Vagueness

I walked into my local comic shop today during lunch and saw that on their 27” widescreen plasma hanging on their wall that they were playing a show that looked familiar. I recognized the British guy on the screen and I realized that the owners of the store were showing the latest episode of Doctor Who Confidential. Russel T. Davies was talking about the “Rise of the Cybermen” episode that just aired on the BBC last weekend. Amazing how modern technology (BitTorrent) allows for people to download TV content from thousands of miles away and then play it back here in the States. Years ago, back in the ‘80s, I remember how difficult it was to see a Doctor Who episode that had not aired here yet. Typically, a hardcore fan would make contact with someone over in the UK, have them send him a VHS tape that was recorded in the PAL format and then the fan would pay to have the tape converted over to the NTSC format so that it would play here in the States. I still remember being about 14 years old, sitting on a hardwood floor, watching a crappy copy of a Colin Baker Doctor Who episode. But we all loved it just the same! Now a fan just fires up BitTorrent and downloads the episode directly to a computer and outputs the video to a TV. I’m glad to hear that Warner Brothers is going to try and experiment and release 200 films via BitTorrent technology late this summer. Sure, it’s not in the format that fans want (who wants to pay $20 for a download that you can only play on your PC and that has DRM attached to it?), but it’s a small step in the right direction. I recently read that over 60 million people have downloaded movies in the last several years. That’s a lot of people!

I’ve talked about the wave of the future before and it’s coming. Anyone can see it. Whether companies are smart and embrace the technology or try to ignore it will be the interesting thing.

In other news, I recently heard an interview of Tracy Hickman on the “I Should Be Writing” podcast If you’re a writer and would like to hear more about how Tracy Hickman came to be a famous writer of 58 books and what his thoughts are of the writing process, definitely take the time to listen to the 45 minute podcast. I believe the interview was one of the better ones that Mur has created for the show. There’s some extremely useful information there (“don’t quit your day job!”). Ha. I had to laugh at hearing that one. Very funny stuff.

As for writing and such: I have some interesting things in the works. I don’t know if I can pull off what an editor has requested, but it would be rather cool if I could. I’m being a bit vague on purpose. As for The Magic Sock, I’m waiting to hear some more information and see if I can move things forward. No rush on this. I’d rather take some time to relax and see what comes out of the situation. Again, I’m being vague on purpose. I just want to get some ideas out on paper and see where they go. I’m not ready to talk more in depth about what’s going on behind the scenes.

Have a good day!