Failing Better
David Bishop edited 2000AD seven years ago, before moving on to fresh pastures.
Before doing so, he wrote a rough guide to putting together a weekly comic as reference material for his successors.
If you’re at all interested in the technical aspects of running a comic, this is a fascinating read.
Nicole Kidman had to go to hospital recently for a checkup after a minor car crash.
Kidman’s publicist, Catherine Olim, said the star was trying to shake zombies off the bonnet of her Jaguar when the car spun off the road.
“I think she’s OK,” said Ms Olim.
Huzzah!
Last night I finally managed to catch up with the legendary pilot “Heat Vision and Jack”.
Created in 1999, the pilot was directed by Ben Stiller and starred Jack Black and the voice of Owen Wilson. Jack is an astronaut on the run from Nasa, aided by his only friend Heat Vision, a talking motorcycle with the mind of his dead stoner room-mate.
Oh, and Jack is super-intelligent. But only when the sun is up.
Pure bloody genius – but it does require you to have some knowledge of and a slight affection for the tropes of late 70s/early 80s US Action/Adventure TV shows.
If you’ve watched Knight Rider you’ll be fine.
If you like “Heat Vision and Jack” you may also be interested in “Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace” – a similar setup, also raiding the half-remembered shows of our childhood.
Billy Mernit has sold his novel to Random House. Huzzah!
Only one problem – he doesn’t have a title. And that’s why he needs your help.
There’s even prizes.
OK… So, not great prizes. But prizes nonetheless.
And just think of the bragging rights.
Damn but the man is good.
John Rogers talks about the way he thinks new technology is going to impact viewing.
To summarise: Big networks die and networks built on informational assessors will become the dominant guiding force.
That was a bit of a mouthful. Let’s break it down.
A TV network is a filtration system for television shows. So, for example, if you want a gentle drama you’d hit Sunday night on ITV1.
That’s changing. With the advent of multi-channel, PVRs, and DVDs the proliferation of viewing options means that the role of the network as selecter of your evening’s entertainment becomes unsustainable. With so much choice being delivered on-demand, one channel will no longer satisfy.
So how do you choose what to watch if you want something new – and here’s the tough part – that you’ll probably like?
One way is to use Opinionated People’s Choices.
Oprah Winfrey’s recommendation carries weight. As does Quentin Tarantino. As does Harry Knowles. As does Warren Ellis.
The specifics of what Quentin or Oprah or Harry or Warren will recommend or decry are actually irrelevant, but I think we can safely say that if we like some of the things that one of them recommends, we’ll probably like most of the rest. Similarly, if we don’t agree with their tastes, then we can safely and happily ignore them.
Rogers suggests – and I concur – that the next logical thing is the development of these people into… well, we don’t know what to call them yet. Informational Assessors. Taste Buddies. Whatever. The important thing is that these are people who have a strong sense of The Things They Like.
And then we build channels on the fly from the choices of people with strong tastes. Here’s how to do it:
– Pull a data feed off the Internet and tag the programmes with an informational flag (Warren likes! Warren hates!)
– Set a threshold (All Warren All The Time! Just The Best! Not Too Weird!)
– Use this as a feed to your PVR to grab and store
Bosh. Your very own Warren Ellis TV channel.
It’s another way of cutting through the murk.
Don’t believe a word of it.
They’re just really good friends.
It’s William Gallagher with his targets of Sell A Novel and Sell A Drama To TV. One bottle per, as usual.
In other news: I got through to the next round of the Gumball 3000 competition. Looks like my opponents from the Scribosphere are Good Dog and Phill Barron. Fortunately there are three prizes, so I can afford to wish them both good luck…
EDIT: It seems that The Moviequill is in the race too… Good luck!
Down the pub this evening, I was appalled to discover that the toilet had been vandalised with one of the most offensive things in the English language.
The word “Cunts” had been scratched into the wood above the urinal.
With an apostrophe.
Marking papers re-interpreted as a text adventure.
Text adventures, kids, are what we used to do before they were able to pipe verisimily worlds directly into our brain-pans.
Ask your grandfather, if you can get him out of that Ginger Lynn sim.
So, apparently there’s going to be a Firefly MMO.
Well, it could work, and work well. There’s a passionate fanbase, and they “hope to get input from series creator Joss Whedon.”
The Firefly ‘verse has several well-defined areas and a great many more unexplored corners. The potential’s there.
But is it gonna fly?
You’ll note that “hope to get input from Joss Whedon” doesn’t equal “will have input from Joss Whedon”. And frankly, given that Firefly is something that Joss is truly passionate about you would think they would have talked to him by this point.
At the moment, this is nothing more than a press release. An announcement that someone has the rights. No named developers, no track records. At the moment it’s just a sliver of hope that could go well or badly.
Now, perhaps I’m misinterpreting here – and do feel free to set the record straight if you know more than I do – but this reads a little like the following:
“We are pleased to announce that we’ve bought a young baby from someone who wasn’t able to bring up the child herself. We’re going to ask the birth mother if she’d like to wish us well raising her child. That we own. And if she doesn’t like the way we’re bringing up her child she can go fish.”
Because if Joss was involved, ya think it would’ve been on the press release.
So either this is an extremely badly drafted press-release, or you’re gonna be buying someone else’s baby.
If it’s pretty and has blue eyes, you may not have a problem with that.