Saturday, March 9, 2013
condoned abuse in videogame culture
There is regular, wide-spread abuse going on right now, & it is being accepted and/or ignored. Become aware! Act as a decent person to your fellow humans beings.
Friday, March 8, 2013
shelf lining to preserve manga
At Anime Expo 2012's Tokyopop panel, the discussion turned to how they store and preserve manga. The companies, that get copies of Japanese manga for American translation, have to be very good about preserving their source copies for reproduction. So, I took notes. And the number one recommended type of shelving was metal. Even though wood is a very easy type of bookcase material to come by, and I already made all my bookcases out of wood, it's actually the worst thing for manga.
So naturally, when I came home from the con, I went to go check on my manga that's been sitting on those wooden bookcases for almost a decade. The pages were indeed yellowing. 0~0! My precious manga! ;O;!
But interestingly enough, the tankouban on my shelves for that same amount of time, still wrapped in plastic, had cleanly white, preserved pages. It was amazing that just that thin barrier of plastic wrap was enough to save those pages.
Now, it was time to change my shelves to save my manga. But what option to choose?
Buying all new bookcases was not only out of my budget abilities, but also would most likely prove less efficient. I had calculated, measured, and built my current bookcases to specifically accommodate manga (US sizes and anime DVDs) and to maximize space for that purpose. I'm sure that my bookcases are able to fit more manga onto my walls than any store-bought bookcase. And with my unceasing additions to my manga/anime collection, there's no way I can just let a less effective use of space slide.
Then there's taking my current bookcases all outside and painting/sealing them. I'm not even sure if that will work to protect manga. Maybe. I mean, most paint is like plastic, and just that thin plastic wrapping on my tankouban was enough to protect it. But the reason I didn't paint my bookcases when I first made them, was because I had seen how paint and sealant could collect grime. Even after years of drying, they just seem to retain a type of tackiness that attracts grime. And I just won't risk my manga on that. Even my painted, hand-me-down bookcases, still have little films of grime, no matter how much I scrubbed them. To this day, they are lined with cardboard, to protect my manga-ka artbooks that sit in them.
So, how about shelf lining? A nice water-proof barrier to protect my manga pages against the moisture or sap in wooden shelves?
Those store-bought liners are nice. Plastic and metal liners seem like the best moisture barriers, more than those cork board liners. But I have a lot of shelves. A LOT of shelves. I can barely see my walls, they're so covered with manga/anime. If I were to buy the amount of liner needed for my room, the high cost might start to make the trouble of clearing out my bookcases, dislodging them from the walls, painting them outside, and worrying if they'll actually be more effective than detrimental, seem appealing.
So I researched some home-made liner ideas:
http://www.ehow.com/way_5138814_shelf-liner-ideas.html
Foil. It's cheap, I've already got lots of it, and it's metal, the best material for protecting manga pages from aging. Sure, I'm a little apprehensive about how durable they'll be when I'm pulling out books and tightly re-shelving them. But at this point, it's affordable and worth a try. My manga have been dying long enough. I need to do something. Besides, when I stop to think about it, so many of my shelves (especially the high ones) have stayed untouched for ages. I can't possibly read everything, all the time. So many of those manga shelves stay undisturbed for long stretches of time. So what kind of distress would foil lining have to really compete with? Even if it does tear when I try to get or put back a book, it would be so infrequent that replacing the torn foil, wouldn't be a frequent hassle.
It's been a while since I had decided on foil, but clearing out my manga bookcases for lining is still a project I haven't started yet. It'll be a big, long undertaking. But when I get it done, I'll take photos, and maybe some notes to guage how well this works.
So naturally, when I came home from the con, I went to go check on my manga that's been sitting on those wooden bookcases for almost a decade. The pages were indeed yellowing. 0~0! My precious manga! ;O;!
But interestingly enough, the tankouban on my shelves for that same amount of time, still wrapped in plastic, had cleanly white, preserved pages. It was amazing that just that thin barrier of plastic wrap was enough to save those pages.
Now, it was time to change my shelves to save my manga. But what option to choose?
Buying all new bookcases was not only out of my budget abilities, but also would most likely prove less efficient. I had calculated, measured, and built my current bookcases to specifically accommodate manga (US sizes and anime DVDs) and to maximize space for that purpose. I'm sure that my bookcases are able to fit more manga onto my walls than any store-bought bookcase. And with my unceasing additions to my manga/anime collection, there's no way I can just let a less effective use of space slide.
Then there's taking my current bookcases all outside and painting/sealing them. I'm not even sure if that will work to protect manga. Maybe. I mean, most paint is like plastic, and just that thin plastic wrapping on my tankouban was enough to protect it. But the reason I didn't paint my bookcases when I first made them, was because I had seen how paint and sealant could collect grime. Even after years of drying, they just seem to retain a type of tackiness that attracts grime. And I just won't risk my manga on that. Even my painted, hand-me-down bookcases, still have little films of grime, no matter how much I scrubbed them. To this day, they are lined with cardboard, to protect my manga-ka artbooks that sit in them.
So, how about shelf lining? A nice water-proof barrier to protect my manga pages against the moisture or sap in wooden shelves?
Those store-bought liners are nice. Plastic and metal liners seem like the best moisture barriers, more than those cork board liners. But I have a lot of shelves. A LOT of shelves. I can barely see my walls, they're so covered with manga/anime. If I were to buy the amount of liner needed for my room, the high cost might start to make the trouble of clearing out my bookcases, dislodging them from the walls, painting them outside, and worrying if they'll actually be more effective than detrimental, seem appealing.
So I researched some home-made liner ideas:
http://www.ehow.com/way_5138814_shelf-liner-ideas.html
Foil. It's cheap, I've already got lots of it, and it's metal, the best material for protecting manga pages from aging. Sure, I'm a little apprehensive about how durable they'll be when I'm pulling out books and tightly re-shelving them. But at this point, it's affordable and worth a try. My manga have been dying long enough. I need to do something. Besides, when I stop to think about it, so many of my shelves (especially the high ones) have stayed untouched for ages. I can't possibly read everything, all the time. So many of those manga shelves stay undisturbed for long stretches of time. So what kind of distress would foil lining have to really compete with? Even if it does tear when I try to get or put back a book, it would be so infrequent that replacing the torn foil, wouldn't be a frequent hassle.
It's been a while since I had decided on foil, but clearing out my manga bookcases for lining is still a project I haven't started yet. It'll be a big, long undertaking. But when I get it done, I'll take photos, and maybe some notes to guage how well this works.
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