# Just made a banner for my blog



## AE35Unit

I had a few thumbnail images of book covers that I used on Library Thing and I thought, why not arrange some of them randomly and make a banner! 
I wasnt sure it would work with Blogger but with a bit of tweaking I got it!







and the blog URL:
My journeys through inner and outer space


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## Omphalos

Looks good!


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## AE35Unit

Omphalos said:


> Looks good!


Thanks! This was the original, but it looked too pale on the dark background of my blog. I  use this one on a site with a pale background.


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## Ursa major

It looks fine, AE. (The one in your first post, that is.)








(Caveat: It doesn't really matter one way or another, but a life spent speaking sentences liberally sprinkled with TLAs leads me to believe it should be "a_n_ SF", as S is pronounced with a leading vowel.)


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## AE35Unit

Ursa major said:


> It looks fine, AE. (The one in your first post, that is.)
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> (Caveat: It doesn't really matter one way or another, but a life spent speaking sentences liberally sprinkled with TLAs leads me to believe it should be "a_n_ SF", as S is pronounced with a leading vowel.)



YES I was wondering about that, thanks for pointing it  out. i still have the psd file so its quite simple to change. I hope...
B TW Ursa, what's a TLA? I'm familiar with a TMA of course-its what led Dave to my ship in the first place...


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## Ursa major

I'm not sure that there's a right and wrong with this; it depends on whether someone expands SF to "Es-Ef" or "Science Fiction" in their head. I tend to do the latter, but that's because I tended to do so at work.

But at least SF is only a two-letter abbreviation. With longer ones, there's a third possibility, that the abbreviation is spoken as if it's a word, in the way that SCSI is pronounced skuzzy (and so it would be _*a*_ SCSI interface, not *an* SCSI interface; probably ).


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## BookStop

Oh, shoot. I hadn't thought about it until Ursa pointed it out, but i expnaded Sf into Sci-Fi in my head when I read it.  

Maybe the 'a' lead me to do it that way and if it had been an 'an' I'd've gone with 'es-ef'??? Quite the quandry.

But, I like the second bkgrnd where the books are lighter in comparison the the words.

Can you frame the background the same colour as the words? Would really make it pop I think.


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## Ursa major

That's interesting, Bookstop. I'd never realised that some people read the abrreviation, SF, as "sci-fi", though now I think about it, I can see why it can happen.


As an aside, I've seen mention of a convention where SF is used for science fiction in books while sci-fi is used for the rather less pure variant we get in visual media (films, TV). I try to stick to this, if only to avoid offending the more knowledgable. But if the difference can be illusory...?


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## AE35Unit

BookStop said:


> I like the second bkgrnd where the books are lighter in comparison the the words.
> 
> Can you frame the background the same colour as the words? Would really make it pop I think.



HMMM the thing is the pale one is far too prominent on my blog, it looks out of place there.


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## Ursa major

It's how it looks in situ that counts, AE.

I can see how the pale version might leap out at the viewer from your blog page, given the dark colours you use in the background, which would be rather distracting.


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## AE35Unit

Yea that's it Ursa. By the way I still want to know what TLAs are...


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## Ursa major

TLA = Three Letter Abbreviation.

Note that it's used less precisely for abbreviations with other numbers of letters: IP, SCSI, INDB, VoIP, etc.

In my industry - telecoms - engineering texts are riddled with them, particularly when describing large network elements (e.g. exchanges) with many different (proprietary) applications. Add to this the move towards multimedia solutions, so that we have to use all the computing world's TLAs as well as our own, and an outsider listening in would start to think we were speaking a different language.


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## AE35Unit

*Re: Just (re)made a banner for my blog*

Heres the new improved version-I had to re-do it from scratch!


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## HoopyFrood

I did the same thing, Book, for some reason I said sci-fi in my head and couldn't work out what Ursa was saying at first. Then I realised it was SF. 

Nice banner, AE. I made a similar one for a film blog a while ago, made with famous movie images.


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## Ursa major

HoopyFrood said:


> ...and couldn't work out what Ursa was saying at first.


 
Don't worry about it, Hoopy. 

It happens rather a lot**. 





** - Which may suggest the source of the problem. o)


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## AE35Unit

Ursa major said:


> As an aside, I've seen mention of a convention where SF is used for science fiction in books while sci-fi is used for the rather less pure variant we get in visual media (films, TV).



Yea thats the distinction I make. Sci Fi is the stuff in the movies and on TV, with widely inaccurate wooshing space ships and the like, whereas SF is the stuff found in books.


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## BookStop

I try to say science fiction very sepcifically when i speak aloud, but my brain will do what it will do when it's my inner dialog


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## Karn Maeshalanadae

As far as futuristic, technological science fiction goes, it's all the same to me, and therefore I use the terms interchangeably if I bother to use more than one at all.


That looks like a nice banner, AE.  I don't think I've read any of the books you have listed, though-sci fi really doesn't appeal to me all that much, as you might tell. I'm a diehard traditional fantasy boy.


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## Ursa major

Manarion said:


> I'm a diehard traditional fantasy boy.


So which are you, then: a woodcutter's son or a blacksmith's son?


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## AE35Unit

Manarion said:


> That looks like a nice banner, AE.  I don't think I've read any of the books you have listed, though-sci fi really doesn't appeal to me all that much, as you might tell.


 I've read them all apart from the Jules Verne one





> I'm a diehard traditional fantasy boy.


And I'm  a diehard traditional SF nut!


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## Rodders

Looking good AE35unit.


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## AE35Unit

Thanks Rodders!


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## AE35Unit

I made this one a couple me years ago too for an astronomy forum in memory of Arthur C. Clarke


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