#cloakstone69

So, further to my earlier post about the problems I find in downloading AO3 stories which are put into a series instead of a single multi-chapter document, my thanks go to the people who have told me their own experiences and thoughts on the issue.  In case it’s useful to others, I thought I would do a round-up here:

@cloakstone69: Yes, I can absolutely see this.  When each story is going to be fairly stand-alone, or will come to a natural stopping point, and when the author intends to add new stories in the series only as-and-when they get inspired, a series does make more sense and reduces the expectation/demand from its readers. And we’ve all experienced the disappointment of a multi-chaptered WIP where the author eventually stopped updating before the end!

@sarahthecoat​: Oh, I’m all in favour of being able to kudos the author each time they add a new section! (I comment later about re-numbering downloads.)

@melmey-fanfics: I didn’t know this was possible but looked into it and there are free PDF combiners available so you don’t have to buy Adobe Acrobat DC.  It wouldn’t help me at work – which is where I mostly save fic from AO3 before emailing it to Kindle – because I would be prevented from downloading the combiner, but I might try it on my home laptop.

@emeraldscholar​: I just tried this again in case the protocols had changed.  MOBI files can’t be re-named – well, I can rename the file when I save it to my computer but when I then send it to Amazon Kindle it reverts to its original title. I tried again with a PDF version and that does keep its new title.  However, I’m reluctant to save AO3 fic as PDF because I often find that it doesn’t convert nicely, frequently running two or three words together with no spaces, and it does this enough times to be frustratingly annoying.  I might try PDF again if I want to save a series, because at least I could put a number at the front of each section for easier access when reading.

Alternatively, if I want to save a series, I might find it easier in the long run to copy/paste each section into a Word document and send that to the Kindle.

And yes, obviously it'll be lovely if AO3 eventually come up with a way of downloading an entire series, but I doubt that’s high on their list of priorities, nor should it be.

Making amends? (Or, trying to.)

wait til you watch 7 Brides for 7 Brothers. Problematic as hell, but Dorcas is clearly the sexiest

Yes! Tons! That’s more or less a constant. Most zoos of the size of ours have at least one animal transfer per week (incoming or outgoing). Of course some of those are like...a couple of fish, and we’d never know. But in the last 12 months, we’ve had born: one gorilla, three polar bears, a wildebeest, several dama gazelles, a bonobo, some flamingoes, a silvered langur, I think an okapi, a Humboldt penguin (well, he hatched), and probably a bunch of birds and stuff that I can’t enumerate. And the zoo has acquired through transfers several baby cheetah (I seriously cannot keep track of the cheetah we have so many), a pair of baby leopard brothers, two orphaned black bear cubs, two new giraffes, two new Asian elephants, a sloth bear, I think a Grand Cayman iguana, four new orphan manatees, some owls, a Japanese sea eagle...that’s all I can think of although I am certain there are more.

i can't fucking believe they're drawing it out over a whole week....

Is that Captain Douglas Richardson, or Captain Herc Shipwright?