt.
Thanks,Joel
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Stay away from FileZilla — it saves passwords in cleartext in a known location. Using WinSCP, also GPL freeware, with a “master password” and your passwords will be safe(r) from malware.