Machines that go *PING*

I like technology. I like gadgets. Where most people have an answering machine, I've got a Celeron 266 running voicemail software, and a cordless telephone with the Microsoft logo on it (yes, they really did make a telephone a few years ago -- the product didn't exactly fly off the shelves, but I love mine).

I'd love an MP3 player -- an iPod would be nice, though the Creative Nomad would work a whole lot better with my SoundBlaster Audigy 2 Platinum.

Anyway...digressing.

The point is this. I like gadgets. That's why I love the Gizmodo blog. Because they feature every amazing, cool, pointless, ridiculous gadget under the sun. The kind of gadgets that make you stare at them until you realize that the front of your shirt is soaked through with the drool that has been spilling out of your mouth for God knows how long. The kind of gadgets that make you wish you made four times as much money at your stupid, pointless job, so you could afford them all.

And that's why it's now listed under LINKAGE. Go. Read. Drool.

Learn something new every day.

I just learned that Blogger time stamps it's posts based on the time the post was started, not based on the time I push the "publish" button.

Wait, I guess that's assuming the date stamp as based on the time on my own computer. Maybe it isn't. Hm, hadn't thought of that. That messes up my whole theory. Maybe I didn't learn anything today after all.

Yup, gotta love the blogs for bringing this kind of fascinating, take-no-prisoners, information to the reading public. Yup. Gotta love it.

Stupid long weekends.

I haven't had a long weekend in years -- my schedule dictates that I work Saturdays and Sundays anyway, and if the extra day off happens to fall on a Monday, then there's no getting around working that day either.

So, in protest, I'm trying to work from home today. So far I've managed to learn that my so-called "home office" needs some improving. Like taking that stupid fax-modem off my bookshelf and plugging it back into my computer because, even though I haven't been on dial-up internet for a few years, it suddenly would be very nice if I could send and receive faxes.

Mucking about.

Just mucked around with the layout. Because thanks to the brand-spanking-new Blogger face lift, there's a whole bunch of new layouts available. Happier with this one than I was with the last one, but my additional areas in the sidebar (Contact Me and Linkage) don't look right compared to the other sidebar items.

Will have to fix that. But that's a project for another day.

Okay, now I can relax.

The proposal meeting is done, and now the waiting begins. Everyone needs to have the chance to read the plays that were pitched, and then gather again to discuss their thoughts.

I don't know why I find myself nervous about these things. Thankfully this year, the nervousness only lasted for about the first 20 seconds of my pitch before I realized I was sitting in room full of really great people that I had gotten to know even better this last year, and everything was fine. Maybe next year I'll be able to pitch something without any nervousness at all?

Yeah, that'll be the day.

Okay, so, agreed, this is a post that probably appears better suited to the new WL Studio Theatre Blog that we're currently testing out. But it also seemed *wrong* somehow to put these kinds of entries there, at least for the moment. Right now, I'm just some guy, proposing a play -- my proposal really has nothing to do with the theatre until I get the thumbs up from them.

Should that thumbs up come, I'll be sure to make my first play-related post at that forum.

Until then...this will be the forum for all my concerns and insecurities. As of which, I'm sure, there'll be few. After all, the pitch is done, and it's all just waiting now.

And, in fact, it's time now to refocus on the last play, that we're taking to Quesnel on the 28th for the Central Interior Zone drama festival. Posts from Quesnel will *not* appear here -- that's a Studio Theatre production, and will, as such, appear on the Studio Theatre blog (yeah, I know I linked it again -- it's a new venture, and I'd like to get as many readers over there as possible).

So feel free to drop by the theatre blog (ack! another link!) on the 28th and the 29th, and drop in a comment or two to the posts we'll be making from Quesnel. It's all part of keeping the community involved in community theatre.

Good 'night'.

Tonight is the Studio Theatre's play proposal meeting. It's the night when directors who want to direct something for upcoming season go out and propose their play. Then the people on the "selection committee" (for lack of a better turn) go and read all the plays, and consider all the directors, and try to come up with the best season they can.

Somehow, I'm just crazy enough to try this directing thing again, and will be pitching a play called 'Night, Mother in probably close to an hour.

It's a beautifully written play that just happens to be, at least in part, about suicide. Yet, in spite of that expectantly bleak subject, it's a play with a surprising amount of warmth to it. And, of course, it's not something that's going to be enjoyed by everyone. Surprise, surprise.

Wish me luck.

Okay, so now what the heck do I do?

Got some free time back. Finally.

The play is done, more or less. We've got a bit of work to do before the 28th, and then we're off to Quesnel to perform for festival, but other than that little bit, it's over. We ended our two week run here, with audiences ranging in size from "tiny" to "acceptable".

Yes, I'm very aware that part of the problem was that this a play that people didn't immediately recognize. It's hard to get people to come and see something if they don't already know what they're coming to see -- which doesn't make much sense to me, but it's obviously something that Hollywood figured out years ago, otherwise they wouldn't be pumping out so many goddamn sequels.

Not that I have any intention of "learning my lesson." I have no desire to direct something with an immediately recognizeable name, something that people have already seen the film version of, something where people already know what to expect when they walk through door.

It's partly that I don't want to end up inadvertantly compared to their memory of their previous experience with the material.

And it's partly because I want the audiences who come to see these plays to experience something new and fresh and interesting. Something that surprises them, something that affects them, something that makes them walk away without being able to just brush away the last two hours thinking, "Yeah, it was okay, but the movie was better."

This is all, of course, assuming that the powers that be decide it's worth it to let me direct again.

I'm pitching something for next season. The meeting's on the 20th, and I fully expect it to be a little awkward and bizarre to be selling material for next year while my mind is still not completely off the work being done this season. But I've found a play that kicked me in the stomach, and I had a fantastic time working on the play this year, and to be quite frank, I really can't wait to do it again.

So I'm pitching. It's a play called "'Night, Mother" and it's drama about suicide that, despite it's subject matter, has a surprising amount of warmth to it. It doesn't have an easy, happy, Hollywood-ized ending, in spite of the fact that there was a film made out of it.

In short, it's everything that *I* think a good, solid story should be. Interesting, dark, affecting, moving, and something that, hopefully, should people come to see it, will not be easily brushed out of their minds.

Of course, that's next year. And even that's only assuming those on the Studio Theatre's selection group decide to give me the go-ahead to direct again.

So what I do until then? Now that I've got my free time back, and I can start writing again, what the heck am I going to write?

As promised, I'll try to blog a bit more. I haven't been too concerned about the lack of updates here these last few weeks because I doubt too many people are dropping by for a visit. And if you have been, sorry for the vacancy.

I'll try to update every day or so. If only to practice the art of using the language -- which is pretty much what I wanted the blog for in the first place.

Outside of that, I've got a film script I'm eager to get finished in the next month or so -- well, the first draft, at any rate. It's something I want to try to film in the fall, so finishing that first will give me the chance to let it sit for awhile before going back to polish.

After that, there's a one act play I'd like to finish before the Theatre BC New Play contest cut-off -- which is, I think, sometime in June. After that, there's a top secret musical theatre production I'd like to work on, plus a novel that I started a few months back that is tugging at me. I'm tempted to leave it until November for National Novel Writing Month, and I may very well do that depending on how my schedule works out over the next few months. But I'm hoping I can back to it before then.

And, of course, there's last November's novel that's still waiting around for an ending.

So I've got my projects, and I've even got them structured into a rough "order of importance".

Then my lawn needs mowing, my house needs cleaning, my refrigerator needs re-stocking...

Dirty Text.

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Once you've had a free lunch, it's hard to justify paying for it ever again.

Napster debuted five years ago, in 1999.

For those of you not around for Napster's initial appearance, it wasn't the pay-to-download service that it is today. When it first appeared in 1999, it was one of the first peer-to-peer file sharing applications available.

Unlike Kazaa, on which you can find, not only music, but movies and applications and more viruses than you can shake a stick at, Napster focused solely on the music, taking advantage of the newly developed MP3 format that allowed people to shrink their digital audio files to about a tenth of their uncompressed size.

This made the files much, much, much easier to illegally download over the Internet.

Obviously, a lot of people thought this was a pertty cool idea. And started downloading the files. Lots of them.

Obviously, the US recording industry wasn't thrilled with the whole thing, and promptly sued the freaking be-jesus out of Napster. After a short but valiant struggle, Napster collapsed, disappearing from the face of the 'Net until it's reappearance last year as a legal, pay-to-play MP3 download service.

Not that Napster's demise had *any* affect on music downloading. It's death simply meant the appearance of more applications. AudioGalaxy, Gnutella, eventually the Kazaa that we know and love/loathe today (depending on how you feel about popups and spyware).

The lawsuits are still being flung around, because the RIAA doesn't like the idea of people getting their music for free. And that's a fair complaint. But the thing they never really got was that, even in 1999, it wasn't solely about getting free music. It was about getting *digital* music.

People wanted small, portable MP3 files that they could store on their computers (with their rapidly expanding storage space) instead of dozens or even hundreds of CDs, cluttered around their office / living room / study / wherever-the-heck-you-decide-to-put-your-computer. And as much as Napster might not have been the legal way to do it, it was, unfortunately, the *only* way to do it.

Even if you wanted to pay the recording industry a buck or two to be able to download a song legally, you couldn't. And it took years before you could.

They were more interested in filing lawsuits than they were in providing a legal alternative for digital music. That was a mistake. A big mistake.

The only real big-name options for legally downloading music -- Apple's iTunes and the newly legalized version of Napster -- appeared just last year. That's four years of people getting used to eating a free lunch. Now you expect them to pay just because you're asking nicely?

Don't hold your breath.

On top of that, if you want to run either Napster or iTunes, you'll need a computer running at least Windows 2000 or Windows XP. Windows 98 won't cut it.

Any particular reason why not? Windows 98 runs Kazaa just fine.

So, if you're running Windows 98, you can choose to either download music for free, or spend $250 to upgrade your computer so that you can download songs at $.99 apiece. Which is makes more financial sense to you?

Here in Canada, even if you *do* have Win2K or XP, you're going to have to move south of the border if you want to use either service. Napster won't run at all in Canada, and iTunes -- while you can open it up and do music searches and listen to 30 second clips of the songs you're looking for -- won't sell you a song until you have a US mailing address.

Pardon my language, but...what the fuck?

Are you planning on shipping me the MP3? Were you going to send it to me on CD, maybe? Or print it out in binary so that I could turn around and retype the song into my own personal computer?

Who the bloody hell cares where I live? It's a stupid digital song, made up of stupid 1s and 0s, that I can download in less than a minute over a high speed connection. Now just goddamn send it to me!

Five years since Napster invented the music disitribution method of the 21st century, and the music industry executives still don't have it figured out.

It's no wonder that people are still happily scarfing down their free lunches...

I am he as you are he as you are me.

Which would be more pompous...

To assume that I am the only who feels this way?

Or to assume that everyone does?




PS: Happy Easter

Are you there, God? It's me, Manuel.

Okay, let me explain why I think the whole notion of "prayer requests" is completely absurd.

First off, we'll have to assume that God actually exists. Because if he doesn't, then prayers of any kind become automatically absurd, and thatmakes my argument far too easy, but it also wouldn't be convincing in any way to those who *do* believe in God.

So, first off, we assume that God exists. Okay?

And we're going to also assume that praying actually has the potential to alter someone's fate. If I'm dying of cancer -- hypothetically -- then we can assume that there's a chance, even a slim one, that the power of prayer alone can push that cancer into remission and allow me to live a long and healthy life.

Now, if I pray all by myself, maybe nothing happens. Either because God doesn't hear me, or because he thinks I'm being selfish for asking to live, or...whatever, he's God, I'm sure he has his reasons.

But if a whole bunch of people who've never met me and know absolutely nothing about me pray for me, *then* God will listen and grant their wishes.

Huh?

Doesn't it seem likely that God -- and remember, we are assuming that he exists -- would take into consideration where the prayers were coming from? I mean, if I use someone who's never met me before as a personal reference on my resume, it's going to have very little bearing on whether or not I get the job. And if someone who doesn't know anything about me, and about whom I know nothing about, is praying on my behalf...isn't God going to kind of wonder why? And why would I count those person's prayers? How does that person praying know that I'm worth praying for? Is he doing it just to be a nice guy? And is that enough of a reason to have God change his mind about whether or not I should die of cancer?

Of course not.

It's absurd to think that a prayer is going to have more *oomph* just because 200 people who know absolutely nothing about me pray for me at the same time. It's like you're trying to trick God into granting your prayers, fool him into agreeing to it just by the sheer power of the numbers you have supporting you, and not because there's any actual reason to grant those prayers.

As I've said a few times, absurd.

Science, religion, cheeseburgers.

I was supposed to write something about science and religion today, because I didn't do it yesterday, but then a kind soul commented on that very column over at MyCariboo which, yes, prompted a response from me, and now I'm not sure how much more I have to say about the topic.

I guess the thing is this. In a nutshell.

Some days, I look out at the world and think that it's absolutely monstrous that some have convinced themselves that all of this -- all this brilliance and beauty in the world, in the universe, the very fact that any of us exist as all, that we exist as we do -- could have all just happened accidently.

Do I think there's a creator? Yes, I do. Do I know his name or what he looks like? No, I don't. Do I think I have to go to any particular church or recite any particular prayer in order to get on his good side? No, I don't. Do I think that any particular organization of religious intent has all the answers? No, I dont.

Does that mean the answers are unreachable? No, not necessarily.

It's my belief -- and this may be either naive or overly-optimistic, or even both -- that there answers out there to the questions we seek. I think if we work at it, we can find them. I also think that we'll find them a lot faster of stop worrying about labels. As I said in the column, does it really matter that much if science happens to stumble across something that feels a little too much like religion? Would it really be the end of the world, say, if a religion decided to shift around its central belief system in order to accept the existence of something like the dinosaurs?

I think we're too stuck on making sure our science stays scientific and our religion stays dogmatic to ever really get to the heart of things.

Which is too bad, really. Because that assumes that it's more important to be sure that you're asking the question in the right way than it is to actually find the answer.

And I just don't believe that.

Well, slap me with a pancake and call me Earl.

Tony Pierce linked me today. Which is not only incredibly generous of him, but it's also -- without a doubt -- the coolest moment of this young blog's life.

I only wish that, you know, I had some slightly more interesting content kicking around here when he dropped by. Kind of embarassing, really...

I should have posted something about science and religion today, but I didn't. Look for it tomorrow.

Naked Canadians are the best kind.

Raymi is Canadian. She doesn't post to her blog with anywhere near the regularity that Tony Pierce does. When she does, it's sometimes incoherent, it's sometime beautiful, and it sometimes contains half-naked photos of her. This is not a bad thing.

Happy April Fool's Day.

April Fool's Day Gallery

Tony Pierce is the Shizzle Dizzle. Fizzle.

Addition to the link list #1 -- Tony Pierce. Gotta start with the man himself. Hands down, the best writter blogging today. How he manages to post upwards of three or four times a day and still make every single word he writes resonate is a mystery to me. If you're not reading him, you're making a huge mistake that must be rectified immediately.

Facelift.

So it begins -- the step-by-tiny-step adjustment to the layout of this page to start pulling it away from the generic template. I'm droping (or, as of this writing, trying to drop) a list of links over in the right hand area.

Wish me luck. My HTML knowledge is circa 1996, soooooo, this might get ugly.

Incoherence.

It's been...uh, a little over a week since I started this stupid thing. At no point in that time have I felt like I was even remotely coherent while communicating through it. Even now these words feel too thick and malformed even as they push their way through my head.

I don't know why that is.

Shut up and listen to me, goddammit.

The thing about blogs, I think -- actually, the thing about any form of self-publishing -- is that you have to have a bit of an egomaniacal streak. You've got to assume that what you have to say is important enough, insightful enough, witty enough for others to take time out of their schedule to come and read whatever it is you've got to say.

It's like the vanity press -- people who pay a printing company to print their own book, either because they haven't bothered trying to get it published in the traditional way, or because the traditional way got them nothing but a kindly worded rejection letter. The problem is that sometimes there are very good reasons for an editor to be there, either saying "Cut this part out," or "Can you make this section longer?" or "This whole thing is a gigantic piece of shit. Please don't waste my time."

If I don't assume people are coming to read this, why on earth would I bother to try to post something at least once a day? On the other hand, why on earth would I be pompous enough to assume that anyone would feel the desire to visit this page once, yet alone on a regular enough basis that I should bother to update every day?

Ah, blogs are stupid.

See ya tomorrow.

Um, g'morning.

It is, for the record, my intent to put some kind of content in this blog each and every day. Except for Sunday. And it's not that I'm particularly religious, I just wanted to have one day of the week that I didn't have to think about something to post here, and that seemed as good a day as any, and besides, after work, and then the Sopranos, I'm usually to brain dead to compose a sentence, not to mention a dozen.

So, anyway, yeah. This is the post for today. Hoo-rah.