Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Lanthorn craziness

So, I asked people if I should keep blogging, and my family and Hanna said yes, but I still haven't been.  Mostly that's because of time, but today I have lots of time for some reason, so I thought I would write a post (and I'm still being lazy, because most of this is copy and pasted from an email I wrote).

Adam and I are having the Lanthorn release party this Thursday.  It's been a crazy process.  First, we couldn't figure out what software we were supposed to use.  The college said they were going to get us new software, but they never did.  There was a layout/design program on the computer in our office, but it said it wasn't the full version and would put a watermark on all our pages.  So I emailed the former editor, and from her I found out that they'd never used that program, but had had access to a different program through the school newspaper.  So we ended up using Microsoft publisher, which worked fine but wasn't the best.

Putting the book together took a lot of time, and then we tried to email it to the print center, but it was too big of a file.  Because the print center lady was going to be going away for a few days, I had to leave a class to go back to my room to put The Lanthorn on a  blank CD and then bring it to her.  And then her color printer wasn't working, so we thought we were going to have to do it in black and white, but after printing 60 black and white copies she got the color to work.  So now they're all printed, but they needed to be folded and stapled, which Adam and I will be working on tomorrow.

We've also had issues with the party; we didn't hear back from the guy in charge of Java 101 (the campus coffee shop, where the party will be) that we actually had it until today, so we only just sent out the campus wide email, and there's some lecture going on at the same time, and everyone we've talked to is either going to that or has other plans already.  So we'll probably have only five people show up to the party.  It'll be okay; the book will still have been successfully published, and even if not many people get them at the party we'll still leave them around campus for people to pick up, but the whole thing has just been way more frustrating than I expected.  Having it done will be a big relief, and I'm sure I'll feel better about it then.  And at least next semester we'll know how to do things better.

3 comments:

  1. I know these problems were frustrating to you, but I think they provided you with lessons in problem solving, etc. Good job tackling the obstacles and overcoming! I look forward to reading the newest issue of the Lanthorn!

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  2. Oj! so this is the story you were hinting at...talk about a comedy of errors...
    how do you choose what goes in the Lanthorn? And will you be bringing one home, so we can admire your handiwork?

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  3. We have a team of staff, about 15-20 people, and we divide them into groups and have each group read a different chunk of the submissions. Everyone rates each piece on a scale of 1-4, and then we average the ratings and the highest rated pieces go in the book.

    And yes, I will definitely be bringing a few copies back! Nora got one also, so I'm sure she'll show it to you.

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