The shop manual

What's on this site, printed: a manual for each rig, in the tradition of the aftermarket repair manuals, and serialised the way comics are. Issues come often: one work package's booklet, an A4 sheet folded to A5, kept in an envelope in its bin. Editions come now and then: the issues so far collected and bound, with a painted cover and a different rig on each. Between editions, printings update the text under the same cover.

Every edition keeps its number and its link for good; the online pages are always the latest printing.

Covers

The cover is laid out by manual/cover.py from manual/editions.toml. Its painting is made from a line drawing (manual/drawings/) by an image model, with the prompt kept beside it (manual/prompts/); until a painting is chosen, the cover shows the drawing.

Copyright page

Each edition's copyright page carries its printer's key and this colophon.

How this was made. Written at the bench and in the editor, with help from Claude (Anthropic), a large language model; covers painted by Gemini's image model from line drawings; plans weighed by clingo. Who wrote it, the person or the machine? 無 (mu; wú): the question unasks itself. Hands on the solder and multiplications accumulated in a data centre: not one, not two. The mistakes are still mine to fix.

Not affiliated with or endorsed by any vehicle maker. Ford and F100 are trademarks of Ford Motor Company, used here only to name the truck this is about; no makers' emblems or lettering appear in the art.

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