So here goes:
Sleep & Anesthesia, Critical Care
I will announce these through my blog instead of automatic FB Sharing as I usually do (apparently Squarespace doesn't facilitate these for uploaded galleries).
On Monetizing /
When I decided to make a website to share my notes (which may or may not be useful for others), I hoped to monetize it by having a few people willing to buy the highest resolution scans and use them however they see fit. I don’t want to upload the highest resolution scans for free as I think it’s overkill over the web; visitors’ mobile bandwidth will be annihilated. As someone who himself believes in FOAM (Free Open Access Meducation – Medical education for anyone, anywhere, anytime), I was prepared for not having many people buy my notes. But I wasn’t for the number being zero.
The bills (including hosting this website) still need to be paid. Or else I’ll have to close down the website. Web hosting is still expensive for us in the third world doing it alone.
As an alternative, I've decided to put web ads on the site, despite the fact that I love clean, easy to load websites. Initially I tried to use AdSense, but for some reason, I just couldn't get it to work with my site, saying that it's not constructed well enough, too many images (well there are a lot of scans, duh), etc. I've decided to move on to another agency.
So now I've just started trying out Chitika. So far I've been able to put their ad codes into the website, but I don't know 1) what's the optimal number and placement of ads, and 2) how to make the desktop and mobile experiences both consistently a win-win setup. Now I do realize that a majority of my visitors visit using mobile devices. Too many ads is definitely more of a killer to the mobile experience compared to the desktop.
To make way for ads, I'll try uploading higher resolution scans that's somewhere in the middle; not too big that'll kill mobile bandwidth, but good enough for those using "Retina-class displays". And of course, those scans will not be for sale. I'll probably follow the 220 dpi resolution of Retina MacBook.
If I don't enough, I'll consider my second attempt at having a "permanent" web presence (I did have a Blogger thing a long time ago) another failure and just shut this site down (as again, it's expensive).
Phew /
So I was again careless, and again one of my fountain pens fell to the floor. This time, it happened while I was getting out of my friend's car.
I had some severe dandruff problems problems so I tried to shake them off my shirt while out of his car in the parking lot. I shook my shirt so hard, my Parker Paremier flew out of my pocket, and the cap wasn't there with the pen.
The cap flew off below my friends car. For the cap was retrieved I had an uh oh moment; the nib was sprung, again. I tried to keep my cool, considering that this has happened before.
The last time it happened, I initially tried to fix it myself, but I was greedy and unhappy with the end result. The nib end was slightly bent laterally. But it was writing perfectly well (just a thicker line) with normal writing; unlike other Parker pens like the Duofold, the Premier just doesn't write with the nib reversed so I sent it to KS Gills on Jalan TAR, paid about 60 ringgit, and got my pen back. The good thing was that the nib was more straightened (but not perfect). The bad thing was that the work scratched off the ruthenium coating over the distal end of the nib, and the pen became a much wetter writer with a much wider line to a point of being almost unusable for someone who has a rather small handwriting size.
So now that the nib is sprung again, I decided to first accept that I don't have to get a perfect repair, and I should save some money and accept my own repairs; to get perfect repairs I guess the only acceptable way is to send my pens to the famous international nibmeisters in the States or Japan (this is expensive).
I've learned some techniques watching the videos on the Pen Habit and SBREBrown YouTube videos, so I decided to apply them. After 10 minutes of work, I'm happy with the results. The thicker lines are with writing with the usual nib orientation, while the thinner lines are with the nib reversed (yes, the pen can now write reversed!).
So I really need to be extra careful from now on (I've been trying to be careful of since forever, anyway). But at least for today, a sigh of relief.
This was written on to Tomoe River paper using Graf von Faber Castell Carbon Black in a Parker Premier Monochrome Black pen with a medium nib.
