#Try microsoft word free online

[duoduotian]

just wasted one hour filling in a form only to click done and they want me to subscribe to an annual plan which can be cancelled at any time... nope

[meichenxi]

Tip for anyone with Microsoft Edge browser learning a foreign language:

If you right-click on any word or highlight some text online, you can open it in 'Immersive Reader mode'.

It simplifies absolutely everything on the page for you, providing only text, for a distraction-free reading environment! You can copy individual paragraphs or sentences, or whole articles.

I'm showing the side of the margin to show how wide the narrow one is!

You can then control the size of the text, from small to very large, how wise the column of the text is, the background colour (helpful for those with dyslexia or limited vision or just tired eyes - mine is pink for the fun of it), the font, the spacing between characters, and loads more.

You can also try out a mode called 'Line focus', where it only focuses on one line, three lines, or five lines!

Despite being able to read in Chinese for more than three years, I am still sometimes psychologically challenged by the terror-inducing sight of a massive wall of text in a tiny font on a computer screen. This makes it a lot easier!

Here's the five-line option. Please note that my screenshots aren't of the whole page, because for some reason all photos on tumblr that are horizontal don't upload...who knows.

You can also look up anything to the dictionary with just a click. Best of all, however, you can get the text to be read aloud!

There are multiple different voices, many very natural sounding, from China, Taiwan and Hong Kong. If you're learning another language, there are at least two options even for smaller languages (for example, two for Azerbaijani, two for Bangla and so on - I assume one is male and one is female). I've found the voices to be very good for Chinese, ranging from sajiao-pouting-douyin-girl to formal male newsreader. Listening to the ones from Taiwan is also a good way to get some listening practice for different accents!

Of course, you can change the speed of the reading under 'read aloud'.

Finally, you can add each page to your 'collections' list - this would be a useful way of keeping useful articles together.

I came across this utterly by chance today, and I think it's a great tool for practicing reading speed and character recognition. Hope this helps someone else! meichenxi out

[crownmemes]

Advice; Where to Make Rules and About Pages

If you've read my advice post about the difference between about and rules pages and why they're both important, you may not be wondering the best way to make them. The good news is, there are plenty of options!

Tumblr

The simplest choice. In the past, people would make custom pages on their theme. However, since dash view has become popular (and you can't view custom pages via it, nor can you view them on mobile), most people simply post their about/rules page as a normal text post, and link to it in their pinned post. If you have a custom theme, make sure to link the pages in the navigation bar too!

Using a plain Tumblr post increases your page's readability, but reduces the amount of formatting you can do. If you make your pages elsewhere, you will be able to customise them a lot more.

Carrd

A free website maker. You can make a small site with a free account, and the prices are pretty reasonable if you need to make a bigger site. Carrd has a minimalist aesthetic, and it will also adjust what you make to fit a mobile browser (though this may break your formatting if you have designed something complicated).

Carrd is easy to use, but it is best used for simple designs. If you want to do something more complicated than a basic Carrd layout, you're going to spend a lot of time trying to make the formatting work. If you want multiple pages for your site, you're also going to spend a lot of time formatting as you can't clone pages, therefore have to recreate each one every time instead.

It uses markdown for formatting text. If you're familiar with it, this can speed up writing, but it may slow you down if you've never used it before.

One of the benefits of Carrd is that there are lots of free templates available within the rpc! Here are resources I found with a quick Google search, but there are plenty more out there if you look for them: [x] [x] [x]

Weebly

Another free website maker. You can make more for free here than you can on Carrd. Weebly sites should adapt to work on a mobile browser.

I've never seen anybody use Weebly for about/rules pages, but I do recommend it! It's very easy to use, and, unlike Carrd, you can copy and paste entire pages. This makes it ideal if you have lots of muses that you want to make individual about pages for.

It uses a more typical text editor than Carrd. Instead of markdown, it's more like Microsoft Word - where you highlight text and click buttons to add formatting. You also have HTML/CSS options.

Weebly does offer some free templates, but you're likely to want to edit them to suit your needs more. This is okay! It isn't difficult to do!

Google Docs

A popular, completely free option. As with Carrd, there are plenty of templates and resources within the rpc (here are three examples: [x] [x] [x]). These pages will be viewable on a mobile browser, but the theme may not translate well. Keep readability in mind if you use this option.

If you use this option, also make sure the link you share is viewer only and doesn't have editor permissions!

Other Options (WordPress, Self-Hosting, etc)

Don't feel you have to follow the crowd. If you like to use WordPress, use WordPress. You could also use Neocities, or any other website builder!

Personally, I already own a web domain because I have websites for other online activities, so I use about pages that I've coded from scratch and host them myself. For my rules page, I just use a Tumblr text post that's linked in my pinned post. In the past, I've used Carrd and Tumblr pages for about pages.

If you want to write your site using HTML, some free website hosters will allow you to do this (Neocities, for example). If you're interested in coding, I do recommend this! It allows you to have full customisability, and coding can be a really useful skill. However, one downside of this is it can make your pages hard to read on a mobile browser. It's up to you to decide how important this is.

If you're interested in learning HTML (as well as CSS, JavaScript, and other coding languages), this site is a great resource!

[xclowniex]

How is people pointing out the atrocities committed by the IDF/IOF whatever the hell they are immediately labeled “allies of Hamas” when ya’ll constantly always use the whole “you can disagree with the actions of others” excuse to justify why Israel does whatever they do

Please point out where I have ever said that. It's honestly pretty tiring getting asks where people try to put words in my mouth that I have never said.

What you can find on many posts on my blog is me saying that I myself do not agree with the actions of the Israeli Government or the IDF and that you can criticize the Israeli government and IDF without being antisemitic which a lot of people fail at doing.

A lot of "criticisms" come from modern day blood libel where people will straight up say an antisemitic trope and swap out jew for zionists or Israel and that is not okay. Changing jew to zionists or Israel or anything similar does not remove the fact that it's still an antisemitic trope being used towards either half of the world's jews (as half live in Israel) or towards 80% of jews (as 80% of jews believe in some form of zionism, the most popular form amongst jews is a peaceful two state solution)

Another from of antisemitism which is masked as "criticism" is when people will only say something is bad if Israel does it yet is fine with any other country doing it. This is antisemitism as why is something only bad when the only jewish state in the world does it?

If a criticism does not fall into either group, then it's not antisemitism.

I also have not labeled everyone as "allies of hamas" what you are thinking about is when I have replied to anons and people saying they are riding hamas's dick or have drunk the hamas koolaid. This is simply me calling out people who are falling for hamas propaganda. Microsoft literally did a report earlier this year on Iran pushing pro hamas propaganda online and getting a lot of engagements. You can search the research findings yourself online as it's free to view.

Whilst I do understand that my replies can be harsh, from my perspective, I am getting a lot of asks, a lot of which I just delete and do not answer, of people who do not understand the basic concepts I have explained here and also like to do the whole "oh you only post about pancakes, you must hate waffles" thing. And it gets tiring and annoying. I do get fed up with people who do not understand nuance when it comes to things or that I might only focus on the Jewish and Israeli side of things because there are already so many great voices there speaking out for Palestine. Adding my voice won't do much more for palestine so instead I lend it back to my community, trying to fight antisemitism and xenophobia.

And the thing is, antisemitism deserve to be spoken about. It deserves blogs which only speak about it or is the main focus. I've experienced a lot of it in my life. I'm not gonna just trauma dump right now but I have been hate crimed before. It was not fun. And when I see levels of antisemitism which is worse than during the time I was hate crimed and a lot of the rhetoric being said that I was hate crimed for, I can't help but to not want to lend my voice to speak out about antisemitism.

Onto your last point, I have never justified any Palestinian civilians deaths. The closest I have ever gotten to it was on a post talking about the hostages where I say it is a difficult situation as Palestinian civilians have died during the hostages rescue and that Palestinian and Jewish and Israeli lives are all equal in value. And that its also hard because if the hostages were not rescued, they would likely have been killed at some point in the future and it's just a hard situation as my heart goes out to all the Palestinians who died that day as well as that I am happy that 4 hostages are home. In that post I also mentioned that my ideal scenario is no one dead, both in the operation and in the war in general and for everyone to be safe.

The other thing which I get a lot of anons about is whenever I bring up the war crimes done by hamas, such as in that same post about the hostages, I mentioned how it is a war crime for hamas to have the hostages in a civilian area and that in the eyes of international law, those Palestinian deaths are due to Hamas.

I honestly don't think that either of those things is justifying the IDFs actions. What I do think is that you, and so many others are afraid of nuance. As soon as someone like myself goes "these are all the factors at play and it sucks that things have turned out as they have" and not "idf bad no nuance ever" you get uncomfortable. And its fine to be uncomfortable. But what isn't okay is taking that feeling of uncomfortableness and directing it into misreading jews online to try and feel secure in your world view again.

I honestly hope that you have read all of this, as I know it's a long post, and you consider everything I have said.

[leveragehunters]

An alternative to google docs

To paraphrase a recent post: google docs is pants as a writing tool.

I'm suggesting MS Word as an alternative. Yeah, I know, it's not perfect, but it is (IMO), better than google docs.

But I'm not just suggesting Word when I suggest Word. I'm suggesting a free Microsoft account, which gives you Word and OneDrive.

It only takes a minute or two and a free account gets you:

Word in the browser

A OneDrive with 5gb of storage - now, 5gb might not be much holistically but in terms of text based documents, it's decent. My entire 'Fic' folder is 2.11gb. That's everything I've ever written and all their drafts, wips and their multiple drafts, betaed fics, ideas, writing refs and guidance, archived drafts/fics, AND the 500+ fics I've downloaded as epubs from AO3).

Excel, Outlook, Teams, OneNote - basically the whole Microsoft365 suite - in the browser

I use Word exclusively, both for fic and for work (where I write extensively), and the online version does everything I need. It autosaves, has version control/reversion, and sharing (if that's what you're into), and you can seamlessly copy and paste from Word into AO3's rich text editor - no formatting adjustments required.

Anyway, it's something to think about. If you want to give it a try, the simplest way is to create a new OneDrive account, which will also give you everything else.

Go here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-au/microsoft-365/onedrive/online-cloud-storage (clickable link)

Click 'Create a free account'.

Click 'get a new email address' and follow the prompts (recommended but not required) or use an existing email address. If you create a new email address, don't actually use it for email. It's just the umbrella the account sits under.

That's it; you're done.

[velkynkarma]

The book you binded looks so cool!!! I've been meaning to get into book binding as well, especially for One Piece fics and I love the format you did it in with Zoro's logo. How did you edit it? Would you be willing to share tips on how you did it? Did you watch book binding YouTube videos?

Thanks, anon! I'm glad you enjoyed! And I'm absolutely willing to share what I learned!

For the general book-binding, I used a couple book binding how-to videos.

Turning Fanfiction Into the Hardcover Book it Deserves by Jess Less

This one helped with:

How to use an old book cover/used book for the cover of the fanfic (you can also MAKE covers, and she has another video on this as well, but I love the idea of recycling old unwanted books into something new and loved)

The basics for formatting the pages (her bit about adding a compass design for the chapters is what inspired me to use Zoro's flag logo)

How to print and prep the pages/signatures

How to finish putting the whole thing together and add some interesting design elements

I especially liked this video because it's very beginner-friendly and casual, which helped the whole project feel a little less daunting. You can get special tools for book binding (there are kits online) but as shown, it's also simple enough to do with a thumbtack and some corkboard if you're low on cash.

That said, I found the stitch in this video a bit confusing, so I used the stitch from this video instead:

Folding & Sewing - Rounded and Backed Cased Book // Adventures in Bookbinding by DAS Bookbinding

Stitch prep is specifically around 7min in if you just want to skip to that. But the whole thing is an interesting watch too. This is more professional bookbinding and he has a lot of other interesting videos if you want to do some more complex things. However I found this stitch to be very straightforward and easy to follow and assemble, so I ultimately used this one when I put together Seven Deaths.

As for my personal tips and things I learned while doing this project?

Turns out Google Docs is kind of useless for this. You'll want actual word processing software like Microsoft Word. If you don't have the cash to spend on Microsoft's ridiculous subscription policy, you can use LibreOffice which is free (I did, and it works very well).

Fics are way longer on paper than they are digitally. Seven Deaths is 'only' about a 50K fic (less, in fact). But it still makes a 200+ page book. Pic a smaller fic to start with while you figure out everything you want to do.

Do some research on good book fonts for the body of your text. You can get crazy with other things (chapter headers or title pages) but pic something recommended for your text body so it's legible.

To add character symbols (like Zoro's flag) you'll need a transparent copy of it to save as a png. Once you pull it into the word doc you can resize and arrange as needed.

Also look at other "real" books you have lying around for ideas for things to add to your book! I turned an author's note into a "Forward", added an "about the author/publisher" section at the back, put in a table of contents, etc. There's other things I want to experiment with next time. Go wild! Have fun!

Test print a couple pages before printing the full project, just to be sure it's actually the right page size, your font is legible and spaced well, etc. If you don't have a printer and you don't want to pay a print shop for some expensive test pages, try your local library! Many let you use their computers and printers for an extremely low cost.

If you don't have a printer (or not one that can do quality printing for 200+ pages) you'll need to go to a print shop. DON'T bother with places like Staples or OfficeMax. I tried this, but their machines automatically staple "booklets" out of your signatures, which messes up your paper and costs extra for this "service." Instead, track down a local print shop in your area. It's easier to talk to them directly about what you want and the quality is better anyway.

On that note, this is an expensive hobby! Printing for Seven Deaths was about $87USD. The quality was worth it, but definitely do not start if you don't have your own printer or a little bit of spending money.

You do not need as much glue or thread as you think you need. Go less. Waste not.

A lot of the end stages is just...waiting...for...glue...to...dry.

You will inevitably, invariably, mess things up on your first project. I sure did! I underestimated the sharpness of some tools and put holes places I didn't mean to; some things glued in a bit sloppily; I didn't set up my page organization exactly right my table of contents ended up on the left page when I envisioned it on the right. But you know what? It doesn't matter! Because at the end of the day you have a book that YOU MADE. And it's still fucking awesome! And now you've learned some things for next time. Do it anyway and have fun with it!

Happy crafting, anon. I hope you are able to add some personal favorites to your bookshelf soon :)

[maypop-the-dragon]

PSA: Free Software

Reading this may really save your time, privacy, and money! Reblog or share to spread awareness!

Folks often use software that’s expensive and sometimes even inferior because they don’t know there are alternatives. So to those unfamiliar: basically, free and open-source (FOSS) or "libre" software is free to use and anyone can access the original code to make their own version or work on fixing problems.

That does not mean anyone can randomly add a virus and give it to everyone—any respectable libre project has checks in place to make sure changes to the official version are good! Libre software is typically developed by communities who really care about the quality of the software as a goal in itself.

There are libre alternatives to many well-known programs that do everything an average user needs (find out more under the cut!) for free with no DRM, license keys, or subscriptions.

Using libre software when possible is an easy way to fight against and free yourself from corporate greed while actually being more convenient in many cases! If you need an app to do something, perhaps try searching online for things like:

foss [whatever it is]

libre [whatever it is]

open source [whatever it is]

Feel free to recommend more libre software in the tags, replies, comments, or whatever you freaks like to do!

Some Libre Software I Personally Enjoy…

LibreOffice

LibreOffice is an office suite, much like Microsoft Office. It includes equivalents for apps like Word, Excel, and Powerpoint, which can view and edit files created for those apps.

I can't say I've used it much myself yet. I do not personally like using office software except when I have to for school.

OpenShot

OpenShot Video Editor is, as the name suggests, a video editing program. It has industry-standard features like splicing, layering, transitions, and greenscreen.

I've only made one video with it so far, but I'm already very happy with it. I had already paid for a video editor (Cyberlink PowerDirector Pro), but I needed to reinstall it and I didn't remember how. Out of desperation, I searched up "FOSS video editor" and I'm so glad I did. There's no launcher, there's no promotion of other apps and asset packs—it's just a video editor with a normal installer.

GIMP

GNU Image Manipulation Program is an image editor, much like Photoshop. Originally created for Linux but also available for Windows and MacOS, it provides plenty of functionality for editing images. It is a bit unintuitive to learn at first, though.

I've used it to create and modify images for years, including logos, really bad traceover art, and Minecraft textures. It doesn't have certain advanced tech like AI paint-in, but it has served my purposes well and it might just work for yours!

(Be sure to go to Windows > Dockable Dialogs > Colors. I have no idea why that's not enabled by default.)

Audacity

Audacity is an audio editing program. It can record, load, splice, and layer audio files and apply effects to them.

Audacity is another program I've used for a long time. It is not designed to compose music, but it is great for podcasts, simple edits, and loading legacy MS Paint to hear cool noises.

7-Zip

7-Zip is a file manager and archive tool. It supports many archive types including ZIP, RAR, TAR, and its own format, 7Z. It can view and modify the contents of archives, encrypt and decrypt archives, and all that good stuff.

Personally, I use 7-Zip to look inside JAR files for Minecraft reasons. I must admit that its UI is ugly.

Firefox

Firefox is an internet browser, much like Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, or Safari. While browsers are free, many of them include tracking or other anti-consumer practices. For example, Google plans to release an update to Chromium (the base that most browsers are built from these days) that makes ad blockers less effective by removing the APIs they currently rely on.

Aside from fighting monopolies, benefits include: support for animated themes (the one in the picture is Purple Night Theme), good ad blockers forever, an (albeit hidden) compact UI option (available on about:config), and a cute fox icon.

uBlock Origin

As far as I know, uBlock Origin is one of the best ad blockers there is.

I was on a sketchy website with my brother, and he was using Opera GX's ad blocker. Much of the time when he clicked on anything, it would take us to a random sponsored page. I suggested that he try uBlock Origin, and with uBlock Origin, that didn't happen anymore.

Linux

Linux is a kernel, but the term is often used to refer to operating systems (much like Windows or MacOS) built on it. There are many different Linux-based operating systems (or "distros") to choose from, but apps made for Linux usually work on most popular distros. You can also use many normally Windows-only apps on Linux through compatibility layers like WINE.

I don't have all four of these, so the images are from Wikipedia. I tried to show a variety of Linux distros made for different kinds of users.

If you want to replace your operating system, I recommend being very careful because you can end up breaking things. Many computer manufacturers don't care about supporting Linux, meaning that things may not work (Nvidia graphic cards notoriously have issues on Linux, for example).

Personally, I tried installing Pop!_OS on a laptop, and the sound output mysteriously doesn't work. I may try switching to Arch Linux, since it is extremely customizable and I might be able to experiment until I find a configuration where the audio works.

Many Linux distros offer "Live USB" functionality, which works as both a demo and an installer. You should thoroughly test your distro on a Live USB session before you actually install it to be absolutely sure that everything works. Even if it seems fine, you should probably look into dual-booting with your existing operating system, just in case you need it for some reason.

Happy computering!

[lynxfrost13]

Some rough HOPR lore as promised, I really have been wanting to type something more proper up in the official style + I have to font but I don’t have a writing program on my computer to use it on 😭

I tried using online Microsoft word but that didn’t work with it so I might have to do the free app trial? We shall see

ANYWAY

Here’s the bare bones HOPR lore it is very subject to change

- Gestalt was kitezh born (empire at the time, and as of Ariane’s rotfront memory in conflict but dominantly empire still) but moved to a nation planet and stayed in the military after her mandatory service with them. She spent the rest of her life serving out of a need to want to prove herself as truly loyal to the nation and eventually volunteered to donate her template to the neural archive. Rip HOPR gestalt 😔

- HOPRs stand at a solid 5’11! Taller than Elster and shorter than arar by one inch (they’re always gonna tell you they’re six foot. Lying little bastards trying to impress you.)

- they’re a multipurpose unit intended for war against the empire primarily, with a lot of them serving as soldiers (incredibly skilled spear fighters) and war propagandists

- they were commonly used for war recruitment and morale boosting, they’re not cheerful sweet personalities but they’re excellent at directing their groups and during their heyday were often looked to as the ideal nation soldier

- they’re older models (~gen 3 like Mynahs?) and once bioresonant combat units started being produced the HOPR line was rendered useless. Most of them are decommissioned now and the few remaining are most likely lost to Vineta and distant abandoned parts of the nation.

- for stabilization they need a space to call their own (THEIR room. No one else’s >:| ) even if it’s tiny!! They just need to have a couple things they feel like they can completely own (books, posters, etc it can vary). Every combat HOPR is equipped with a spear. If they don't have any fetish items they can become really protective over replikas/gestalts which can cause issues especially with degradation, so it's better to provide items.

- personality wise they’re very strong willed and eager to prove themselves in combat. Despite craving violence they also tend to be pretty laid back when left to their own devices. They’re not the most social of replikas outside of their work, but they want to impress and tend to come off as tryhards and ridiculous flirts. Don't be fooled by their calmer attitude during downtime though, they're still combat replikas first and foremost.

- degradation can happen if they hear any news/talk of Kitezh, lose their fetish objects, or lose their commander (they usually have to be decommissioned after a loss like that bc they just can’t bounce back from it). They shouldn't have their loyalty or authority questioned unless ABSOLUTELY necessary, it can lead to severe degradation.

[allthe-everything]

to all my babes out there trying to get a job, got some tips for y'all. i'm updating my resume and realised that what i do might help some people, and not everyone knows about ATS parsing. gonna be long, will add a tldr at the end

so, first things, instead of MS office, i use libreOffice as my document creator/word processor. stop giving microsoft your money - libreOffice is free and open source, and it's amazing. go get it. saves you money too and god knows we need that. but, i'm sure you can do this in publisher too, i just don't know all the buttons

onto techniques: instead of creating my resume in libreOffice's equivalent of word, i use the equivalent of microsoft's publisher - the thing meant for you to make cards and flyers and whatnot. essentially you just pick a size document, and get to throw things (pictures, text boxes, charts, whatever) onto the page where you want them. since it's geared more towards artsy things, it's a lot more flexible with formatting than word (moving images in word? just don't).

essentially, every snippet of information i put on my resume is one text box. each job with its description, each project i've worked on, etc gets its own text box. this is great in a couple ways: it means that if you want to change the formatting of your resume, you can just move around text boxes instead of fucking around with copy/paste all day. the second thing is that when a machine tries to read your resume, internally it'll read that pdf and see blocks of related information that's more precise than giant paragraphs you'd get in word. make your section titles their own text boxes (like experience, education, skills, etc) so they don't get lumped in with the real info.

i'm not gonna talk about "resume words" or "clean formatting" bc tbh i'm bad at that and i think recruiters are dumb sometimes for wanting "no templates, but only format it this one particular way". but get all your info there, arrange it how you see fit, and THEN. then we get sneaky.

in libreOffice, you can name and add descriptions to text boxes. "what!" i hear you say. "that's so weird why would anyone do that!". and i say "well, if a human is reading your resume, it doesn't matter what the text box thinks it is. but it's a machine reading your resume! you want to speak the machine's language." the name is less important than the description, in my opinion, but you can name the boxes too. what you're gonna do is select a text box, click on "format" at the top bar, then "description". and you're gonna add in the alt text box what this text box is. if it's a list of skills, write "skills". if it's education, write "education". this info won't show up visually to a human reading the doc, but it helps machines categorise the data, just a little bit better. in the description part of this, you can also try adding the key words from the job description so the machine sees them but a human really can't find it unless they really look. this isn't something i've been able to test thoroughly, though, so take it with a grain of salt.

i'm still working out all the kinks myself, and picking apart what the ATS does in terms of parsing your resume, but when i started doing this my resume was better parsed whenever i applied to jobs. which, bonus, less retyping your resume into the bullshit job app.

tldr; fuck microsoft, use libre office instead. use libre office's drawings app or ms office's publisher app for ease of use. in libre office, click text box, go to format -> description and add a description of what the text box contains. test and retest your resume in an ATS parser online to make sure the machine reads your resume correctly.

i wish this wasn't how things are, but since we're here might as well figure out hacks. if anyone else has info to add, please please do. it's rough out here.

[ere-the-sun-rises]

Controversial Opinion

Microsoft Office is superior to Google's features. Hands down.

Point 1: Email

Okay, so here Google does actually win one. Gmail is better than Outlook not because it's a better service but because it's not trying so hard. Outlook is over-functional, in a way that says someone is justifying having a paycheck by adding features that no one wants or uses.

Point 2: Word Processor

Microsoft Word beats Gdocs to death in a back alley. Gdocs sucks so much ass it's not even funny. Word is the perfect program - clear parameters, nicely in-depth features and controls that allow for precise formatting. It doesn't lag no matter how long the doc is and it has more fonts than people on planet earth. You can easily save the doc as a PDF and it prints without issue. Gdocs has to beg for mercy and can barely manage to save to desktop without completely fucking up what little formatting you can manage. Plus, did you know that Gdocs doesn't save your work as a proper text file, but as image plates of each page? God, Docs sucks so much.

Point 3: Spreadsheets

GSheets is a joke. Its mother thinks its a failure and its siblings only hang out with it because they feel bad. Excel is intimidating, but for a reason - it knows what it's doing and is damn good at it. Nothing is beyond it. Nothing.

Point 4: Presentations

GSlides is screaming, crying, throwing up when Powerpoint walks into the room. Can you imagine? Intuitive slide management, no lag after ten slides, detailed formatting and being able to save and transfer without breaking both of its legs.

Point 5: Online Storage

OneDrive not only has more space, it has more sophisticated organization too. It saves stuff like your desktop would - in files, preserved formatting. It can also host online-only documents or just be a cloud backup. Drive wishes it could be so elegant instead of a dumpster.

Point 6: Meeting Platform

Teams is an unholy middle-management monstrosity made from a bargain with whatever eldritch being is in control of frustrating UI, but who tf has ever heard of Duo? Did you even know Google has a knock-off Zoom? I hate Teams, but if I had to be stucm in an elevator with the three of them, Teams is the only one I'd trust to reliably host a call for help. With a free Halo background, no less (Halo's artwork is so pretty you guys).

Point 7: Cost

Okay, Microsoft takes the L here again. I don't mind paying for stuff, but I resent subscriptions. Just fucking let me buy the program outright, you shitlords. But then again, Google is free for a reason.

I'm not a Microsoft shill or fan here, just a frustrated and irritated TA who's had people attempt to use Google's hideous products in their presence when the university provides Office to its students for free. The disrespect, honestly.

Dishonourable mention: Apple Pages.

You don't even have an excuse. Microsoft made Office for Apple and you know damn well that no dropbox accepts Pages files because they suck. Get that shit out of here.

P.S. I can tell when you're an Apple user too, because you never change the default font (San Francisco) to one any PC would have (like Arial, Calibri or Times New Roman).

[gregorygerwitz]

As of July 1st, Google Docs is scraping everything written within them for AI, and after finding that out this morning, I decided to research a bit to find an alternative - at least for myself and Kit (kitthekazoo) to use. A few people wanted to know what I found by way of options, and I think I found the program that I, at least, will be using for the foreseeable future - unless my research turns up something bad about this one too.

I'm going to start using Microsoft 365 - a free, online based version of Microsoft Office. Things written within the system on a computer or in a browser, much like Google Docs, will transfer instantly to the app (available for iOS an android), and vice versa. The app even has more formatting options than the Google Docs/Drive apps did, which was my main complaint up until the AI thing. It's a lot easier to tab in just one line of a paragraph - something that couldn't be done on the Google apps - and all of the features are laid out really nicely too, easier to find than just randomly trying different menus ever was.

And like I said, it's free.

There's online versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote all within one app. I know that Google used to slow down my phone and kill my battery when I had to have multiple apps downloaded - one for forms, one for documents, one for sheets, and then the Drive app to keep it all together - so I love that it's all in one and neatly integrated. There is a premium version - $7 a month for one person or $10 a month for a family plan of up to six people - which includes the old versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote that you can download to your computer and work offline (I assume that the app is like Google's was, where you can still work in the documents offline, it just won't sync the changes until you have internet again), but those documents won't sync up between there and the app, as far as I'm aware, so I'm perfectly happy with the free version, myself.

And, if you already have a Microsoft account (MSN, Outlook, Hotmail email addresses all count!), you can log in with that, and it will sync everything you have connected to that! My app even synced up with the post-it note app on my old laptop! So I have all these old notes I thought were lost forever, as well as gifset ideas!

This is just what I'm going to be using, but if anyone wants to learn more about it, the FAQ page is right here!

[crow-caller]

Hey! I saw that you published some books (looking forward to checking them out, actually), but I was wondering how you did that? I'm not out of high school yet, but I've already finished my first draft of book one of my series, and have been working on editing and fixing up the second draft. I do have an editor, which is nice. I was wondering how you published? Any advice/ info would be greatly appreciated!

Hey, cool! My first book legit came out when I was still in high school.

I'm an indie author, so I'll talk about indie stuff... and traditional... and oh dear that's a lot.

Let's go over some pros and cons and what to expect.

Crow's (oops not) Quick Guide to Publishin'

Self Publishing:

This is what I did for Good Angel, Bad End, my duology!

Self pubbing:

+Total control of end product +No deadlines +Full control of changing it at any time -You do all the work (or pay) -It costs you money for jobs you can't (or shouldn't) do yourself like editing -Extremely limited reach of audience, very hard to sell

I queried GA/BE around a bit but ultimately decided to self publish it. It's just too niche for mainstream, being a weird genre mix up with way too queer characters. Multiple neopronouns used by funky angels in magic school slice of life that turns apocalyptic? yeah, I felt it'd be best I just put it out.

You'll need to

Edit the text (I'd recc multiple friends, a paid editor)

Proofread the text (I'd recc paying a pro)

Assemble the text files formatting (for digital, print)

Get a cover

Make pages for it on GoodReads etc and promote it

Self-publishing can be a lot of work. I did GA/BE's interiors myself using first Microsoft word, then adobe indesign for the recent revamp. Using Word/other text programs can give you a fully workable interior file, but abusing the free trial system of adobe will allow more advanced inclusions. Getting ebook files to work is a nightmare, and print can also be a pain- it's a lot of following online tutorials and trial and error I found. Calibre then is the program you use to finish digital files for release.

Costs for editing can be very high. Editing is a high skill, high time job- I got my books done on discount from a friend for next to nothing, but expect definitely a few hundred bucks. Research though fair prices. You don't need to hire someone to proofread or edit, but it is a good idea. That or outsource to many friends, ideally ones who give honest feedback. A proofreader is much cheaper as they only look for errors, I again got it cheap for 65£ per book. Art wise, I bought mine on commission- talk to an artist and make it clear it is for a commercial project and that you have the right to sell the end result. My cover for each book was about 100£

You might notice this is adding up to a few hundred quid, and yes: it cost me like, 350£ or so per book to publish, even with myself doing a lot of the work. This is a lot! Does it pay back? Usually no. I have at this point now "made a profit", but it took years. You can't typically go into self publishing looking for profit.

I really enjoy self publishing GA. It meant I could put a project out that I kinda only made for me, and have full rights to do whatever I want with it. I got to design the cover and choose what to do at every step... but it was a crazy amount of intensive work too. Marketing wise I've found is about impossible- your best bet 100% is to send the book to as many people as possible (digitally) for review and just try to get enough people reading it. Then you hope they like it and talk about it. I've found no other method of marketing particularly useful: word of mouth is still king.

Indie Publishing:

Indie pubbin:

+Don't have to spend any money (get paid) +Professional editing/cover/formatting +Backing of publishing house's marketing team -Deadlines -Less creative control -Contracted -Must query and be accepted

My first book was Angel Radio, which actually I sold when I was 17. came out when I was 18. The timescale for traditional publishing, even indie, is typically at least a year.

There's a lot of indie publishers out there, and we should read them more often. However, being published by an indie publisher (aka, a small, non-mainstream one- unlikely to ever be 'on shelves') takes extra, different work.

Do your research!!! There's a LOT of scam publishers out there. A publisher will never, ever, not even slightly ever, charge you money or pressure you to spend money (like buying your own copies of the book). A great way to check is to just look up 'publisher name + scam'.

Prepare a query letter. This is a pitch for your book, basic book info, and a bit about you. Every publishing house will have a 'submissions' page which explains specific wants (such as several pages of your book or a synopsis), so every application is slightly custom.

Query and wait. It takes many weeks to hear back with queries. Usually you should do them in small batches of like five. It's very rare to get a deal- it may not be your book, it might just be market trends or they already got a book about dragons on order.

DOUBLE CHECK YOUR CONTRACT. Contracts can be hard, so seek help if you want, though I've found my one contract to be not that long and readable. Still, you should always read a contract, especially as a scam publisher might try to trick you there.

Indie publishing is good because... it's more accessible and diverse than mainstream, but still offers the same benefits to authors. Just on a way smaller scale. I don't think my publisher, Harmony Ink Press, did much jack or shit for me marketing wise, and that's pretty typical. Marketing is very hit or miss and very expensive, so the onus is still on you to market (spoilers, these days marketing is on you no matter what). You also have more leeway in edits and covers- I designed AR's rough cover and worked with the artist directly! That's uncommon.

Most indie publishers also have a common royalty scheme where you pay it back. This isn't a hallmark of a scam, it's pretty normal: You get advance cash upfront, but then do not earn royalties until your book has paid itself off. Which it may not. Angel Radio sold for 500$, not a huge amount but not exactly tiny, especially for a teen. But I haven't earned a penny on royalties because it never sold well enough! I think I'm a little over halfway there.

Traditional Publishing

(I don't have a book of this type. yet...?)

Y'know, like, books?

+Large advance +Big support team +Marketing +Books on shelves +Most lucrative and recognizable -Sharper deadlines -Least control and rights -Must query (hardcore mode) -Still marketing yourself

Traditional publishing is the longest timescale and hardest method. Obvs. You again are looking to write a good query, but now you need to go through a literary agent. You query an agent with your book (again, should only ever be free), the agent then essentially queries publishers on your behalf ("out on submission"). An agent is your liaison to the business of publishing, taking a portion of your earnings for the service. You just can't make it into publishing without an agent.

A query letter ideally is... roughly, quickly, this is my format guide.

Hi there [actual agent name]

I'm here proposing my cool book, XYZ of ABC, a GENRE book of ??k words that IS SOMETHING UNIQUE SELLING POINT. MAIN CHARACTER is LIKE THIS but faced CONFLICT when PLOT HAPPENS, in SOME KINDA WORLD OR WHATEVER. THIS IS THE PART WHERE YOU WRITE A 2-3 SENTENCE PLOT BLURB. But when TWIST happens, will MC have SOME EYECATCHING IDEA? This book will appeal to fans of THIS KINDA THING and is extra good because RELEVENT DETAIL LIKE OWNVOICES. I believe JUST KEEP SELLING KID. I myself SOME SORT OF ACCOMPLISHMENT LIKE UNI, PAIRED WITH A RELEVANT HOBBY. thank you for your time

Hot and dirty, something like that. You gotta recall at all times this is a market. It is economic. Your passion... matters, but uh. It doesn't matter. Gosh that sounds rough. But make your passion clear but your sound business proposal clearer: You need to show why your book is worth picking over thousands of other queries.

Querying is a horrible torturous process that does help you slowly build up exposure therapy to rejection and failure. Anyways, that will take a bit typically (I've been querying on and off for ten years for an agent, but a lot has been 'off' time). Then you wait and eventually, bam! Probably post some edits, your book is sold.

You still wait a long time though, and have a lot of work to do. So much work. Your book will come out on shelves at the end, sure, but that's still not a promise of success. The author these days is especially the product, and while you start on a higher stage (maybe even the marketing team will f---ing do something), you still gotta claw. There's a high level of scrutiny too on debut authors on any tier, but especially the traditional publishing tier. So your success is very dependent on each book you do, with it being harder and harder to sell books if you aren't doing fantastic.

Still, it's hard to deny the appeal of that mainstream success. Man, I'm chasing it myself! But it's not just easy book out there you go. I'm pals with traditionally published authors and you'll still be very busy, if you can get your foot on the ladder with an agent to begin with. Being on submission generally takes months, and even when your book is with a publisher it may be a lot of time and work before it ever comes out. Even then, hitting the shelves still doesn't mean you're set for life.

Still. Good luck. Go try!

(BTW look at my books, I guess, as a sticker on what I hope is good advice, and good luck! I first decided to try publishing Angel Radio with HIP because of a post by someone else published by them on tumblr... like 10 years ago now....)

Gum ebook

Amaz print

Goodreads)

[yellowocaballero]

How did you get into writing?

That one's kind of tough to answer. I feel like there's a simple and a complicated answer. I'll try and go for simple.

It's partly genetic. My mother wrote Buffy fanfiction in the early 2000s. She put it up on her Buffy forums. It's quite good. When I told her I was flying out to meet an internet friend, she was like - ah, yes, the joy of meeting internet friends! I hope you have fun! Icon.

I read a lot of books and comics as a kid for very boring reasons. I think if you do enough of that, it's pretty natural that you want to write something yourself. I remember vividly sitting in my office period in 8th grade, bored out of my skull, and deciding I wanted to write a story. I grabbed a random sheet of office paper and wrote a. Uh. One page Batman fanfic. OTL.

The thing about writing is that you don't have to stop doing it. It's just writing on a piece of paper, or writing on a Word document. You can do that shit in class. You can do it during lunch. You can do it in the library. You can go home and do it on Microsoft Word 2003. You can mentally write it in class and then go home and physically write it. You can do it on the bus as your friends make you write stories about them riding narwhals. I used to get smashed drunk and write (a small percentage of my AO3 fics were written drunk - I got called Hemmingway a lot). My family was very poor growing up, and writing didn't require any money. It was completely free. It didn't require any equipment or a space. It didn't require other people. You didn't have to stop doing it. So I didn't.

The other thing is that I love writing. I love the act of writing. It does not matter what I'm writing, it does not matter what the story is, and it doesn't matter how good it is. You know how your grandma sits in front of the TV and knits, not so she has a potholder or anything, but just because knitting is relaxing? It's like that for me. Writing is fun. I don't remember ever caring if it was bad. When I was 13, 14, 15, I don't remember ever worrying over if something was bad or not. I remember looking at lines and thinking - these are awesome lines. Or I remember how great it felt to put my elaborate daydream on paper.

Writing is the only hobby I've ever really enjoyed. I should find more hobbies. Ones that involve going outside with groups of people. Writing's made me a ton of friends but they're all online. I could meet up with writing groups in person, but then I'd have to talk to actual writers (worst case scenario). I'll have to fake interest in DND or something.

Oh, also, fwiw - during middle school I wrote fanfic, during high school I wrote almost entirely original fiction. I didn't write much in college because I was a Neuroscience major. And when things calmed down I decided god was dead and writing was for fun and my life was hard enough already, so I went back to fic. The fic is a choice.

[ileftherbackhome]

idk who needs to hear this (me) but um word converts pdfs for free all u have to do is open word and then open the pdf the same way you would open a saved word doc. i spent 8 hours today trying to use websites online to convert a literal test bank pdf into a word document and i could have just... opened the pdf while in microsoft word this entire time.

[bakersfield-row]

Am a Windows user, have never used anything but windows, am comfortable with windows.

Convince me to linux. Explain

I’m going to keep this short because I could make this infinitely long.

In a world where you really cannot trust big companies, windows has gotten very self conscious that they could track and sell every piece of data from their customer and add unnecessary features and no one would notice it, even though it actually makes the user experience worse. If you don’t have a key, you probably also have to over a hundred dollars just for some basic amenities, like changing a wallpaper.

Linux, in the other hand, is free and open source software (FOSS), which, in its simplest form, means that all the code is there for you to change and revise. Because of this openness, most Linux distros usually never have features to sell your data, and if they do, someone’s bound to make a patch to have that not happen. This means that Linux is much more safe and secure than windows by a long shot, and you really don’t have to worry about your information being sold to dubious companies.

Linux, with all its FOSS-ness, also allows anyone to make theirs distro look anyway you want. For instance, I personally prefer the look of MacOS to Windows (I know, probs controversial opinion). On windows, it’s be a pain in the ass to get it that way, especially without a key, while in Linux you can easily do that with relative ease, as long as you have a guide. Linux is just more freedom, something probably over said but still very true.

There’s other reasons why people would want to switch to Linux to. I didn’t really note that it’s less “bloated” than windows, which means that it has a lot less unnecessary features and thus will run way faster on any computer, especially old ones. Bloat has been kinda a controversial word in the community, since people like to argue that some distros are worse because they have more features. However, no matter what you choose, it’ll probably be better than windows.

The biggest drawback to Linux, in my opinion, is obviously app compatibility. I’ve mentioned gaming before, but that’s something that’s seedy vastly improved over the years. However, some popular apps are just incomparable with Linux, most notably the entire adobe suite and (unsurprisingly) Microsoft office. There’s a couple other things you can do to circumnavigate this.

You can try to find alternatives. GIMP works as a nice alternative to photoshop, Davinci Resolve has native Linux versions, and libreoffice is probably capable enough to replace word or PowerPoint.

You can try to install wine and pray to god it’ll work (though it probably won’t).

You can run a virtual machine and run windows with that, thought that’s not GPU accelerated and thus might be laggy.

OR, and this is the best option in my opinion, you can dual boot windows along side linux, so if you really need to use it, it’s there as an option. If you’re going to do this option, make sure to install windows first before Linux (because of some stupid thing where it erases it in grub or smtn) and that the two operating systems are on separate drives. Also try to debloat windows though guides on YouTube, but know that it won’t be as private as Linux.

Honestly, that’s as much as I have to say about the subject matter. Others are free to add on, since I probably missed a few things. You might not like it at first, but I do encourage you to at least try it. Hell, you might even like it so much that using windows is now alien to you (like me, lmfao).

Hope this helped, and remember, never type “sudo rm -rf /” in the terminal. (Aw fuck, I forgot to explain the terminal. Oh well, I hope someone can explain it to you, and if you get stuck on it there’s always guides online)

[online-games-io]

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