I miscalcuated and it has cost me

Hello everyone

I have some disappointing news: I will no longer be able to continue working on Bad Voltage Magazine for the foresable future. My days have gotten longer at work due to supporting a webservices interface that I wrote, writing a new one that is due in mid-July and also learning AngularJS at work. Once I finish this interface then I will probably be supporting it and long with writing a new one along with doing some UI work once I get trained up on AngularJS. You add this with the personal responsiblities I have outside of work and you end up with a huge mess that robs you of your sanity like I have going on now.

I have moved the code under the Bad Voltage organization (https://github.com/badvoltage/badvoltagemagazine) and hopefully, someone will pick up where I am leaving off. Thereā€™s nothing worse than seeing a project you start gain momentum and then realize you canā€™t support the project as it should be supported. It honestly sucks.

I feel I owe the community at large an apology. I realize that this may possibly kill the magazine and I am truly sorry. I thought I would have more time to give to this but unfortunately, I have miscalcuated and have been left with no margin to be able to do this in the manner I believe it should be done.

I want to thank @joe for his contribution and also to those who have forked the repo to start work on the magazine. Also, thanks to @neuro for his feedback thus far on the magazine and asking some really great questions. Finally, thanks to @jonobacon, @bryanlunduke, @sil, & @jeremy for putting together a great podcast and letting me run with this as long as I could.

I still plan to be active in the community and hope people understand the choice I made. Maybe one day, once the waters calm again, I can come back and contribute once again.

Donā€™t apologise for anything, mate. You thought you had the spare time to contribute something, but it hasnā€™t worked out. No biggie :smile:

This, though, is partly why I was asking about a magazine format. It usually ends up with a small number of people (usually one) doing the actual layout and render stages, sometimes with proprietary software which not everyone has access to (although I notice you were using Scribus, good shout). This then becomes a SPOF which can derail output in the long run (or very short run in this case, unfortunately).

The good thing, though, is that youā€™ve set a ball rolling, and gotten some minds intrigued. We can hopefully either continue with the magazine idea as-is, or transmogrify it into something else along the same lines.

I had thought it would give a good response platform to the show in the same way that the hashlugradio did for lugradio, a long long time ago. After every episode, there can be a lot of interesting talking points, and while the forum is a good place for a back and forth discussion, sometimes a long form response / expansion / rebuttal / praisefest is worth reading.

All we need to now is keep the interest up, and figure out the optimal way to let it happen in a redundantly available fashion :wink:

Absolutely no apologies needed! This is a volunteer communityā€¦you are welcome to participate as much or as little as you like.

I really do hope that the magazine continues - I think it is a great initiative!

Anyone else want to take over the reigns?

For reals. No apologies necessary. I think itā€™s rad that you got this kick started.

ā€¦ thoughā€¦ if you feel like punishing yourself, we could always do it ā€œBad Voltage Styleā€ and we could pick an avatar for you to use in the forum for the next few weeks. :smile:

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You do not. Anyone who disagrees, send 'em to see me. This was a cool idea, and remains so; maybe somebody else will pick it up!

How does the saying go? ā€œFeces occurs?ā€ :smile:

Just hope you do well with the changes that now face you.

Ok so next step is to figure out how we take what was started and run with it. I have no experience making a magazine of any kind. Iā€™ve sent in an article (waiting for pull request to have some action is what brought me here).

Iā€™m happy to contribute a little but rather than leave it up to one person can we see what we can do with many?

First thingā€™s first. Lets keep contributions rolling in. Who has an editors eye and can accept pull requests in Github?

Then we can figure out how we put it together from there eh? :slight_smile:

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My pleasure. Iā€™m in a similar boat too :frowning:

All Iā€™d suggest you do on GitHub, is start an ā€˜Organizationā€™ and add some people from here, I think thatā€™s the easiest way to allow someone to start contributing.

Have you ever seen the film ā€œThe Commitmentsā€? IMDB The Commitments

If not, take some time out to see it. Particularly the line from Joey Fagan about starts. I doubt the first bloke who dug the first shovel full of foundations on the pyramids (or Taj Mahal, or whichever creation inspires you) was around to see them finished. but it was vital that somebody made a start because thatā€™s what enables the rest of the endeavour to happen.

Antonio Gaudi started on the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona in 1883, and it still isnā€™t even nearly finished yet. That doesnā€™t mean it isnā€™t awesome.

Thanks everyone for the support. Also, I am thankful for @sil and his willingness to ā€œtalkā€ with anyone for giving me a hard time. @sil, @jonobacon, & @oldgeek , in the next week, I will be updating my avatar, any suggestions? I would like to stick with a BBC show character. I would ask @bryanlunduke but we know he knows nothing about anything British

Iā€™m flattered to be asked for ideas.

My first thought when it comes to British entertainment goes to The Flying Circus. And I love this image:

Or from the Spam sketch:

Then there is Mr. Humphries from Are You Being Served.

But, then the next thing I think of is Doctor Who. So, how about a Dalek?

Or a Sontaran?

I could go on all day with this. What fun! Thanks for asking.