u/plazman30

I think that might be a little cheaper than it was on Prime Day.

This is what I'd like to see. Have no idea if it might actually happen:

1. 4.3" screen
2. Front Light
3. Page turn buttons on the bottom front of the device

I basically want a non-touch Pro with the page turn buttons on the front. Though I'd hop on a full 4 Pro with front page turn buttons.

I feel like side page turn buttons are useless when you have the device attached to the back of your phone.

My first complaint about the unit was that I paid $200 for this thing, and it's slow. And that criticism is still valid. But I noticed that it's at its slowest after I restart it. It gets faster after it sits around a bit. I have to assume it's spinning up processes and caching data. For some reason my default setting was turning it off instead of putting it to sleep.

I'm also a KOReader user and it's wonderful that installing KOReader is a simple drag-and-drop. KOReader is actually faster than the stock reading app, making the experience even better.

Then we have FOUR physical buttons. Most e-readers only have 3 if they have page turn buttons, and one if they only have a touch screen. You can also customize what the buttons do. HUGE plus in my book.

The buttons also have a very satisfying tactile click and feel good in the hand and are easy to identify by touch without looking at them.

Then we have those wonderful rounded corners on the side with the buttons, making it very easy and comfortable to hold. I think this thing is more comfortable than any other e-reader I have held.

This thing also has the exact combination of features I wanted: 7" eInk Carta 1300, physical page turn buttons, access to the file-system via regular USB protocol and not MTP, and a USB-C port on the side instead of the bottom.

And the size is great. I have it up against 2 other 7" eInk devices, the Kobo Libra Colour, and the Kindle Paperwhite. They all have the same screen size, but the Era Lite is the smallest of the 3 and feels the best in the hand.

And lastly we have the price. In the US, I can get it for $199 on eBay when it's in stock. A similarly spec'd Kindle would cost me $220 and I don't get physical page turn buttons. And Kobo doesn't make a Carta eInk device with a 7" screen and page turn buttons. You'd need to get a Clara BW, which is $160, but only has a 6" screen and no page turn buttons.

I've only ever used KOReader on this thing. I need to give the stock software a try and see how it compares.

Era Lite, I judged you too early. You're my go-to now.

Love the hardware. Love the software. The UI is SLOW. I put KOreader on it, and it's a bit better. But compared to my 11th Gen Kindle, this thing drags.

I'm in the US and on firmware U710.6.10.3462, which came out on April 14, 2026.

I'm curious what makes this thing slow, it is the hardware or the software.

For those that don't know, Steve Jackson Games has a very generous POD policy that lets you get ONE POD made for any PDF you legally own.

I took advantage of that and had a hardback, standard color POD made of the GURPS Super book and thought I would show what the final product looks like. So here we go.

Front Cover

https://preview.redd.it/8yfx1y8kpeoh1.jpg?width=768&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7da5327f75c7ce6427d8b05c5b33e3790b206b10

Back Cover

https://preview.redd.it/yqr3cijmpeoh1.jpg?width=768&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1363bea5d8de5980d7457fbebb2f81577ef406e3

Spine

https://preview.redd.it/lu83u1wpueoh1.jpg?width=5712&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=360c148952f81a89421f27d74ded65adbb1c5b26

Interior

https://preview.redd.it/fc0iqrgupeoh1.jpg?width=5712&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7299f4636dd0e1135729524e412cb51bb1cb99bb

https://preview.redd.it/bwiwiohvpeoh1.jpg?width=5712&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6e5f952b22c95d6f0e74651172b3b75da2b7c173

I had this book done at Lulu.com. I used a 10% off coupon I got in my email and it cost me, with the 10% coupon $18.46. Shipping was Shipping was $5.69 and I paid $1.46 in tax.

A couple of notes about this for people that have never done a POD book before:

• This isn't a simple as "upload the PDF and they send you a book." There are steps you need to do to make this work:
  • You need to delete the front and back covers from the PDF and resize the PDF from 8½×11 to 8¾×11¼. Resize the page, but leave the content on the page the same size.
  • You need to design the cover to fit the template you download from Lulu's website. This involves some desktop publishing/graphics arts skills that are outside the scope of this post. In a quick summary, you need to take the front and back covers out of the PDF, drop them in the template and design a spine. There's a way to pull the full wraparound cover out of the PDF, but even that is not enough. You still need to move stuff around to make sure the image is centered on front and back cover.
• Even though this is perfectly legal for you to do, Lulu frowns on doing PODs of someone else's copyrighted work. If you upload your files and the automated process ships the book, then you're fine. If anything happens along the way that requires a human review the order (computer problem, printer jams, etc) they WILL ban your account, refund your payment source and you will not get the book. They will not accept the letter on the Steve Jackson Games website saying it's OK to do this. I've had a dozen PODs done on Lulus' website and haven't gotten banned yet. But there are plenty of posts on r/rpg about Lulu accounts getting banned.
• These are POD glue-bound books. They won't last as long as a nice smyth sewn hardback will. But they'll probably last way longer than a paperbook book will. I did a lot of research into glue binding, and the type of glue you use can increase the longevity of the book. Way too much to get into here.
• DO NOT order the matte cover option. It feels weird in the hand. Almost slimy. Only get the gloss cover. The matte cover from Mixam.com is OK. But not from Lulu.
• Lulu has 3 print options: black and white, standard color and premium color. Standard color only costs a few dollars more than black and white, and is OK for something like GURPS Supers, where there is only occasional color on pages. But anything with full-page images. you're probably going to want premium color, which costs 3-4 times what a black and white book costs. Any print job that requires premium color, you're better off buying a printed book. It will probably be cheaper.

As much as I would love to post a tutorial on how to make files for a POD job at Lulu.com, that well outside the scopy of what r/gurps is for and more for a community about making POD books.

Every site I've been to in the last couple of weeks, when I try to set up my Yubikey for second factor authentication, it doesn't use FIDO U2F. Instead it creates a FIDO2 Passkey and saves it to my Yubikey, taking up one of the 25 slots I have available.

Is FIDO U2F dead at this point, and all websites are just going for Passkeys now?

For the most security when logging in to any site, in a perfect world, you would use a Passkey and have the option to disable your password.

If I want to use a Passkey to login to Bitwarden, where do I store that Passkey?

My wife wants a Kobo and I want to get her one. She has two specific requirements:

1. NO COLOR SCREEN
2. Page turn buttons

I watched a lot of reviews of the Libra Color and it looks like a great device. I don't understand why there isn't a black and white model also.

This is going to sound stupid, but I get irrationally annoyed when I buy a PDF and it doesn't include the back cover of the book and only has the front cover.

One useful and one just to see if Claude could do it.

The "Let's See If Claude could do it" script.

This one removes all the gradient fills and replaces them with solid fills.

Original PDF:

https://preview.redd.it/phqk1iwf1bnh1.png?width=1760&format=png&auto=webp&s=04af6501f9fe7438f9febc25a0c4ab5e9177fb9d

After the script runs:

https://preview.redd.it/745hgshi1bnh1.png?width=1752&format=png&auto=webp&s=6f096f088c8b11b10bc670af6981976646c3828d

And the second script, which I think might be useful for some: PDF Layers!

The second script takes the page borders on every page and moves it onto it's own PDF layer, so you can turn it off. Of course this led to the chapter title and page number disappearing because they're white. So, the script also makes a copy of the chapter name and page number and changes them to black on another later you can turn on, so you get the that back. Claude took it upon itslef to also make the border around colored text boxes it's own layer you can turn off also. Why do this? Well, if you need to print a few pages out to use at the table, this will save you a lot of ink. You need to use a PDF reader that supports layers. Right now, the only ones I kow of that support layers is Adobe Reader and Foxit Reader on Mac/Windows and Xodo on iOS Android. Here is what we got.

Here is the original page in FoxIt Reader:

https://preview.redd.it/7lr0l9193bnh1.png?width=2350&format=png&auto=webp&s=5165033a75095b1a201387cedd2740eaba64ad71

And here is the border turned off:

https://preview.redd.it/o8yo1k8c3bnh1.png?width=2340&format=png&auto=webp&s=b02608600a78797cac6e3bf0aaa4ad2f583e4469

Here is the border turned off with the page numbers turned back on:

https://preview.redd.it/hzonyc9l3bnh1.png?width=2346&format=png&auto=webp&s=5a03b21c6c9e9a095460363a951c1c61d8787adf

And here is one with the box boreders turned off:

https://preview.redd.it/p133o0cq3bnh1.png?width=2344&format=png&auto=webp&s=865e0333112c23bcfd4c252296c26af1389be5aa

I'm going to see if I can get Claude to add a layer that has a 5 pixel-wide stripe down the outer edge with the original color, so if you still want the color, you can get it. It just won't take up as much space or use as much ink as you print.

Same place all the other script are:

https://github.com/plazman30/gurps_4e_revised_hyperlink

EDIT: Now it adds a "stripe" layer so you can still get color on the page edge if you so choose:

https://preview.redd.it/cegz73z3kbnh1.png?width=2352&format=png&auto=webp&s=40345d19a10ea8cc0c52110fbb4d56eee2650937

Steve Jackson Games has a very generous personal POD policy. If you buy the PDF, you can get ONE POD made for personal use. I'm sure this polict stems from a period of time when most of the GURPS books were out of print. Now that most of the line is available as a POD from Amazon, it's nice to see that they still allow you to get a POD made.

One challege with getting a print-on-demand book made from a printer that supports getting just one book made is the cover. You need to design a full wraparound cover. Most PDFs only come with a front and back cover and no spine. As someone who's been a "typography nerd" since the late 80s, when I got my first Macintosh, I call pull this off, even thought I don't do it professionally.

This involes pulling down their template, and thex extracting the front and back covers from the PDF, dropping them into the template and designing the spine (typing the text, picking a color, rotating it 90 degress, dropping it in place and lining it all up).

To make sure you get the spine right, you really need to see a picture of an actual spine. And guess what nobody ever really photographs and posts online? The spine of the GURPS book they're showing off or trying to sell.

I learned last week that any of the PDFs of books that are/were available for print actually have the full wrap-around cover in the PDF. It's just cropped to only show the front cover. But the data is there.

I'm still tryng to figure out the best way to extract it. For my GURPS Supers POD, I let an LLM extract it for me. Here is an example of what I found:

This is the cover as viewed in any standard PDF Viewer/Editor:

https://preview.redd.it/d8d120gbdrmh1.png?width=1976&format=png&auto=webp&s=a5d2e23643abc14528a55fd3bb1445b91c4153e9

With the assistance of an LLM, I got it to pull this out of the PDF:

https://preview.redd.it/56i7ichhdrmh1.png?width=2432&format=png&auto=webp&s=cd46fa748fe120305e97b71a10fe4b8711efe2aa

That being said, getting a personal POD made of a book available through Amazon isn't really going to save you any money. I'd buy a POD from Amazon or DTRPG to help support SJG.

Just neat that I found this.

Another note, any GURPS PDF that is only available as a PDF does not have a wrapround cover "hidden" in the PDF. No need for SJG to create a full wraparound cover for something they don't plan to offer physical copies of.

I'm going to see if I can vibe-code a script that can pull this image out. We can't distribute covers we pull out. That would be a copyright violation. But creating a tool that can do this from your legally owned PDF is fair use.

That full wraparound cover is way too low a resolution to use for a POD job. It's just here for demonstration purposes.

I'm looking to pick up a physical copy of GURPS Supers. The POD on Amazon is completely black and white. The PDF I own has some color in the headers. Do older copies have any color in them or are they also completely black and white?

I've created a workflow on my PDF purchases, which I will describe at the end of this bullet list. But here is what I would like to see RPG publishing companies do to PDFs they sell to customers:

• Convert all images in the PDF to RGB. I have a script that does this, and it seems to really speed up image rending, especially on slower hardware. It also makes the images "pop" a little more when viewed on computer devices, since computers display things in RGB and not CMYK.
• Hyperlink your PDFs. The table of contents, the index in back and any references to other sections of the book. If you reference another page in the book, or another chapter in the book, please make the text a hyperlink to that location in the book.
• Please number the page labels in the PDF properly. When I use the Go To Page option in my PDF reader and tell it to go to page 35, it should not go to page 37. Page Labels will let you label PDF Page 1 as the cover, and any front matter pages such as the TOC and copyright pages with i, ii, ii etc. And you can label Page 1 as Page 1. So when I tell it to go to Page 35. It actually goes to Page 35.
• Please include proper metadata in your PDFs. PDFs support 2 types of metadata. Basic metadata is 4 fields: Title, Author, Subject, Keyword. There is also XMPP metadata that will allow you to enter much more such as publication date, description, publisher name, etc. At a minimum, please at least fill in the 4 basic fields. A lot of ebook apps on tablets read these fields and name file using this when you import it instead of the filename.
• If your pages have a background on them, if possible, please include a PDF with just a white background. This is easier for some people to read and is way more printer friendly, if someone wants to print out a few pages from your book to have at the gaming table.

PDFs are just a subset of PostScript. And PostScript is just code that describes a page. You can manipulate a PDF using scripts. That's pretty obvious, since PDF editors exist.

I've actually created Python scripts to do a lot of this stuff for me. When I get a PDF, I do the following with scripts:

1. Convert all images in the PDF to RGB.
2. If it's a Mongoose or GURPS PDF, I have scripts that will hyperlink all page and chapter references as well as the TOC and index,if it's not already hyperlinked.
3. If it's a Castles and Crusades PDF, I have a script to either remove the background completely or move it onto it's own layer.
4. I have script that applies proper page labels to a PDF, so that Page 1 is actually Page 1.
5. I have a script that will pull metadata from DriveThruRPG and tag the PDF and write a Grimmory sidecar file.
6. The conversion to RGB can sometimes really increase the side of the PDF. If it gets way too big, then I have a script that will do light compression on the PDF and can usually cut the file size down as much as 50% with almost no loss in visual quality when reading on an iPad.

The last thing I do is drop the PDF onto my home Grimmory server (https://grimmory.org/). The server reads the sidecar file and properly imports all metadata, and I can access my PDFs from either in the Grimmory Web UI, or use the OPDS feed built in the app to get the files on my iPad, iPhone or computer.

This is all made possible by Bundle of Holding and their insane deals.

Looked at the Mongoose Traveller 1E collection, it's clear they were trying to maintain a similar aesthetic to Classic Traveller with the book covers and the black and white interiors.

And the switch back to 2D6 mechanics also harkens back to the Classic Traveller era.

How do the two games compare? What's better about one vs the other?

I kind of see the appeal of playing an older edition of a game. It's 'done.' No new supplements will come out to mess with your world.

But sometimes a new edition comes out and it just doesn't click with you.

I'd like to hear people's stories of why they stuck with an older version of a game after trying a newer version.

I ordered a ton of "mouse wrist rests" try out with my Ploopy Adept and here is what I settled on:

Kensington ErgoSoft Wrist Rest

https://preview.redd.it/mzwx14ls7rjh1.png?width=1500&format=png&auto=webp&s=9035fa22081041a36a4a87bc2ca6ceb7971c3291

It's just the tiniest bit too high. But it has a very grippy bottom so it doens't move around.

Dapesuom Mouse Wrist Rest

https://preview.redd.it/0pne61h48rjh1.png?width=1294&format=png&auto=webp&s=0ace92baad675bd6c4ecfb88fb5d0317e8c58b9e

This one, at least for me, is the perfect height. But it does not have a grippy bottom. It's textured, so it's not perfectly smooth and will move around on me. I'm pretty sure I can just glue some kind of grippy material on the bottom, but that will probably raise the hight to that of the Kensington. So, for now, I'll stick with the Kensington.

Now that I did the BTU upgrade, I have a blue Ploopy adept topcase I don't need. If anyone wants it, it's yours for the cost of shipping.

https://preview.redd.it/0amp7saz2rjh1.jpg?width=1536&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ac2f3cc66db970e79be532454b42e4bb66209eb6

VIAL is a GUI-based QMK configuration tool similar to VIA, but it exposes a few more QMK options.

One is tap dance.

With Tap Dance you can assign multiple options to one button. You can do 4 different assignments:

https://preview.redd.it/5fmfrurb3gjh1.png?width=692&format=png&auto=webp&s=5622aa0d99446709f6a75e72c0478c881d13140f

On the lower right button, I now have a right click when I tap the button. But if I hold the button down, then I can drag scroll with the ball.

Thank you to @Outrageous_Sort_8984 for compiling Vial for the Adept and posting it in a comment here for me to use.

I'll leave it to him to make a post with a link, so he can get some karma for his hard work.