This is only a preview of the September 2001 issue of Silicon Chip. You can view 35 of the 104 pages in the full issue, including the advertisments. For full access, purchase the issue for $10.00 or subscribe for access to the latest issues. Items relevant to "Build Your Own MP3 Jukebox; Pt.1":
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So you have spent countless hours developing a project and now you would
like to see it published for all the world to see. Does SILICON CHIP accept
articles for publication? Yes, we do. Here are some general guidelines to
anyone contemplating writing articles for SILICON CHIP.
W
ant to write for SILICON
CHIP? You do? Great. Before
you start, let's give you some
general guidelines which will make your
job easier and will greatly increase the
chances that the article will be accepted
for publication.
Before you start on that great article concept, please contact us to find out whether it
is of interest to the readers. We would hate
it if you had put in an enormous amount of
work to produce an article only to find that
we reject it because it is not of sufficient
interest to the readers.
There may be other reasons for rejection,
of course: we might have a similar article
ready or almost ready for publication – or
we might have already given another person the go-ahead for a similar idea.
When you contact us, we will ask you
for the general concept. If it is a project, we
will want to see a circuit diagram and a brief
synopsis on what it does, how it works and
how much it might cost. We'd also need
to know that any specialised components
you have used will be available for other
readers to obtain.
Perhaps you would like to submit a
feature article. Again, we would like a
synopsis; ie, a brief outline of the article.
You can contact us by phone or mail but if
you can do it by email, please do. Contact
us at silchip<at>siliconchip.com.au
When emailing, please do NOT attach
documents in HTML format. If you wrote
your synopsis in Word or another text
editor, leave it that way. Opening HTML
documents simply takes extra time.
What about money? Yes, we do pay for
published articles but there are conditions
which we will spell out when you contact
us. We generally do not commission articles. We always edit submitted articles and
often end up doing substantial re-writes.
The amount we have to do affects the
overall payment.
Submitting the article itself
These days, we like articles to be submitted as (preferably) Word documents or
.txt files on a Zip disk, CD-ROM or floppy
88 Silicon Chip
disk, formatted for PCs. You can also email
articles to us. If you do email us an article,
please do it as a text file or as an attached
Word file. Any Word attachments you send
to us should be virus checked beforehand.
Speaking of viruses, we get a lot of them
sent to us in various ways. If you need to
send .exe files or zip files please make
sure that you run them through the latest
virus software such as Norton Anti-Virus.
Contributors get very embarrassed when
we subsequently inform them that they
have a virus.
As a general policy we, like most companies these days, immediately delete any
email that comes in with an attached .exe
file unless we know (and trust!) the source.
By the way, we often find viruses in submitted material but the contributor swears
on a stack of Bibles that they virus check
everything. It's only after a bit of quizzing
that we find they haven't updated their
virus definitions or signatures for months,
perhaps years. Please update regularly!
Article format
Please don't make your article look
pretty. We want it in plain, unadorned text.
These days, since so many people have
Microsoft Word or similar word processing software, there is a great temptation
for writers to use fancy fonts and formats,
dropped caps, italics, bullets, indented
paragraphs, text in various colours and so
on. Don't bother!
No matter how fancy your document
looks, all that effort in presentation will
be dumped because if we do publish it, it
will be formatted to suit the magazine. So
whether we like your article or not, we have
no choice but to dump your formatting.
We are only interested in your basic text.
For the same reasons, please do not present your article as a PDF file, a Powerpoint
presentation or as files from any desktop
package such as Pagemaker, Quark Express,
Publisher, etc. We only have to extract the
text back out again which once again will
lose all your fancy formatting.
Fancy formatting also makes your article
much harder to edit and you want to make
our job easy, don't you?
OK, maybe you need to include some
tables in your article. In that case, we
will need the table format (eg, in Word)
but please don't send them as Excel or
database files.
All of that sounds like a lot of negatives
but we really need to keep the whole
process simple and that means text files or
Word document files.
By the way, regardless of which word
processor program you use, they all have
a facility for outputting your article as a .txt
file (also known as ASCII or plain text). Do
not just change the file extension and hope
for the best – the chances are that we won't
be able to read it.
That is one really good aspect of email. If
you send us an article inserted as a text file,
you will be able to read it on the screen,
before you click on the “send” button.
Still on word processors: if you have Microsoft Word it is a good idea to make full
use of its grammar and spell-checking capabilities. Make sure you have the English
dictionary loaded, not the American. Also,
it is a good idea to use Word's readability
statistics after you have run a spell check.
If you want to make your article as readable as possible, keep the sentences and
paragraphs reasonably short. Try to make
sentences active, not passive and not too
wordy. If the Word “Flesch-Reading Ease”
score is below 40 (out of 100), you know
you have a problem.
Photographs and graphics
As you can see from most of the articles
in SILICON CHIP, we generally like to include plenty of photos and diagrams. So
what to do?
While some people do go to the trouble
of taking photos of their projects, they are
rarely good enough for publication. We
much prefer to take our own photos and for
that reason (and also to check the operation
of your project) we generally prefer to have
the prototype submitted to us.
We do return prototypes, whether or not
the article is published.
We know there are times when it may be
www.siliconchip.com.au
SILICON
CHIP
impractical or impossible to send us your
project and therefore you wish to take your
own photos.
We work in 35mm format only and prefer
colour transparencies (ie, so-called colour
slides). The sharper they are, the better. It
does not matter to us if the slide is mounted
or unmounted (but unmounted cost you less
to have processed); if unmounted, please
do not cut slides into individual frames.
Most “neg files” hold a strip of 6 negatives
or transparencies – that's fine for us.
By the way, send us all the frames you
shoot – we like to choose the best exposures,
best focus and best framing, ourselves.
We don't want 2-1/4-inch square or
larger format transparencies, as we then
have to out-source the scanning which can
delay publication.
If you only have colour prints, send us
the colour negatives as well. We scan the
latter as they have far more detail, contrast
and colour than any colour print.
If you want to take your own photos,
you really need a single-lens reflex 35mm
camera with separate control over aperture,
exposure time and focus. And while modern, automatic cameras might be great for
happy-snaps of your family on holidays,
they are really not suitable for magazine
photography because you have no control
over aperture and depth of field.
If you are taking photos of your project,
vintage radio or whatever, don't do it on
your front lawn, grubby garage floor or
against a brick wall. Try to use a neutral
background which contrasts with the object you are photographing. You can use
a plain or light pastel bedsheet, but make
sure it is spotless and has been carefully
ironed to take out the creases – remember
that the camera will ruthlessly record any
blemishes. Remember also that any shiny
surfaces on the object being photographed
will pick up the background (foreground)
colour and can give unwanted colour casts.
Speaking of unwanted colour casts, taking photos under fluorescent light will give
a greenish cast while incandescent lighting
will give a red cast. Direct sunlight will give
very strong shadows which can conceal
www.siliconchip.com.au
detail while indirect sunlight can give an
overall blue cast. Can't win, can you?
Well, you can, but it is best to be aware
of all the traps. The best light – by far – is
outdoors with a lightly overcast sky. Shadows will be minimised or even eliminated
and the light is virtually pure white. But
sometimes you don't get those overcast
days without the rain pouring down!
That is why it is preferable to send us the
project and we'll take the photos in our studio. If we mess up, we have to do it again!
Digital photos
Digital cameras have come a long way
in recent times but the majority are still not
good enough for magazine photography.
Some high-end digital cameras which
have a resolution of at least 3 megapixels
(4 is better) and which also allow you to
control aperture, exposure and focus can
produce good results (the cover photo on
the August 2001 issue of SILICON CHIP was
shot "natural light" with a 3.3 megapixel
digital camera outdoors on a cloudy day).
Photographs shot on a digital camera
need to be done at the camera's highest
possible resolution. Many digital cameras
store photos at 72dpi. This is OK if the image
size is very large but not if it is small. We can
manipulate the photo to some degree but
only if we have plenty of pixels to start with!
As a general rule, if a digital picture will
fit on a floppy disk, it will probably NOT
be good enough for reproducing in the
magazine. There are exceptions, especially
where photos are going to be printed very
small, but we find that an average compressed photo needs to be at least 2MB to
be of much use, particularly where we are
going to use it at a reasonable size.
If sending pictures by email or on a
ZIP disk or CD, you can store them in
any recognised format: .EPS, .BMP, .TIF,
.JPG, .ZIP, etc – but remember that JPG is
a lossy format and .JPG files should not be
resampled and restored. ZIPped EPS or TIF
are our preferred formats.
Scanned photos
We would very much prefer to scan any
By LEO SIMPSON
photos (or other artwork) ourselves. Scanning is an art, especially when it comes to
scanning for reproduction in a magazine.
Circuit diagrams
We need a clear and legible circuit
diagram. This can be a pencil sketch or
a computer printout but whatever format
you provide, we will always redraw it to
our standards.
If possible, when you draw your circuit
diagram stick to the conventions of inputs
on the left, outputs on the right, positive
supply rails at the top and negative/ground
rails at the bottom.
You will have noted that we do not use
“nF” in our circuit diagrams or descriptions
– please convert to µF or pF.
Those who are constantly working in
electronics understand nF, those who
dabble part time are confused by the extra
abbreviation.
For the same reason, we do not use
so-called “metricated” abbreviations for
resistors – eg, 1K5 meaning 1.5k or R33
for 33 ohms.
Printed circuit boards
If you have produced a PC board we
prefer that the pattern be drawn in Protel
or any version of PC board layout software
compatible with Protel: Easytrax, Autotrax,
or Circuit Maker.
If you design your PC board in another
package (eg Eagle, Ivex, etc), we will need
an EPS output of each layer – board layer
and component layer for a single-sided
board.
Designing PC boards is a separate topic
in itself and we hope to feature an article on
this subject shortly. However, as a general
rule, keep components more or less evenly
spaced on a 50-thou grid (typical) and parallel to the sides of the board; don't have
diagonal components – it doesn't look right.
Other points to consider:
(a) circuit components must be readily
available and reasonable in cost.
(b) 240VAC wiring must be safe and
SC
comply with all relevant codes.
September 2001 89
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