Warning to AMR about your recent advert/request

[ImmortalA1000]

I noticed yesterday on AMR that someone running the site had put up an advert/request about a certain "Mort" and his scanning services and asking for people to donate their magazines to him.

I have dealt with this guy and some of his pals before and well.....

1. His scans are terrible, he takes no pride in his work and his CU Amiga scans are pretty much unreadable on almost every page because the text is blurred out near the spine/middle of each. Useless.

2. He has zero respect for customers anyway, I bought a DVD from him and it was some cheap ass DVD-R with marker pen on it, a 10p DVD case and a cover printed on some cheap as inkjet for 12 bucks. Fair enough but the DVD he sent was USED, and it was COVERED IN SCRATCHES. I emailed to tell them this and got no reply ever (he obviously got the paypal notification from my email address so not in spam folder)

3. Spends all day (almost everyone involved with his ZZAP64 site actually) bitching and moaning about people selling magazine scans on ebay despite selling them without permission from such people as Future Publishing himself in the first place. Was quite hilarious when we contacted the copyright administrator at future publishing about his site lol teach them to bitch constantly about people on ebay providing a more professional service for half the cost or less


So please please if we are to have new scans of mags added to AMR choose someone who checks his scans for quality/readability AND someone who isn't a joke of a businessman. I would rather have missing pages than unreadable pages and free mags going to this joker. I've lost respect now for people running AMR now.

You want any scanning done properly, there are four of us out there in the wilderness who have the equipment and attitude to do our beloved mags justice.

[Zetr0]

@Immortal

I dont think its fair to say that you have lost "respect" for the AMR team -

Those that I have spoken with have my deepest respect for their efforts

Lets be honest here - they need help in getting these scans in for the AMR project, some one has offered their time and effort to help them, so I can understand in this instance whereby they ask fellow donators to send them on to this fellow whom promises to help out.

Now, I dont know this Mort, I believe if you have concerns and issues of their work and practices to share that with the AMR team - instead of berating them on the issue - they may not know the ecentricities that you mention of this Mort fellow.

At the end of the day, the AMR project is run by a small group of people and its a great project, I find it would be better to be involved in somthing like that than to argue its premise of source - instead of wasting protein in arguing the validity of their chosen source, why not spend £20 - pick up a USB A4 Scanner and have at it with some old Amiga Mags ?

I understand from your reading that you have an eye for quality, and this could be an opportunity to create a standard in this practice for AMR as well provide a "how-to" guide for those just wanting to help out on the off chance.

Opportunities are always - ever present =)

[DH]

Hey Zetro, My hints and tips for scanning/photographing mags for HOL

http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=54810

EDIT: On another note, I have to agree that this is something that should be taken up with the guys at AMR and not publicly announced.

On the other hand, maybe someone should contact Mort, if your suggestions are correct, and explain how to reproduce the best quality with the given hardware, he may think his scans are OK if no one tells him . Believe me, it does work as I have already done this for a certain contributor for HOL and now his reproductions are so perfect there's almost nothing to do

[Zetr0]

ahhhh - "moiré interference"

Tackled that bad-boy with a 24bit colour parallel "HAND" scanner on the miggy.... I won too yes I know... I rock!

I used to draw commic characters like rouge trooper / judge dread etc

.... ohhh.... that was way to long ago!

anyway - imma old skool - I can only use M$ Pain (correct spelling) D-Paint / P-Paint and paint-shop-pro

[Codetapper]

I've contacted Mort and asked him to read this thread. In my personal opinion, Mort has been amazing for AMR allowing me to put lots of his scans online. The quality isn't perfect but the scans are certainly readable and he's done tens of thousands of pages in his time! I personally have had no problems at all with him!

[Mort]

Hi Guys and Immortal, sorry for any problem with some of the scans, I do spend six months scanning theses sets in at a time (well trying to collated the issues). Never had a complaint on the quality and if people want to check then they can read the lower resolution scans on the Amr site. Always replace damaged or scratched disks if that was the issue ,so if you can contact me I will send out a replacement.

If it was a free hobby ie did not cost me anything to buy up all the issues on ebay etc and everyone scanned an issue then certainly it could be free , but it takes months of work for each dvd set and about £2-300 pounds to buy up the issues hence donations really do help.

Hope that clears things up and thanks to all who have supported me over the last 7 years and the 12 scanners at home which I have destroyed.

[kriz]

Show me some examples of quality and if it is readable or not ?

[Mort]

Nearly all the cu amigas and normal cus are scanned by me. I donate all the scans I have done to AMR and other sites to publish online.

Hope you can see Kris

regards Stephen

[DH]

Hmmm. I've just looked at CU Amiga (May 1991) Page 40 and I see nothing wrong. I agree, they are not perfect but hey, Mort is scanning thousands of pages and because of this, who are we to complain?

I think if someone offers their own time and effort scanning magazines for free, then I don't see any real reason why anybody should suggest they are of bad quality and unreadable (which they aren't).

Although I don't mass produce scans, I am aware of some of the difficulties that can arise with the reproduction process, but as I photograph my magazines, I can't really comment any further because of the difference in the methods.

All I can say is, keep up the good work Mort, your efforts do not go unnoticed

[Cloudane]

I think AMR is fantastic. My only wish is that it had the news articles etc and not just the game reviews Big thanks for the effort as far as I'm concerned. Even if not perfect (seem ok to me?) they're better than nothing... Which is exactly what we might end up with if it ends up with the task being thankless / complained at too much.

[poohbear]

I would like to add my support for Mort. He has done a fantastic job on an incredible amount of scanning (see http://www.zzap64.co.uk/zzuperstore.html for ZZAP, Crash, and many more). I very much doubt that he is adequately recompensed for his time (not to mention magazine and scanner purchases) by CD and DVD purchases.

I think it is a bit unreasonable to gripe about someone who has invested so much of their own resources into a project that benefits the community.

Thanks Mort.

Now I'm wondering if I should post a similar message to say "Thanks Toni Wilen" for much the same reason. :-)

[Mort]

Thanks Guys

[kriz]

It looks ok to me, i just checked some CU AMiga reviews and easy to read for me... But its only the game pages still ? Serious pages is still missing, must wanted for me

[zipper]

What about requests about wanted articles - I could do some bu really won't scan all my couple hundreds of mags at least until on pension...

[Codetapper]

If anyone has requests for specific pages that Mort has scanned, I have many of his DVDs and can upload the missing files. The scans Galaxy and I have done - we generally did do the news articles.

I still have hundreds of mags but since I cycle to work it's not so easy to transport them anymore! But I can try and get some scanned if there are specific pages requested and if nobody else can do them.

[AmigaFriend]

I also checked CUA scans by Mort, and although they are not 600dpi, they are very readable. For the medium provided (the web), the scans are really good.

So thumbs up to you Mort, for all your hard work on this.