FAQ

Why do you make zines?

Because I like writing. Because I miss zines. Because sometimes I just want to write stuff and put it out there in a fairly unpolished form, just as it emerges Athena-like from my head. (Although I have done my very best to correct typos and spelling mistakes because those cause me pain.)

Why should I read anything you write?

You shouldn't. These aren't the droids you're looking for. Move along.

I meant, what if I read it but don't like it.

That's fine. That just means it wasn't meant for you. (I try to avoid saying that something was bad just because I didn't like it. And there are some things that are bad that I truly love.)

Where do you ship?

I ship physical copies to the United States, Canada, and Mexico. I have tried shipping elsewhere, but it is really expensive and incredibly unreliable. I'm trying to include digital versions of some zines that you can download and print yourself. As we use letter-size paper* in the United States and the rest of the world (quite sensibly) uses A4 paper, this takes me some time to do.

Can I see the banana?

Yes.

Did you really say that Howard the Duck is a great movie?

I did not. I said it's not as bad as people make it out to be. Honestly, I really recommend that you watch UHF instead, which is a truly under-rated movie. Plus, it has Weird Al Yancovic in it!

How can I contact you?

My email address is just13zine @ gmail . com.
Other contact info is often (but not always) on the last page of my zines. If you sign up for my mailing list you can also reply directly to the email you get.

You can also follow me on Mastodon, where I mostly talk about techy stuff, and also at BlueSky, where I tend to talk about work and art and sometimes post photos.

Why just13?

I have no idea. That word combination just popped into my head one day about 20 years ago and found a snug little place to hang out. I had no idea what I thought I would use it for, but I knew I wanted to use it at some point. When I sat down one evening and just starting typing, it ended up being a zine, and it wasn't long before I realized the name would be just13. Also, I like the idea of not having capital letters or spaces.

Why the codex?

A friend of mine in high school studied Mayan culture in high school, including the Mayan codices, so the word “codex” as a reference to an old and somewhat cryptic document has been with me for a long time now. (He's now a professor of archeology, I do believe.) And as both Unix and LaTex have been around for a long time and can seem old and somewhat cryptic to a lot of people, it seemed like a good title. (Also, note the lack of capital letters again. If you are sensing a theme, you are quite correct.)

Also, someone on Reddit thought that I was making a bit of a joke, because "LaTeX" is pronounced as "lay-teck" not "lay-tecks", and thought I should pronounce this as "co-deck". I was not making a joke (in fact, this didn't even occur to me until they pointed it out, but I think this is hilarious), so I'll leave it up to you how you want to pronounce it: "co-decks" or "co-deck"—it's all good to me.

Why is this site called “just13” when you have other zines listed here?

When I created this site, the only zine I had was just13. I added the other zines later. This still bugs me a little bit, but at least it's everything in one place. (Plus, I really didn't want to spend any extra money on another domain registration. And it's a lot easier to maintain one website rather than two or three.)

What's the deal with Etsy?

That's a long story. Etsy used to be a great place for individual artists and crafters to sell things directly to other people, but they followed the same path as other tech companies: they went public. When that happens, a company worries entirely about what the shareholders think, and not what their users, whether creators or buyers, think. I think their official policy is "go along with this or go away." It's a sad, but entirely predictable, story. It's happened before and it will no doubt happen again with other companies.

How much do you actually know about Linux?

More than I think I do, but never as much as I need to know. The important thing is to keep asking questions.

How much do you actually know about LaTeX?

Ditto.

How did you make this website?

I coded everything by hand—html, css, php, and absolutely zero Javascript. It's the kind of thing I find quite fun, actually.

I ask because it looks pretty plain. No color. It's almost downright ugly.

Yeah, I really wanted to focus on you know, actual words and not a bunch of flashy stuff that doesn't add anything. I've lived long enough to be quite done with style over substance.

At least there aren't any ads on this site.

There are any ads on any of my websites. I hate ads. In the old days, you used to have an ad at the top and an ad at the bottom, and that was it. Now they're everywhere on most websites: at the top, at the bottom, inserted into the content, in pop-ups. Video ads are the worst. How the hell am I supposed to read your website when there's a freaking video playing? Ugh! Nothing makes me click off a website sooner than having lots and lots of ads. That's why I don't get on the internet all that often.

Not that it matters, but those last two items weren't actually questions.

Anything else you do that we should know about?

I'm a former teacher, former web designer, current jack of all trades, and a writer. I have numerous blogs, such as my personal blog (“inwpw” is an initialism for “in some weird postmodern way”), a blog where I talk about books and writing, a tech blog plus a couple of others. My main website is here. I also do the occasional podcast (over on my personal blog).